Pedagogy Oct 2019

Anxiety Can Bring Us Together

Douglas Dowland

Abstract

This article traces the history of the word anxiety and explores its use as a way to describe the act of literary interpretation. Returning to Stanley Fish’s idea of the interpretive community, the article argues that pedagogy often reinforces anxiety as an individual, isolating experience. This bespeaks a larger concern about the role of pedagogy in student and faculty life. The article concludes by encouraging faculty to consider anxiety as an energy that can be productively harnessed through the construction of a more emotionally aware interpretive community.

Journal
Pedagogy
Published
2019-10-01
DOI
10.1215/15314200-7615553
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
writing pedagogy
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (4)

  1. Siltanen (2024)
    “Bound by a Shared Affect”
    Pedagogy
  2. Ball (2023)
    Surveillance and Pedagogy
    Pedagogy
  3. Ioanes (2023)
    Should You Kill the Spider?
    Pedagogy
  4. Porter (2023)
    Corequisite English and Community College
    Pedagogy

References (15)

  1. Ahmed (2004)
    The Cultural Politics of Emotion
  2. Bammer (2015)
    Tribal Rites: Academic-Speak and the Promise of Belonging
     ↗
  3. Berlant Lauren . 2017. “Humorless. Serious. Critical.” Supervalent Thought (blog), 1January. supervalentthoug…
  4. Best (2009)
    Surface Reading: An Introduction
    Representations  ↗
  5. Cvetkovich (2012)
    Depression: A Public Feeling
     ↗
Show all 15 →
  1. Denizet-Lewis (2017)
    The Kids Who Can’t
    New York Times
  2. Fish (1980)
    Is There a Text in This Class?
  3. Freeman (2012)
    Anxiety: A Very Short Introduction
     ↗
  4. Lim (2010)
    The Performance and Pedagogy of Neoliberal Affect
    Theatre Survey  ↗
  5. Palmer (2007)
    The Courage to Teach
  6. Paulson Steve . 2016. “Critical Intimacy: An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.” Los Angeles Review o…
  7. Tompkins Kyla Wazana . 2016. “We Aren’t Here to Learn What We Already Know.” Avidly, 13September. avidly.lare…
  8. Warren Kathryn Hamilton . 2017. “The Reluctant Reader.” Chronicle of Higher Education, 22January. www.chronic…
  9. Wiegman (2014)
    The Times We’re In: Queer Feminist Criticism and the Reparative ‘Turn.’
    Feminist Theory  ↗
  10. Williams (1992)
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CrossRef global citation count: 4 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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