Author: Holly

Just as correspondence involves the exchange of ideas between people, dialogue, according to Freire, is an important part of learning. To Freire, asking and answering questions is the way we … Continue readingFreire and Correspondence

In “Self Writing,” Foucault stresses that correspondence — although it has a similar function of providing introspection, even as the writer writes to an audience other than himself — is … Continue readingGaze in Correspondence

In “On Notebooks,” one of Joan Didion’s essays from Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Didion writes of her personal experience with keeping a notebook and writing things down. She sees her urge … Continue readingHupomnemata and Joan Didion

Foucault recounts the ideas of the philosopher Seneca in his account of the Hupomnemata. Seneca stresses that one must balance between absorbing information and expressing one’s own thoughts, that is, … Continue readingBalancing Reading and Writing

Inspired by Freire himself, hooks’ work can be applied to Freire’s ‘banking’ concept of education. In “Teaching to Transgress,” hooks questions the divide between theory and practice, claiming not only … Continue readinghooks and Freire

In her chapter “Teaching to Transgress,” bell hooks laments the inaccessibility of feminist theory, not only in its complicated and esoteric language, but also in its inability to be applied … Continue readingThe Commodification of Feminism

bell hooks speaks to Butler’s Gender Theory when she writes in her chapter “Teaching to Transgress” about the importance of “challeng[ing] and deconstruct[ing] the category ‘woman’ — the insistence on … Continue readinghooks and Butler

In her chapter, “Theory as Liberatory Practice” hooks contests the “false dichotomy between theory and practice” (65), citing the common contempt of theory and discussion in favor of “action.” hooks … Continue readinghooks: Theory as practice

bell hooks observes the opposition between academics and “being well.” She writes that academics are often idealized as emotionally dysfunctional people, whose intellectual gifts distract them from their misery and … Continue readingTeachers as Self-Actualized Individuals

In her 1999 Preface of Gender Trouble, Butler addresses an internal betrayal of feminism to those it tries to empower. This is, of course, its exclusionary consideration of gender. If those … Continue readingButler’s Perspectives on Feminism and DuBois’s “The Souls of Black Folk”