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How, Why, and What: Teaching Students the Literatures of Early America

How, Why, and What: Teaching Students the Literatures of Early America How, Why, and What: Teaching Students the Literatures of Early America Thomas Hallock One of the many significant points made in Teaching the Literatures of Early America is that students often resist the nuances of early American texts, and for similar psychological or ideological reasons they are reluctant to link the themes to our own time. I met this resistance early in an American survey, at a Florida university, when attempting to direct the class’s examination of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century colonialism to the World Conference on Racism, then unraveling in Durban, South Africa. I had photocopied and dis- tributed to the class a newspaper article about the United States and Israel’s abandonment of the U.N. meeting. The article explained why Israel had rejected the label of a “colonialist” state, and it suggested through the Pales- tinian ambassador, Salman el Herfi, that the American delegation had left because it wanted to avoid discussing slavery and the injustices done to native peoples. The thematic interests and chronological structure of the course invited this brief digression. We were moving forward through time and addressing the same questions: What is a colonialist state, and what are the traits of colonial culture? What are http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Pedagogy Duke University Press

How, Why, and What: Teaching Students the Literatures of Early America

Hallock, Thomas
Pedagogy , Volume 2 (2) – Apr 1, 2002
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References (5)

Copyright
© 2002 Duke University Press
ISSN
1531-4200
eISSN
1533-6255
DOI
10.1215/15314200-2-2-281
Publisher site
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Abstract

How, Why, and What: Teaching Students the Literatures of Early America Thomas Hallock One of the many significant points made in Teaching the Literatures of Early America is that students often resist the nuances of early American texts, and for similar psychological or ideological reasons they are reluctant to link the themes to our own time. I met this resistance early in an American survey, at a Florida university, when attempting to direct the class’s examination of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century colonialism to the World Conference on Racism, then unraveling in Durban, South Africa. I had photocopied and dis- tributed to the class a newspaper article about the United States and Israel’s abandonment of the U.N. meeting. The article explained why Israel had rejected the label of a “colonialist” state, and it suggested through the Pales- tinian ambassador, Salman el Herfi, that the American delegation had left because it wanted to avoid discussing slavery and the injustices done to native peoples. The thematic interests and chronological structure of the course invited this brief digression. We were moving forward through time and addressing the same questions: What is a colonialist state, and what are the traits of colonial culture? What are

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Pedagogy – Duke University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2002

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