What are you reading? – June 2021

David Bridges, Professor Emeritus at the University of East Anglia’s School of Education and Lifelong Learning, reads Clare Debenhams Life and Death in Higher Education: The Rise and Fall of British Universities (Lutterworth Press, 2021). “Teacher Training Colleges (‘Colleges of Education’ from 1964) deserve a place in the history of higher education in Great Britain. At its peak in 1968, Debenham explains, there were 113 local government colleges and 53 voluntary institutions. About 40,000 men and women entered it, compared with about 50,000 freshmen. But from 1974 the colleges were abolished as independent institutions. Some were closed, others merged with local colleges and universities; some survived and diversified, eventually becoming universities in their own right. Debenham provides a vivid picture of the life of these colleges through interviews and archival material, and uses their deaths as a starting point for a provocative analysis of how teacher education is best provided within and increasingly outside of higher education. “

John Anker, Professor of International Strategy at the University of Huddersfield, reads Mauro F. Guillens Rude Awakening: Threats to the Global Liberal Order (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). “The 2008 financial crisis threatened the stability of the political and economic settlement that emerged from the ashes of World War II. The first Global Liberal Order (GLO1) ran from 1945 to the 1970s and was shaped by Keynesian macroeconomic management and increasing social liberalism. GLO2 emphasized the primacy of markets and the financialization of the economy. Technocratic economic management prevailed in both periods. The bon vivants who invented increasingly complex financial derivatives and lent billions to those who couldn’t repay them were not punished after the 2008 crash. The crisis and the response to it were then exploited by populists to challenge the global liberal order and its multilateral institutions. Despite a new respect for expertise during the Covid pandemic, the jury has not yet decided whether the liberal center can hold up.

Uwe Schütte, German-speaking reader at Aston University, reads David Andersons Landscape and subjectivity in the work of Patrick Keiller, WG Sebald and Iain Sinclair (Oxford University Press, 2020). “I try to keep up to date with publications by WG Sebald, my former PhD advisor at the University of East Anglia. But while research on it shows no sign of deterioration, quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality. This book turned out to be a welcome exception. Anderson’s comparative study connects and compares Sebald’s East Anglian travelogue with essay The Rings of Saturn and his novel Austerlitz with key works of ‘English psychogeography’. It opened my eyes to how his books, although they were originally written in German and retain a decidedly European perspective, participate in a very English tradition of dealing with landscapes. Most gratifying, however, were not only the many insights I gained, but also the fact that it is written without the jargon that tarnishes so many studies about Sebald. “

source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/what-are-you-reading-june-2021/