The Dysfunctional Use of Myth in Intercultural Conversations in Education - Professor James Conroy
SEMINAR – SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
With the destabilization of a broad range of Islamic cultures and the mass migration of peoples across the Levant and Middle East, understanding interculturality has never been more pressing. In recent history there has been a propensity to appropriate certain kinds of cultural myth in the service of a liberal account of intercultural tolerance, which in turn has been appropriated by international educational organisations such as the Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OCSE). Drawing on the widely deployed myth of the cultural tolerance of the 10th century Andalusian caliphate as an exemplification, I argue that this move is a mistake with respect to the both the nature and function of myth and the pedagogy of interculturalism, focusing, as it does on forms of recuperation of the other and ignoring a more durable source of intercultural tolerance - the self.
Professor James Conroy
Professor James Conroy is the Vice-Principal (Internationalisation) at the University of Glasgow. He is responsible for the University’s international strategy and engagement with its partners. He is also Professor of Religious and Philosophical Education and previously held the position of Dean of the Faculty of Education, Head of Graduate School and Head of the Department of Religious Education.
He has held visiting positions at Warsaw (EU Modern Universities Professor), Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) Fordham University, Australian Catholic University and is currently visiting senior research fellow in the Department of Education at Oxford.
A past President of the Association for Moral Education, he is currently Chair of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. In 2011 he was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. With 3 monographs and c.100 papers and essays, his most recent monograph was a prize winner in the 2014 Society for Education Studies annual book prize. His scholarly interests are in liberalism, religion and education as well as epistemology in education.
Date: Wednesday 18 May 2016
Time: 2.00pm to 3.00pm
Location Sir Llew Edwards Building #14 Room 116