
Turned Inside Out
Reading the Russian Novel in Prison
Steven Shankman(Author)
Northwestern University Press
Will be published approx. on 30. May 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
200 pages
978-0-8101-3491-1 (ISBN)
Description
In Turned Inside Out: Reading the Russian Novel in Prison, Steven Shankman reflects on his remarkable experience teaching texts by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Vasily Grossman, and Emmanuel Levinas in prison to a mix of university students and inmates. These persecuted writers-Shankman argues that Dostoevsky's and Levinas's experiences of incarceration were formative-describe ethical obligation as an experience of being turned inside out by the face-to-face encounter. Shankman relates this experience of being turned inside out to the very significance of the word "God," to Dostoevsky's tormented struggles with religious faith, to Vasily Grossman's understanding of his Jewishness in his great novel Life and Fate, and to the interpersonal encounters the author has witnessed reading these texts with his students in the prison environment.
Turned Inside Out will appeal to readers with interests in the classic novels of Russian literature, in prisons and pedagogy, or in Levinas and phenomenology. At a time when the humanities are struggling to justify the centrality of their mission in today's colleges and universities, Steven Shankman by example makes an undeniably powerful case for the transformative power of reading great texts.
Turned Inside Out will appeal to readers with interests in the classic novels of Russian literature, in prisons and pedagogy, or in Levinas and phenomenology. At a time when the humanities are struggling to justify the centrality of their mission in today's colleges and universities, Steven Shankman by example makes an undeniably powerful case for the transformative power of reading great texts.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Evanston
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
260 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8101-3491-1 (9780810134911)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Steven Shankman holds the UNESCO Chair in Transcultural Studies, Interreligious Dialogue, and Peace at the University of Oregon in Eugene. He is codirector of the UNESCO Crossings Institute for Intercultural Dialogue and Conflict-Sensitive Reporting at the University of Oregon.