Call for papers: Special Issue 2024

“I have not been a philologist in vain—perhaps I am one yet: a teacher of slow reading. I even come to write slowly. At present it is not only my habit, but even my taste—a perverted taste, maybe—to write nothing but what will drive to despair every one who is “in a hurry.” For philology is that venerable art which exacts from its followers one thing above all—to step to one side, to leave themselves spare moments, to grow silent, to become slow—the leisurely art of the goldsmith applied to language: an art which must carry out slow, fine work, and attains nothing if not lento. For this very reason, philology is now more desirable than ever before; for this very reason it is the highest attraction and incitement in an age of “work”: that is to say, of haste, of unseemly and immoderate hurry-skurry, which is intent upon “getting things done” at once, even every book, whether old or new. Philology itself, perhaps, will not “get things done” so hurriedly: it teaches how to read well: i.e. slowly, profoundly, attentively, prudently, with inner thoughts, with the mental doors ajar, with delicate fingers and eyes.” Friedrich Nietzsche

This is a special call for a special issue. The issue has two purposes. First to present the reader of the issue with several readings and texts that have meaning in the context of essential PBL research. We imagine a table of contents for a scholar to study and to be inspired by. This scholar can be new to the field, and thereby be given an access or pathway into the field on which to build his/her further exploring. Or the scholar may be well-established and then be allowed to reflect, to reimagine and to revisit those foundational works that once were done and now seem partly forgotten. Enthusiastically and boldly, we hope to assemble an issue that can provide a concentrated and selected, but valuable and profound brick or pillar for the research field of PBL in Higher Education.  

The second purpose is to strike a blow for the slow-reading movement. The movement has been around for a while, and has many cousins, such as slow-food, slow-travel and even slow-medicine. Recently we ran into slow reading during a conference on scholarship of teaching and learning. The presentation focused on the movements merits in terms of providing a ground for critic of neoliberalism, capitalism and colonialism, while promoting and siding with feminist and post-human positions. However, it does not have to be as radical as that. In short, slow-reading is just a more careful attitude, focusing on working with dense, complex, and important texts, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. Trust not in numbers of citations, or in endless or needless empirical studies with dubious scientific value, but instead to indulge in the text, making meaning and enriching a comprehension. This movement or idea or academic devotion has inspired us, to try to create this special issue in its spirit. We would like to have the contributors carefully read or re-read an essential text in PBL. A text that means something, that requires attention and that makes a difference. A text worthy of a slow reading.

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