Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This work lucidates bell hooks' social and educational theory, with emphasis on her 1994 book, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom . Florence deals with the issues of marginality and cultural alienation that are so prevalent among certain groups within the American society and presents strategies to help develop critical consciousness and affirmation of formerly subordinated cultural traits and characteristics. Her study resonates with current themes raised by critical, feminist and multicultural scholars showing how marginalized groups may be guilty of reinforcing their own status through complicity with the dominant culture's world view, and how education can empower them to demand a more egalitarian society and one that recognizes cultural plurality.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Series Foreword (p. ix)
• Acknowledgments (p. xiii)
• Prologue (p. xv)
• Part I Bell hooks' Social Theory
• 1 Racism (p. 5)
• 2 Sexism (p. 39)
• 3 Classism (p. 53)
• 4 Reflections on hooks' Social Theory (p. 63)
• Part II Hell hooks' Educational Theory
• 5 Related Theories (p. 79)
• 6 Major Components of Engaged Pedagogy (p. 95)
• 7 Teachers' Role in a Transformative Education (p. 131)
• 8 Limits of Engaged Pedagogy (p. 135)
• 9 Reflections on hooks' Educational Theory (p. 139)
• Part III Relevance of bell hooks' Educational Theory to a Third-World Context
• 10 Relevance of hooks' Social Critique (p. 147)
• 11 Racism, Sexism, and Classism (p. 155)
• 12 Relevance of hooks' Engaged Pedagogy (p. 195)
• 13 Reflections on hooks' Relevance to a Third-World Context (p. 219)
• Epilogue (p. 223)
• References (p. 229)
• Index (p. 241)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Namulundah Florence (Fordham Univ.) analyzes the considerable corpus of writing by African American feminist thinker bell hooks, who castigates sexism, racism, classicism, capitalism, and vestiges of colonialism in US education, charging that the system promotes white supremacy by idealizing white values and characteristics. To liberate and transform students' minds, hooks advocates "engaged," "interactive," and even "transgressive" pedagogies. Teachers should not be active givers of Western, "universal" knowledge and students mere passive recipients or empty vessels. Emotionality should no longer be subordinated to rationality in the learning process. Teachers and students should engage in a critical, feminist, and postcolonial "interrogation" of cherished assumptions. In line with Paulo Freire's philosophy of "consciontization" (The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970), hooks supports the "practice of freedom" (Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, CH Apr'95). Florence's authoritative treatment establishes hooks's place along with Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, and Peter McLaren as one of education's most respected cultural critical theorists. Florence's own contribution is invaluable in scholarship and literary style--making the opaque language of cultural criticism accessible without sacrificing rigor or scholarship. The application of hooks's theories to the author's native Kenya is impressive. Recommended for academic and special libraries in the field of education; upper-division undergraduates and above. C. Maroufi; California State University, Los Angeles

Author notes provided by Syndetics

NAMULUNDAH FLORENCE is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in Fordham University's Graduate School of Education and College of Business. She was born in Kenya.