Ron Scapp

Street Noise offers a series of historical and cultural reflections and observations about York City. It presents innovative insights into many day-to-day aspects of New York City that have been ignored or forgotten. Street Noise is a unique mixture of urban studies and cultural theory. Through a blend of provocative and evocative musings about New York City, the book provides both the sophisticated reader and the casual “tourist” themes, issues and topics often overlooked or not adequately considered. It explores interesting destinations not typically on a tourist’s “to-do list,” and offers serious and rigorouss analysis of important sites and characteristics that make New York New York. A wide range of topics is discussed in a series of short note in this book, from the origins of Ray's Pizza to the social dynamics of cell phone users. This hybrid text is both a cultural critique and an ode to the city, offering readers a unique perspective on one of the world's most dynamic urban landscapes. Street Noise will appeal to graduate and undergraduate students interested in cultural and social theory, urban studies, architecture, urban design and history. Yet it is a book that is readily accessible to both the tourist and the general reader interested in New York City. It would also be a perfect memento and gift.

A Question of Voice: Philosophy and the Search for Legitimacy offers an explicit and comprehensive consideration of voice as a complex of rethinking aspects of the history of philosophy through issues of power, as well as contemporary issues that include and involve the desire for and the dynamics of legitimacy, for individuals and communities. By identifying voice as a significant theme and means by which and through which we might better engage some important philosophical questions, Ron Scapp hopes to expand traditional philosophical discussion and discourse regarding questions about validity, legitimacy, empathy, and solidarity. He offers an innovative perspective that is informed and guided by multiculturalism, ethnic studies, queer studies, feminism, and thinkers and critics such as bell hooks, Barbara Christian, Angela Davis, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, among others. A Question of Voice is an American investigation, but also suggests questions that emanate from contemporary continental thought as well as issues that arise from transnational perspectives—an approach that is motived by doing philosophy in an age of multiculturalism.

This book is an appeal to those directly and indirectly involved in education reform to reconsider the very nature of education as a process of transformation and not, as the neoliberal corporate model insists upon, as a “product.” By using Paulo Freire’s fundamental principle of understanding “education as the practice of freedom,” and expanding upon it with bell hooks’ own spiritual understanding of that principle, this book offers readers the opportunity to rethink what education is, and what it is not. Utilizing the work of diverse thinkers and critics, the book lays out a criticism of neoliberalism’s profound influence on education reform and our culture generally. It reaffirms the political and ethical import of education for individuals and for our nation as a whole.

Ron Scapp moves teaching back to the center of scholarship on educational administration, asking how school leaders might connect their work more integrally with the ideals and practices of critical pedagogy.

Ron Scapp moves teaching back to the center of scholarship on educational administration, asking how school leaders might connect their work more integrally with the ideals and practices of critical pedagogy.

In Teaching Values, Ron Scapp wrests the discussion of values and values-based education away from traditionalists who have long dominated educational debates. While challenging the Right's domination of the discussion of values education, Scapp examines some issues not typically raised by educators and critics on the Left, including the positive role of citizenship and national identity in U.S. education and culture.

In Teaching Values, Ron Scapp wrests the discussion of values and values-based education away from traditionalists who have long dominated educational debates. While challenging the Right's domination of the discussion of values education, Scapp examines some issues not typically raised by educators and critics on the Left, including the positive role of citizenship and national identity in U.S. education and culture.