Background
Armstrong, Paul Bradford was born on October 31, 1949 in Morristown, New Jersey, United States. Son of James Harrison and Asta (Jensen) Armstrong.
(Armstrong argues that conflicting readings occur because ...)
Armstrong argues that conflicting readings occur because readers with opposing suppositions about language, literature, and life can generate irreconcilable hypotheses about a text. Without endorsing a particular critical methodology, the author offers a theory designed to help readers better understand the causes and consequences of interpretive disagreement so that they may make more informed choices about the various interpretive strategies available to them. Originally published in 1990. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
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(Armstrong suggests that James's perspective is essentiall...)
Armstrong suggests that James's perspective is essentially phenomenological--that his understanding of the process of knowing, the art of fiction, and experience as a whole coincides in important ways with the ideas of the leading phenomenologists. He examines the connections between phenomenology's theory of consciousness and existentialism's analyses of the lived world in relation to James's fascination with consciousness and what is commonly called his
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("Classrooms and curricula should be structured to foster ...)
"Classrooms and curricula should be structured to foster the playful interaction that can teach students how to negotiate social and political differences in an emancipatory, noncoercive manner. . . . Teaching reading as a playful exercise of reciprocity with otherness can help prepare students for a democracy understood as a community of communities." —from the "Pedagogical Postscript" Reading is socially useful, in Paul B. Armstrong’s view, and can model democratic interaction by a community unconstrained by the need to build consensus but aware of the dangers of violence, irrationality, and anarchy. Reading requires mutual recognition but need not culminate in agreement, Armstrong says; instead, the social potential of reading arises from the active exchange of attitudes, ideas, and values between author and reader and among readers. Play and the Politics of Reading, which has important implications for education, draws on Wolfgang Iser’s notion of free play to offer a valuable response to social problems. Armstrong finds that Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, Henry James, and James Joyce provide apt examples of the politics of reading, for reasons both literary and political. In making the transition from realism to modernism, these authors experimented with narrative strategies that seek simultaneously to represent the world and to question the means of representation itself. The formal ambiguities and complexities of such texts as Howards End and Ulysses are ways of staging for the reader the difficulties and opportunities of a world of differences. Innovative formal structures challenge readers to reconsider their assumptions and beliefs about social issues.
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Dean English language educator
Armstrong, Paul Bradford was born on October 31, 1949 in Morristown, New Jersey, United States. Son of James Harrison and Asta (Jensen) Armstrong.
Bachelor of Arts in History and Literature summa cum laude, Harvard University, 1971; Master of Arts in Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University, 1974; Doctor of Philosophy in Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University, 1977.
Assistant professor English University Virginia, Charlottesville, 1976—1983. Associate professor English Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, 1983—1986. Professor English University Oregon, Eugene, 1986—1996, head department English, 1986—1991, associate dean College Arts and Sciences, 1994—1996.
Professor English State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1996—2001, dean College Arts and Sciences, 1996—2001. Professor English Brown University, Providence, since 2001. Dean college Brown. University, 2001—2006.
Visiting professor Free University, Berlin, 1985—1986, University Copenhagen, 1994.
(Armstrong suggests that James's perspective is essentiall...)
("Classrooms and curricula should be structured to foster ...)
(Armstrong argues that conflicting readings occur because ...)
(Book by Armstrong, Paul B.)
Member executive committee Association Departments of English, 1990-1993. Member Modern Language Association (William Riley Parker prize 1983, representative English Coalition Conference 1987), National Council Teachers English (commission on literature 1990-1993), Society for Critical Exchange, Joseph Conrad Society (trustee), American Conference Academy Deans (board directors), Phi Beta Kappa.
Children from previous marriage: Timothy Buck, Margaret Buck. Married Beverly Haviland, September 1, 1996. 1 child, John Allen.