Abstract
This article is based on my experience of teaching Nepalese students, who are from different socio-cultural backgrounds. The study proposes a pedagogy through participatory and interactive reading strategy (PAIRS) for Tribhuvan University’s 4th Semester Graduate class of English Literature on the course of ‘Single Author’ (ENG 582), by making them engaged in dialogues, both in oral and written form, in which they will share and exchange their ideas on literary texts of Toni Morrison by investigating on some specific implications of the author’s vision on the issues of differences, prevalent in America. The proposed pedagogy is intended for raising students’ critical consciousness of the contemporary world’s most pertinent issues of identity of minorities, which Nepalese students face in their day to day living experiences. Thus, it is hoped that an individual and collective engagement would be developed in students for dealing with what is both historical and immediate, and global and local. By practicing PAIRS, students would develop self reflection on their biases that would make them critical of their culturally imbedded ideas and that would gradually make them empathetic to differences. The proposed pedagogy is not for demonstrating a teacher’s knowledge on the author’s works by critical and theoretical tools, but contextualizing the author in Nepalese socio-cultural conditions through the platform of a classroom of diverse thoughts for the students’ better understanding of the world, enriched with ‘differences’. The study further contributes to new pedagogy of English Studies for Non-western students by widening the field of comparative cultural studies, and thus enhancing the scope of comparative literature.
Highlights
The study proposes a pedagogy through participatory and interactive reading strategy (PAIRS) for Tribhuvan University’s 4th Semester Graduate class of English Literature on the course of ‘Single Author’ (ENG 582), by making them engaged in dialogues, both in oral and written form, in which they will share and exchange their ideas on literary texts of Toni Morrison by investigating on some specific implications of the author’s vision on the issues of differences, prevalent in America
What responsibility does a teacher have in making students engaged with their peripheries? What pedagogic strategies should I take for my students who are of different class, caste, religion and communities in teaching the texts of an author, who is from a different cultural place? How to make them take part in sufferings of others by creating a visionary world for them that would broaden their imaginative power? The study is based on how reading and teaching of Toni Morrison, a distinguished American author of African American ‘origin’, may involve both a teacher and students of Nepal examine critically the issues of minorities that they come to face in their day to day living conditions of life
This study focuses on how teaching of Toni Morrison may be useful for critical understanding of Race, Gender, Class, Sexuality, and Community in a Nepalese classroom where the students are from various class, caste, religion, ethnicity, and language speaking zones, and the study is significant for the present M.A
Summary
A teacher teaching Toni Morrison in a multicultural, multiethnic, and multireligious classroom of Nepal may face with some problems like making students comprehend the conditions of black people in white America It is difficult for the students of Nepal to comprehend racial discrimination of white America from their own socio-cultural set-ups. The classroom is a place where the histories and experiences of collective memory and social, structural and political inequality are constantly being challenged and redefined In such case a teacher’s responsibility is not making a comparative study between African American and Nepalese society, but rather making students engaged with a different world of African American society in such a way as if it is their own. In this respect Ngugi wa Thiong’o is worth to be pointing out, who said about the effects of Imperialism in global context : Imperialism is total: it has economic, political, military, cultural and psychological consequences to the people of the world today ... but the biggest weapon wielded and daily unleashed by the imperialism against the collective defiance [of the oppressed] is the cultural bomb (1986, pp. 2–3)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call