CALL FOR PAPERS

The Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies announces a call for papers for a special issue 'The The Teacher in Literature in the Mediterranean.'

This special issue of the Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies explores the representations of the teacher in literatures in the Mediterranean.

In an era that considers theoretical constructs as narratives, that welcomes and promotes the blurring of boundaries between the theoretical and the fictional and that suggests that the fictionalization of research findings is a welcome political, ethical and epistemological challenge to the grand dimensions of theories, the question of how or indeed, whether literature can be an educational resource is highly relevant.
 
Considering such contexts, this special issue seeks to
 
1.      Describe the ways that teachers have been depicted by authors of literary texts throughout the Mediterranean and to identify the sociocultural discursive construction of teachers through a critical reading of these literatures. As examples one might consider feminist and/or postcolonial readings of the representations of teachers that trace and challenge their patriarchal and imperial formations. Such theoretical positions raise important questions, such as: Are teachers perceived as mothers, as fathers, as parents? Who benefits from such depictions? How do literatures in the Mediterranean speak the feminization of the teaching profession?
 
2.      Identify and compare the ways various and differing political, religious and sociocultural systems in the Mediterranean are reflected in literary representations of the teacher.
 
3.      Problematize and explore the function of literature for educational purposes, with particular attention to the uses of literary texts about the teacher in formal and informal teacher education. What new experiences does literature provide in being and becoming a teacher? What is literature’s relation to the “real” teacher? To what extent do literary texts go beyond the academic and theoretical narratives of the teacher in education?
 
4.      Explore the possible uses of literatures for re-inventing the teacher. Does literature function to reproduce meta-narratives of the teacher or to essentialize teachers according to the dictates of educational grand-narratives? Can literature be used as a critical and pedagogical tool that re-conceives teachers in alternative ways? If literature cannot be read as forms of writing that are completely filtered from powerful discursive regimes that seek to dictate who or what the teacher should be what other forms of writing and methods of reading can enhance imaginations of how teachers could “become”?
 
5.      Understand how teachers themselves become authors and utilize spaces in literature. How do they make use of their literary writings to articulate and enhance their educational, political endeavours and become “critical and creative” intellectuals? How do they seek to subvert accepted ideas of the teacher by moving between literature and education? How do their particular teacher-author subjectivities within particular Mediterranean locations and their borderland positions in Europe, Africa and the Middle East contribute to a politics of difference in educational and literary spheres?
 
In general, this MJES special issue seeks to reinvent the teacher by bringing together literature and education as areas of studies that have generally been thought in isolation in order to open up new avenues for both areas of research. The ground of exploration for this special issue is that research projects seeking to recreate the teacher can be deeply intertwined with the reinvention of literature and its uses.

Important Notes
 
Abstracts (and eventually papers) need to be written in English, and language editing is the responsibility of the authors. The editors expect to receive a final draft that is ready for publication.

Prospective authors are encouraged to write a paper specifically for this special issue of MJES. However, it is also possible to draw on already published work, adapting this to address the volume theme. Copyright clearance for work that has already been published is entirely the responsibility of the contributing authors, and evidence of such clearance may be required by the publishers when we submit the final draft of the volume.
 
We do hope you will feel able to respond positively to this invitation, and we look forward to hearing from you.
 
Please send your 200-word abstracts for this special issue by the end of December 2009. If abstract is accepted by the editors, the first draft of the paper is exepected by the end of May, 2010. Final drafts need to reach the editors by 15 September 2010.

Simone Galea and Adrian Grima

simone.galea@um.edu.mt and adrian.grima@um.edu.mt.
University of Malta
20 August 2009