Abstract
This paper interrogates the epistemic and pedagogical significance of literature and philosophy within the field of curriculum theory through a reading of John Updike’s Rabbit tetralogy. Following the reconceptualist turn, which foregrounds subjective and aesthetic experience over technocratic outcomes, I position the novel as a site for moral imagination and curricular disruption. Engaging Derrida’s (1993/2011) notion of hauntology, I examine the novel’s protagonist, Harry Angstrom, as haunted by crises of faith over temporal existence as well as racialized violence. Literature, I argue, is a site of study for curriculum theorists to begin reimagining teacher and student subjectivity and alterity as a spectral shaping of educational experience.
References
Augustine, St. (2006). Confessions (F. J. Sheed, Trans.; M. P. Foley, Ed.). Hackett Publishing Company.
Barthes, R. (1977). The death of the author. In Image–music–text (S. Heath, Trans., pp. 142–148). Fontana.
Bennett, J. (2025). Why so many MIT students are writing poetry. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2025/08/what-mit-students-are-learning-poetry/683856/
Bergo, B. (2005). Ontology, transcendence, and immanence in Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy. Research in Phenomenology, 35(1), 141–180. https://doi.org/10.1163/1569164054905474
Biesta, G. J. J. (2009). Witnessing deconstruction in education: Why quasi-transcendentalism matters. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 43(3), 391–404.
Blackmon, D. A. (2008). Slavery by another name: The re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. Icon.
Burns, J. P. (2018). Power, curriculum, and embodiment: Re-thinking curriculum as counter-conduct and counter-politics. Springer.
Carter, J. K. (2008). Race: A theological account. Oxford University Press.
Casemore, B. (2008). Autobiographical demand of place: Curriculum inquiry in the American South. Peter Lang.
Casemore, B. (2024). On the raveling of deep aspect: Curriculum as subjective place. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 39(4), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.63997/jct.v39i4.1239
Derrida, J. (1997). Of grammatology (Corrected ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. (Original work published 1967)
Derrida, J. (1978). Writing and difference (A. Bass, Trans.). University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, J. (2011). Specters of Marx: The state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the new international (P. Kamuf, Trans.). Routledge. (Original work published 1993)
Derrida, J. (1995). Points…: Interviews, 1974–1994. Stanford University Press.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (2007). Dusk of dawn: An essay toward an autobiography of a race concept. Oxford University Press.
Gordon, L. R. (2000). Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana existential thought. Routledge.
Greene, M. (1973). Teacher as stranger: Educational philosophy for the modern age. Wadsworth.
Greene, M. (2001). Variations on a blue guitar: The Lincoln Center Institute lectures on aesthetic education. Teachers College Press.
Grumet, M. (1988). Bitter milk: Women and teaching. University of Massachusetts Press.
Hart, T. A. (1999). Regarding Karl Barth: Essays toward a reading of his theology. Paternoster Press.
Huebner, D. (1967). Curriculum as concern for man’s temporality. Theory into Practice, 6(4), 172–179. (Reprinted in W. Pinar [Ed.], Curriculum theorizing: The reconceptualists, pp. 237–249. McCutchan)
Huebner, D. (1999). The lure of the transcendent: Collected essays by Dwayne E. Huebner (V. Hillis & W. F. Pinar, Eds.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203053706
Hwu, W.-S. (1993). Toward understanding post-structuralism and curriculum (Doctoral dissertation, Louisiana State University). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/5516
Kincheloe, J. L., McKinley, E., & Lim, M. (2006). Forum: A conversation on “sense of place” in science learning. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 1, 143–160. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-005-9003-8
Kline, K., & Abowitz, K. K. (2020). Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer: On the existential novel as educational text. Educational Theory, 70(2), 171–185. https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12414
Laubscher, L. (2010). Working with the apartheid archive: Or, of witness and testimony. Psychology in Society, 40, 49–63.
Leggo, C. (2005). Pedagogy of the heart: Ruminations on living poetically. Journal of Educational Thought, 39(2), 175–195.
Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority (A. Lingis, Trans.). Duquesne University Press.
Morrison, T. (1989). Unspeakable things unspoken: The Afro-American presence in American literature. Michigan Quarterly Review, 28(1), 1–34.
Morrison, T. (1993). Playing in the dark: Whiteness and the literary imagination. Vintage Books.
Morin, M. (2007). The self, the other, and the many: Derrida on testimony. Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, 40(2), 165–178.
Nancy, J.-L. (2008). Dis-enclosure: The deconstruction of Christianity. Fordham University Press.
Pinar, W. (1974). Currere: Toward reconceptualization. In J. Jelinek (Ed.), Basic problems in modern education (pp. 147–171). Arizona State University.
Pinar, W. F., & Grumet, M. R. (2015). Toward a poor curriculum. Educators International Press. (Original work published 1976)
Pinar, W. F. (2004). What is curriculum theory? Lawrence Erlbaum.
Pinar, W. F. (2015). Educational experience as lived: Knowledge, history, alterity. Routledge.
Pinar, W. F. (2019). What is curriculum theory? Routledge.
Plath, J. (1994). Conversations with John Updike. University Press of Mississippi.
Poetter, T. S., Murray, D., Larrick, P., Moyer, M. A., Berlioz, E. C., & Waldrop, K. (Eds.). (2020). Curriculum windows: What curriculum theorists of the 1950s can teach us about schools and society today. Information Age Publishing.
Quinn, M. (2019). Complexifying curriculum studies: Reflections on the generative and generous gifts of William E. Doll, Jr. Routledge.
Rivera, M. (2015). Poetics of the flesh. Duke University Press.
Reynolds, J. (2001). The other of Derridean deconstruction: Levinas, phenomenology and the question of responsibility. Minerva: An Internet Journal of Philosophy, 5, 31–62.
Rocha, S. D. (2015). Folk phenomenology: Education, study, and the human person. Pickwick Publications.
Rorty, R. (2009). Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1989)
Shakespeare, W. (2012). The tragedy of Hamlet, prince of Denmark (B. A. Mowat & P. Werstine, Eds.). Simon & Schuster. (Original work published 1603)
Spector, H. (2011). The cosmopolitan imagination in Philip Roth’s “Eli, the fanatic.” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 27(3), 224–238.
Updike, J. (2010). Rabbit, run. Random House. (Original work published 1960)
Updike, J. (2010). Rabbit redux. Random House. (Original work published 1971)
Updike, J. (2010). Rabbit is rich. Random House. (Original work published 1981)
Updike, J. (2012). Rabbit at rest. Random House.
Warren, J. (2001). Doing whiteness: On the performative dimensions of race in the classroom. Communication Education, 50(2), 91–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634520109379237
Ward, G. (1995). Barth, Derrida and the language of theology. Cambridge University Press.
Watkins, W. (1993). Black curriculum orientations: A preliminary inquiry. Harvard Educational Review, 63(3), 321–338.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2026 Symphony