Reconstructing the Academy: Women's Education and Women's Studies

Politics & Social Sciences

Minnich, Elizabeth

O'Barr, Jean

Sociology

Univ of Chicago Pr

Transforming Knowledge

Philosophy

Temple University Press

Transforming Knowledge suggests that education can serve neither the quest for knowledge nor the promise of a genuinely democratic system until some very basic intellectual errors are uncovered and corrected. Examining the heritage of a tradition created primarily by white Euro-American men who considered themselves the norm and the ideal for all humankind, Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich identifies these errors, characterizes them, and demonstrates how they work to distort and limit our knowledge. She cites work primarily by feminist scholars and activists, but also from ethnic, peace, and ecological studies, and argues that a reorientation of education and thus thinking and thus knowledge makes sense. 
This book is the result of more than twenty years of work in higher education during which the author talked with thousands of faculty members, administrators, students, and community people about the necessity to transform the curriculum in this country. Drawing also on her years of work with Hannah Arendt and on Dewey, Kant, Plato, and Socrates, Minnich confronts the "dominant meaning system" that perpetuates errors in thinking, particularly faulty generalization and universalization, circular reasoning, mystified concepts, and partial knowledge. 
In light of the heated debate in which such critics as William Bennett and Allen Bloom charge that a return to "the classics" is the only acceptable route for education, Transforming Knowledge offers a philosophical analysis of the cultural, intellectual, political tradition behind our curriculum. Minnich warns that it is in and through education that a culture, and polity, not only tries to perpetuate but enacts the kinds of thinking it welcomes, and discards and/or discredits the kinds it fears.

Social Sciences

Privatization has been on the right-wing agenda for years. Health care, schools, Social Security, public lands, the military, prisons—all are considered fair game. Through stories, analysis, impassioned argument—even song lyrics—Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich show that corporations are, by their very nature, unable to fulfill effectively what have traditionally been the responsibilities of government. They make a powerful case that the market is not the measure of all things, and that a vital public sector is an indispensable component of a healthy democracy.

The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy

Business & Money

Kahn, Si

Biography & History

Berrett-Koehler Publishers

This is a book about how we define knowledge and how we think about moral and political questions. It argues that the prevailing systems of knowledge, morality, and politics are rooted in views that are exclusionary and therefore legitimate injustice, patriarchy, and violence. That is, these views divide humans into different kinds along a hierarchy whose elite still defines the systems that shape our lives and misshape our thinking. Like the first edition of "Transforming Knowledge, " this substantially revised edition calls upon us to continue to liberate our minds and the systems we live within from concepts that rationalize inequality. It engages with the past fifteen years of feminist scholarship and developments in its allied fields (such as Cultural Studies, African American Studies, Queer Studies, and Disability Studies) to critique the deepest and most vicious of old prejudices. This new edition extends Minnich's arguments and connects them with the contemporary academy as well as recent instances of domination, genocide, and sexualized violence. * Updated to consider recent scholarship in Gender, Multicultural, Postcolonial, Disability, Native American, and Queer Studies, among other fields of study a* Revised to include an extended analysis of the conceptual errors that legitimate domination, including the construction of kinds (genders) of human beings * Revised to include new materials from a variety of cultures and times, and engages with today's contemporary debates about affirmative action, postmodernism, and religion"

Transforming Knowledge 2Nd Edition

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Minnich, Elizabeth. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Minnich, Elizabeth