'See the world differently': New textbook opens different perspectives

A new book co-authored by a University of Prince Edward Island professor focuses on how common experiences can help you better understand how the world around you works.

Anne Braithwaite, co-ordinator of diversity and social justice studies at UPEI, and co-author of Everyday Women's and Gender Studies, said the goal of the textbook is to get students thinking more critically about how the world around them is organized.

"The questions of the world are not questions only of big organized politics," said Braithwaite.

"They're implicated in our everyday lives."

Asking the right question

The book focuses on a number of concepts — such as what you know and how you know it, how your body works, where you're from — and uses them in everyday situations, like parking your car, to discuss how views of the world might be different.

"It's about the ability to see the world differently," said Braithwaite.

"What I want [students] to take from this is the ability to ask good critical questions about the world around them, the ability to think that the world is structured in ways that reflect only some people's experiences, some people's bodies and some people's lives."

Braithwaite and co-author Catherine Orr of Beloit College in Wisconsin are hopeful the textbook is organized in such a way that it can be used at colleges and universities in both Canada and the U.S.

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