Strangers in the Discipline: What Victorian Literature Says to Students of Color

Abstract

Using James Baldwin's essay "Stranger in the Village" (1953) as a touchstone, this essay draws parallels between Baldwin's experiences as the only Black person in a small Swiss village to that of students of color in the Victorian literature classroom. Then, by comparing and contrasting similar themes in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations (1860–61) to Baldwin's own Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), it offers methods by which teachers of Victorian literature can create classroom spaces that enable students of color to feel authentically that Victorian literature also belongs to and welcomes them.