Criticality is an educational ideal of critical thinking according to which (higher) education should aim to cultivate critical persons capable of critically engaging with the world and themselves, as well as with knowledge (Shpeizer, 2018; Normile, 2024). Within critical thinking as a research area, the so-called “criticality movement” has developed out of two scholarly works published independently of each other, at the end of the 1990s: Ronald Barnett’s Higher education: A critical business (1997) and Nicholas Burbules and Rupert Berk’s essay “Critical thinking and critical pedagogy: Relations, differences, and limits” (1999) published as a chapter in a Routledge volume on critical theories in education. This paper focuses on one aspect of criticality, namely critical self-reflection. While other models of critical thinking in education also value critical evaluation and self-reflection, the notion of reflection and its implications for critical being have been given special attention by the criticality movement. In Barnett's (1997) theory, critical self-reflection is a form of critical being, alongside critical reason and critical action, each of them corresponding to the domain of the self, knowledge, and the world, respectively (p. 7). Burbules and Berk (1999) consider the ability to reflect on one’s own views and assumptions as a type of critical reflection that is enabled through conversations with others (p. 61). Taking my cues from the latter, I am going to present the dialogical teaching and pedagogical practices designed to train critical self-reflection in literary studies in English language teacher education at my university and discuss their contribution to democratic education. Those practices range from in-class and asynchronous seminar discussions to the three-part mentoring conversations (triads) at the end of student teachers’ school placement.

Often acknowledged as the proprietary method of literary criticism and the academic discipline of literary studies, close reading faces special challenges and, perhaps, opportunities from the growing impact of AI on knowledge and education. Following Jonathan Kramnick’s understanding of the method as a “transformative writing practice that fosters a unique kind of engagement with the world,” I explore the practical uses of AI for close reading in literary studies (with concrete examples from Morrison’s Beloved and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby) and discuss a few ethical concerns around AI’s self-defined role as  “a thinking partner and guide” for students and scholars. A tentative conclusion is that AI may indeed benefit a more experienced reader’s close reading, but that must be weighed against the risk of stifling originality and getting incorrect or misleading output.

This paper explores the conceptions of critical thinking in national and local policy documents for teaching placement, using the case of teacher education programs at a Swedish university. The concept under scrutiny is based on three contemporary theoretical models of critical thinking in education: critical thinking movement, critical pedagogy, and “criticality” movement. In Sweden, the teacher profession is framed with a broader socio-ethical scope than the focus on individual cognitive skills of the critical thinking movement. Critical reflection and self-reflection, two conceptions identified with the criticality ideal of education for critical being, prevail in the analyzed documents.

Critical thinking is a catchword in educational studies and policy documents. It is usually considered a set of cognitive skills and argumentation competences, such as the ability to assess premises and make inferential connections between statements, but that is not the whole story. As an educational ideal, critical thinking goes beyond formal/informal logic and the individual’s capacity for reasoning; in the growing field of scholarship on the role and meaning of the concept in (higher) education, critical thinking has assumed psycho-social, ethical, political, and ontological dimensions. One of the “schools” of critical thinking is the criticality movement, according to which the paramount function of education is to produce critically thinking citizens. Cultivating openness, self-reflection, and critical action, it lays emphasis on our acting in the world and our responsibility for the world around us. This presupposes a kind of transformative learning that leads to the development from critical thinking to critical being. In pursuit of the criticality ideal of critical thinking in teaching the survey of American literature and inspired by one of the foundational texts of the criticality movement (Ronald Barnett’s book Higher Education. A Critical Business) this paper homes in on an important aspect of the pedagogy for critical being, namely, the cultivation of critical self-reflection, using a central text in the canon of American naturalism. With its multilayered structure of meaning, rich symbolism, ethical conundrums, character and situational dynamics, and complex relationship with determinism, Stephen Crane’s “The Blue Hotel” is a stimulating ground for critical self-reflection in literary studies.

Critical thinking is a catchword in educational studies and policy documents. It is usually considered a set of cognitive skills and argumentation competences, such as the ability to assess premises and make inferential connections between statements, but that is not the whole story. As an educational ideal, critical thinking goes beyond formal/informal logic and the individual’s capacity for reasoning; in the growing field of scholarship on the role and meaning of the concept in (higher) education, critical thinking has assumed psycho-social, ethical, political, and ontological dimensions. One of the “schools” of critical thinking is the criticality movement, according to which the paramount function of education is to produce critically thinking citizens. Cultivating openness, self-reflection, and critical action, it lays emphasis on our acting in the world and our responsibility for the world around us. This presupposes a kind of transformative learning that leads to the development from critical thinking to critical being. In pursuit of the criticality ideal of critical thinking in teaching the survey of American literature, this paper homes in on an important aspect of the pedagogy for critical being, namely, the cultivation of critical self-reflection, using a central text in the canon of American naturalism. With its multilayered structure of meaning, rich symbolism, ethical conundrums, character and situational dynamics, and complex relationship with determinism, Stephen Crane’s “The Blue Hotel” is a stimulating ground for critical self-reflection in literary studies.

Often identified and promoted in European and national policy documents as one of the standards of education for democratic culture and citizenship, critical thinking (CT) is deemed especially important in teacher education. What it means and how it can be implemented and trained in teaching and learning, however, continue to be relevant questions that an impressive and ever-growing body of research literature is still addressing. As long as these basic questions have not yet been answered decisively, and the assumption that it is important for democratic education remains valid, CT can be considered a critical issue in teacher education. This paper aims to contribute an in-depth and theory-based understanding of the meaning of, and conditions for, CT in upper secondary school English teacher education programs in Sweden. To accomplish this aim, I will examine course syllabi at ten Swedish universities (half of those that offer upper secondary school English teacher education programs), using a document analysis method inspired by conceptual historians’ analyses of the semantic fields of concepts. The semantic field I am interested in is based on the contemporary theoretical models of CT in education respectively espoused by the critical thinking movement, critical pedagogy, and the “criticality” movement. Although individual teacher educators’ and students’ own practice might be best for observing CT in action, the course syllabi, which are legally binding documents in Sweden, offer a good indication of the meaning of CT and the conditions for it in the education of English language teachers.

In this article, I analyze six well-known antebellum essays on US national identity from the perspective of their engagement with the contemporary exceptionalist discourse. My focus is on their representations of the particular and the universal, whose paradoxical relationship lies at the core of all national exceptionalisms. I approach antebellum exceptionalism as part of the history in which the authors of these texts (Emerson, Fuller, Simms, Douglass, and Delany) lived their lives and to which they responded in different ways. The analysis shows how the universal–particular duality at the core of US exceptionalism is conceived and operates in these essays' discourses of American identity. A tentative conclusion is that whenever the universal dimension of American exceptionalism is enlarged or challenged by other universal criteria, the nationalist ideology loosens its grip; conversely, its presence is stronger when particularization occurs. Furthermore, the representations of the universal and the particular in these texts are discussed in relationship with certain aspects of US exceptionalism as a cultural phenomenon of antebellum history, namely, Manifest Destiny, cultural nationalism, the concept of civilization, and the growing tensions of slavery and racial discrimination in the free states.

A longtime NPR commentator, Andrei Codrescu is a Romanian-born American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, creative writing professor, and translator. “Our funniest /saddest contemporary bard,” as Marjorie Perloff affectionately called him, has spent more than half a century observing American life and history and faithfully recording his reflections on, and interactions with, his adoptive country with Dadaist humor, wit, sound criticism, and a touch of youthful wonder. 

The main title of this paper is taken from the contributor information in the May 2020 issue of The Brooklyn Rail, which featured two poems by Andrei Codrescu. Throughout the national and global Covid crisis, he continued to cast spells, play with words, observe, reflect, hope, and sometimes despair, keeping poetic chronicles of “The Plague” with the avowed intention to soothe and heal. Many of them are collected in Too Late for Nightmares, his new volume of poetry released on September 1, 2022. In keeping with the topic of the conference, I am going to explore the tropes of discontinuity in these poems paying special attention to Codrescu’s older quarrels with consumerism, the blind faith in the new technology, the disappearance of the “outside” now complete with the virtual irrelevance of the body, the illusion of singularity, and the habit of stuffing the future with the placebo pill of progress. 

This is the sketch of a subjective portrait of Professor Octavian Roske, as I knew him. In this portrait, I share my fond and grateful memories of this exceptional man, introducing the readers of Totalitarianism Archives to aspects of his professional life with which they might be less familiar: as a teacher, mentor, vice dean, head of department, and scholar of American literature and history. His professional life was indeed commensurate with his luminous character.