Pamela Ryan

University of South Africa, English, Emerita

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Address: Kyalami , Gauteng, South Africa

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Joseph Carroll

University of Missouri - St. Louis

Manfred Malzahn

United Arab Emirates University

Alaric Hall

University of Leeds

Timothy Morton

Rice University

Djelal Kadir

Penn State University

Brent Ryan Bellamy

Trent University

Antonio Donizeti da Cruz

Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Paraná

Kian Pishkar Assistant Professor

I.A.U. Jieroft Branch

Titika Dimitroulia

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Andrew Cole

Princeton University

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Papers by Pamela Ryan

Beyond access: tailoring ODL provision to advance social justice and development

South African Journal of Higher Education, 2016

This article observes that while open distance learning (ODL) has demonstrably created greater op... more This article observes that while open distance learning (ODL) has demonstrably created greater opportunities for access to higher education opportunities, access alone is a necessary but insufficient criterion for advancing the twin causes of development and social justice. The article considers social justice and supporting learners in ODL, particularly in terms of what is taught and the ways in which teaching/learning is mediated. It argues that the demographics of ODL learners are changing and these changes should be considered and addressed. The article starts from the assumption that learning is a basic human activity, but observes that what is learned in higher education is both more systematic and more purposeful and therefore requires careful mediation. It considers the University of South Africa (Unisa) case, recognising a shift towards an epistemology of social-constructivism, where progressive scaffolding allows the learner to move to more independent learning. The article then identifies some of the key assumptions that need to inform changed practice in order to produce a deeper sense of connection and relevance with learners: from appreciating that learning resides with the learner, through to redesigning the distance learning approach. The article is basically a position paper for Unisa, but it seeks to manifest many of the root assumptions underlying its interpretation of ODL. As such it is hoped that the article will be of interest to international readers by providing an African perspective on challenges faced by higher education more generally.

Identity, difference and healing: Reading <i>Beloved</i> within the context of John Caputo’s theory of hermeneutics

Literator, 2005

John Caputo’s interest in the human struggle towards healing/wholing is obvious in his contributi... more John Caputo’s interest in the human struggle towards healing/wholing is obvious in his contribution on the work of Foucault: “On not knowing who we are: Madness, hermeneutics, and the night of truth in Foucault” (Caputo, 1993:233-262). While basing his reading of madness as a form of human suffering on the work of Foucault, Caputo moves beyond Foucaultian theory – “in a direction that, while it was not taken by Foucault, is perhaps suggested by him” (Caputo, 1993:234) – by envisioning a hermeneutics of response and redress and a therapeutics of “healing gestures” (Caputo, 1993:234). In this article we investigate the applicability of Caputo’s theory of progressive Foucaultian hermeneutics to Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”, a work of historical fiction. (Morrison is an African-American author and Nobel laureate.) We do this investigation by reading the novel’s three major characters (Sethe, Beloved and Denver) as symbolic representations of Caputo’s three kinds of hermeneutics, of which t...

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4. What Lies Beneath

Open Book Publishers, Aug 17, 2023

This work is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). This l... more This work is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text for non-commercial purposes of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:

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4. What Lies Beneath

Research, Writing, and Creative Process in Open and Distance Education: Tales from the Field, 2023

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Open Sesame! And Then?

Open(ing) Education, 2020

Between The Idea And The Reality

Health Affairs, 2013

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Plain Women and Ladies in a Strange Country

Harriet Ward, far from 'home', writes back from the Cape Colony in 1848, using rhetoric t... more Harriet Ward, far from 'home', writes back from the Cape Colony in 1848, using rhetoric typical of the Victorian colonial voice. Here is the metropolitan vision of darkest Africa, the colonial narrative of the good settler and the indolent indigene, and the pragmatic declaration to the ignorant liberals who make laws but fail to see the consequences of their actions. In this article, I intend to examine different forms of rhetoric in the colonial memoir written by English women who settled in Natal, South Africa, during the mid-nineteenth century.

Black Women Do Not Have Time to Dream: The Politics of Time and Space

Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 1992

A novel is something you have to reflect on; you have to create it, you have to have characters, ... more

Subversive strategies: Fictional alternatives by women writers

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 02564718808529854, Jul 6, 2007

Summary This article explores the ways in which certain recent texts by women writers construct o... more

A woman thinking in dark times?: The absent presence of Hannah Arendt in J. M. Coetzee's "Elizabeth Costello and the problem of Evil

Journal of Literary Studies, Dec 1, 2005

... But it is a question that never arose unless I broached it. It is the only serious question -... more

Virtual and Virtuous: Creating New pedagogies for a New South Africa

Introduction to Identities in Transition in South Africa

Scrutiny2, 2009

ABSTRACT What, then, is the need for a further debate about “identity”? Who needs it?(Stuart Hall... more

“A prisoner of affect”: Julia Kristeva talks to Sylvia Plath

Scrutiny2, 2013

ABSTRACT This article attempts a reading, through various lenses, of the poem “A birthday present... more ABSTRACT This article attempts a reading, through various lenses, of the poem “A birthday present”, which is not often discussed in detail in the Plath critical canon. A helpful partner in this reading is Julia Kristeva, in particular her ideas on melancholy and depression as expressed in Black sun (1989). In selecting a mainly psychoanalytic reading to “A birthday present”, I hope to provide an unusual and original entry-point to a difficult, sometimes opaque, poem.

Giving up on Given

Scrutiny2, 2010

Abstract The theme of this paper is indebted to the ideas of several theorists, most notably Jame... more

“College girls don't faint”: The legacy of elsewhere

Journal of Literary Studies, 2004

Abstract: This article is an attempt to pursue a localised cultural history of private girls&... more Abstract: This article is an attempt to pursue a localised cultural history of private girls&amp;amp;#x27; schooling in Natal during the apartheid era. Using an autobiographical lens, it looks at the traces of Victorian rhetoric and its codification within a feminine/feminist militarism evident in the speeches ...

Subversive strategies: Fictional alternatives by women writers

Journal of Literary Studies, 1988

This article explores the ways in which certain recent texts by women writers construct oppositio... more This article explores the ways in which certain recent texts by women writers construct oppositional strategies to the conventional depiction of gender in narrative. These texts are examined as acts of revision and, more radically, of subversion. The focus is on the way certain writers in the twentieth century revise prevailing paradigms, in particular, the paradigm of heterosexuality which has

The postmodern text in recent American fiction

Journal of Literary Studies, 1985

Summary This article explores the relationship between American meta‐fiction of the 1960&#x27... more Summary This article explores the relationship between American meta‐fiction of the 1960&#x27;s and 1970&#x27;s and postmodernist theoretical discourse. It is the contention of the author that a reader&#x27;s response to postmodern American fiction is assisted by recent theories of ...