Listening as an Ethical Engagement: Dialogues From Eastern and Western Traditions

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium brings together six scholars who have jointly shared interests in “listening” from different philosophical and cultural traditions. Collectively drawing on Levinas, Nancy, and Confucian notions of “organisms,” “Otherness,” “listening as a sage,” “wholeness,” and “witness,” this session challenges the normalizing discourse on listening and teaching from a global horizon. Listening as an ethical engagement considers the people we are listening to as “whole persons” or the “Other.” As a result, the meaning of listening in education has been imagined beyond epistemological knowing and ontological “self” to ethical engagement.  This symposium will generate interests and dialogues among curriculum theorists, philosophers, teachers, and school leaders on the practice, and significance of, listening.  

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Issues in Curriculum and Cultural Studies

Chair

• Bruce J. Novak, Foundation for Ethics and Meaning

Papers

• Listening to the Other: A Levinasian Perspective - Shaofei Han, Louisiana State University

• On Confucian Listening - Hua Zhang

• Listening to People—Not Just What They Say - Leonard J. Waks, Temple University

• The "Whole Person" and Ethical Listening - Guoping Zhao, Oklahoma State University

• Learning to Listen to Political Adversaries: An Evangelical Preparation - Rachel Wahl, University of Virginia

• Bearing Witness as an Enactment of Listening to the Person in the Role of Teacher - David T. Hansen, Teachers College, Columbia University

Discussant

• Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon, Northwestern University