Teaching Politically
Global Perspectives on Pedagogy and Autonomy

May Hawas (Edited by), Bruce Robbins (Edited by), Dimitris Christopoulos (Contributions by), Dimitri Dimoulis (Contributions by), Khaled Fahmy (Contributions by), Rishi Goyal (Contributions by), May Hawas (Contributions by), Bonnie Honig (Contributions by), Mona Kareem (Contributions by), Benjamin Mangrum (Contributions by), Nora Parr (Contributions by), Bruce Robbins (Contributions by), Ahdaf Soueif (Contributions by), Omid Tofighian (Contributions by), Elahe Zivardar (Contributions by)

9781531510190

Hardback, published 1 July 2025

277 pages, 5 b/w illustrations
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.422 kg

"Teaching Politically addresses a pair of important and resonant issues in universities in the U.S. and elsewhere: how one teaches and learns under political pressure and surveillance, and how one talks about politics in literary and cultural classrooms. The book’s attention to a range of sites around the world admirably pushes the conversation beyond the U.S. context." - Christopher Newfield, author of The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them

"At a moment when the politics of the university classroom is undergoing blistering attacks from the right, this smart and thoughtful collection investigates what is in fact political about teaching. What is authority? Who are the university’s publics? What is the teacher’s responsibility? This volume is refreshing and unusual in its global reach, addressing pedagogy and politics in Egypt, Greece, and Palestine, as well as the U.S. and Australia." - Caroline Levine, author of The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis

Culture is inextricable from politics. This includes the politics of who we are, as teachers, intellectuals, writers, cultural workers, and students, and what we want to bring to and take from the site of instruction. It also includes the politics of who we want to be, as citizens, professionals, and active contributors to our communities and to the world in general, and what we can be, realistically, in the particular contexts in which we live.
Teaching Politically addresses some of the political constraints that shape our pedagogical spaces, especially in the teaching of literature. The book brings together a global group of academics, activists, public intellectuals, poets, and novelists to examine the way politics manifest pedagogically, and how a commitment to educating manifests politically, in and beyond the classroom. At the heart of the discussion is how political and professional paradigms chafe against, intersect with, or otherwise become inseparable from each other in any vocation that attempts to educate: from writing, journalism, and public speaking to art, activism, and medicine.
Contributors: Dimitris Christopoulos, Dimitri Dimoulis, Khaled Fahmy, Rishi Goyal, May Hawas, Bonnie Honig, Mona Kareem, Benjamin Mangrum, Nora Parr, Bruce Robbins, Ahdaf Soueif, Omid Tofighian, Elahe Zivardar

Introduction
May Hawas and Bruce Robbins 1
Melville's Democratic Pedagogy: Moby-Dick Takes On Hobbes's Leviathan
Bonnie Honig 20
Liberal Education and the Politics of Discussion
Benjamin Mangrum 37
Teaching While Arab
Mona Kareem 58
Whose Politics? Teaching Palestinian Literature
Nora E. H. Parr 72
"Don't Speak or Laugh! Greece Is in Danger!":
Censoring Dissident Discourse on So-Called National Issues in Greece
Dimitris Christopoulos and Dimitri Dimoulis 89
The Politics of Mentorship
May Hawas 106
Teaching Literature Politically: Some Examples
Bruce Robbins 125
Baking and Breaking Bread, or Daniel Defoe and the Catastrophic Imagination
Rishi Goyal 140
Foundations for Nauru Prison Theory:
Australian Border Violence, Art, and Knowledge Production
Elahe Zivardar and Omid Tofighian 151
Politics Was in the Very Air We Breathed
Conversations with Khaled Fahmy and Ahdaf Soueif 170
Contributors 191
Index 195