My thesis is titled Modeling the Public Intellectual: The Case of Matthew Arnold. Matthew Arnold, arguably the most influential critic of his age (Trilling 190) has also proven to be an influential model for the public intellectual currently in Canada and elsewhere. The role and work of public intellectuals is complex and who or what they are is the topic of vigorous debate and sometimes extreme disagreement. Because Arnold is so influential and controversial as a literary and social critic, I want to develop and to communicate a better understanding of his achievements and to explore the connection between his work and the role of the public intellectual. To that end, I draw on three of his works, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (1864), Culture and Anarchy (1869) and Literature and Dogma (1873). In the course of a decade, Arnold asserts and expands the role of criticism in society and the kinds of issues a poet, critic, and inspector of schools feels competent to address while defining his own personal version of the Victorian Sage (Holloway). I also want to explore why criticism produced in the nineteenth century, particularly in Arnolds work, promotes the figure and activities of the public intellectual. Moreover, I will reaffirm, via Arnolds example, the importance of the relationship between literature and life and show how this connection nourishes the idea of the public intellectual in the English-speaking world.

My thesis is titled Modeling the Public Intellectual: The Case of Matthew Arnold. Matthew Arnold, arguably the most influential critic of his age (Trilling 190) has also proven to be an influential model for the public intellectual currently in Canada and elsewhere. The role and work of public intellectuals is complex and who or what they are is the topic of vigorous debate and sometimes extreme disagreement. Because Arnold is so influential and controversial as a literary and social critic, I want to develop and to communicate a better understanding of his achievements and to explore the connection between his work and the role of the public intellectual. To that end, I draw on three of his works, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (1864), Culture and Anarchy (1869) and Literature and Dogma (1873). In the course of a decade, Arnold asserts and expands the role of criticism in society and the kinds of issues a poet, critic, and inspector of schools feels competent to address while defining his own personal version of the Victorian Sage (Holloway). I also want to explore why criticism produced in the nineteenth century, particularly in Arnolds work, promotes the figure and activities of the public intellectual. Moreover, I will reaffirm, via Arnolds example, the importance of the relationship between literature and life and show how this connection nourishes the idea of the public intellectual in the English-speaking world.

This dissertation analyzes public-intellectual work that deploys crisis tropes in its treatment of literacy, arguing that such work provides insight into the influence that intellectual engagement might exert on discourse in the public sphere. From A.S. Hill’s lament that freshman entering Harvard in 1874 could barely construct a legible sentence to Stanley Fish’s charge that millions of college graduates earning degrees in 2005 did so without learning what a sentence was, the relationship between literacy and the communicative skills required of productive citizens has been a constant source of concern. Between these two historical moments, this relationship has been an undertheorized feature of debates surrounding racial uplift, feminist protest, and America’s role as a world power. When interlocutors in such debates minimize the significance of literacy practices, they encourage rhetorical action driven by a coercive conception of social crisis that limits critical engagement on the part of the public. I argue that the public intellectual’s capacity to facilitate rhetorically literate discursive exchange at the level of the mass public can transform the paralysis of crisis into possibility. I reframe well-known debates between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, and Mortimer Adler and Glenn T. Seaborg in terms of the rhetorical models they offer for responsible public-intellectual work.

Indiana University, Purdue University- Indianapolis / Current models of public intellectualism rely upon arbitrary and oftentimes elitist criteria. The work of Corey Robin, when combined with that of Antonio Gramsci, provides a reproducable, and scalable, series of tests for consideration of indivduals as public intellectuals. This work takes author Ray Bradbury as an example of public intellectuals who are often missed using current schemas . Bradbury serves as a test case of public intellectualism in the early Cold War period in the United States based upon this new formulation. It examines Bradbury’s work in light of the historical situation in which Bradbury operated, his work’s comparitive arguments in relation to contemporary intellectuals, and reviews some of the influence Bradbury exerted on future generations.

Este artículo explora las conexiones entre el trabajo profesional como historiador de Alberto Flores Galindo, su papel como intelectual público y la cultura política de izquierda en la que él se formó como miembro de la llamada generación del 68. El artículo muestra que, como partícipe de una forma de hacer política en la cual la palabra impresa desempeñó un papel crucial, Flores Galindo desarrolló una creativa y obsesiva relación con el libro y la cultura impresa,cuya reconstrucción nos ayuda a entender los mecanismos de formación de un intelectual público.---This article explores the connections between the work of Alberto Flores Galindo as a professional historian, his role as a public intellectual, and the leftist political culture in which he was formed as a member of the so-called 1968 generation.The article shows that, as a participant in a style of doing politics in which the printed word played a crucial role, Flores Galindo developed a creative and obsessive relationship with the book and the printed culture, the reconstruction of which helps us to understand the mechanisms which go into the formation of a public intellectual.

This article reconstructs the trajectory of Nicomedes Santa Cruz, one of the foremost Afro-Peruvian intellectuals of all times, whose presence in the public scene transcended a purely artistic ambit and extended to the terrain of social and political criticism. Nicomedes Santa Cruz was a public intellectual whose multifaceted work addressed the most pressing themes of his time: he was a critic of racism, imperialism and social inequality; he supported the Cuban Revolution; he committed himself to the reforms of the Juan Velasco Alvarado regime; and he promoted international solidarity. Likewise, he tried to combine a commitment to socialism with a defense of Afro-Peruvian culture and rights. / Este artículo reconstruye la trayectoria de Nicomedes Santa Cruz, uno de los más notables intelectuales afroperuanos de todos los tiempos, cuya presencia en la escena pública trascendió el ámbito puramente artístico y se proyectó hacia el terreno de la crítica social y política. Nicomedes Santa Cruz fue un intelectual público que abordó en su multifacético trabajo los temas más candentes de su tiempo: fue un crítico del racismo, el imperialismo y la desigualdad social; apoyó la Revolución Cubana; se comprometió con las reformas del régimen de Juan Velasco Alvarado; y promovió la solidaridad internacional. Asimismo, intentó combinar la apuesta por el socialismo con la reivindicación de la cultura y los derechos de los afrodescendientes.

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This thesis explores the role and positionality of three Black public intellectuals in post-94 South Africa, namely, Simphiwe Dana, Ntsiki Mazwai and Sisonke Msimang. For the purpose of this study, I analysed the twitter postings shared by these intellectuals on various social matters that concern the condition of the Black in post-94 South Africa. Using Fanon’s Native Intellectual Consciousness as a lens, the study seeks to capture and evaluate an emergent form of ‘cyber’ activism in the country. The main argument of this thesis is that, the concept and function of intellectualism must undergo a complete overhaul, beginning with the accommodation of more voices, particularly those of oppressed Black women. For this reason, the study is based on three Black women and seeks to dismantle the colonial lens through which Black women are studied This study not only historicises Black women as producers, users and custodians of knowledge but it also situates their lived experiences as relevant ‘knowledges’ albeit ignored in discourse. Moreover, the study is not only a form of epistemic protest against epistemic racism, but it is also a form of Black positioning in communication studies. I therefore posit that, Black Twitter is the communicative plane on which blackness performs and articulates itself, for itself. For this purpose, I conceptualise Black Solidarity within Communication studies; a field that often pretends to be only marginally affected by issues of race. This study contributes to Communication Studies, a new, raw and altruistic way of studying blackness by allowing it to think, and speak through its pain as opposed to the usual pathologising white gaze. Using the decolonial concept of a traditional Imbadu as the methodological aspect in conducting this study, I observe that even in the face of debilitating colonial hangover, blackness persists through those intellectuals whose intergenerational trauma forces them to think and speak from Blackness. The chosen intellectuals who are feminists by choice, think and speak from Blackness albeit being silenced by oppression. As such, the study itself is a pedagogical contradiction to the orthodox axiology of a detached scholar and hence written in the autobiographical form. / Communication Science / D. Phil. (Communication)