Furman education professor Paul Thomas co-edits new book
February 11, 2016
Furman University education professor Paul Thomas has published a new book about renowned Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.
The 158-page volume, Challenging Authors: Haruki Murakami (Sense Publishers), is co-edited by Matthew C. Strecher of Sophia University (Tokyo). Furman English major Kristen Marakoff (Class of 2016) and future secondary English teacher assisted with proofreading.
The book is the seventh title in the series, Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genres.
One of Murakami’s central and enduring themes is a persistent warning not to suppress fundamental desires in favor of the demands of society at large. Murakami’s writing over his career reveals numerous recurring motifs, but his message has also evolved, creating a catalog of works that reveals Murakami to be a challenging author.
Many of those challenges lie in Murakami’s blurring of genre as well as his rich blending of Japanese and Western mythologies and styles — all while continuing to offer narratives that attract and captivate a wide range of readers, according to the authors.
The book is designed to open new lines of inquiry into what constitutes national literatures, and how some authors, in the era of blurred national and cultural boundaries, seek now to transcend those boundaries and pursue a truly global mode of expression.
Before joining the Furman faculty in 2002, Thomas taught high school English in rural South Carolina. He earned undergraduate, master’s and doctoral degrees in education from the University of South Carolina.
He was the 2013 recipient of the George Orwell Award presented by National Council of Teachers of English. A collection of essays that he co-edited, De-Testing and De-Grading Schools, was named an Outstanding Academic 2014 title by Choice magazine.
He is a column editor for the English Journal, a publication of the National Council of Teachers of English and has written commentaries for the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, Education Week, The State, and The Greenville News.
Read Thomas’ blog at https://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com. The book is available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or by visiting the publisher’s website, www.sensepublishers.com.
For more information, contact Furman’s News and Media Relations office at (864) 294-3107.
