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When Comparative Literature Becomes Cultural Studies: Teaching Cultures through Genre

When Comparative Literature Becomes Cultural Studies: Teaching Cultures through Genre katherine arens When Comparative Literature Becomes Cultural Studies Teaching Cultures through Genre A rapprochement in the classroom between the traditional elements of compara- tive literary study and the political and methodological imperatives posed by the turn to cultural studies is long overdue. The teaching of literature in the 1950s and 1960s was largely an exclusive, intrinsic enterprise, stressing period, genre, and formal features of written texts, and in the comparative context, many of the same habits were preserved. Yet in the course of the ‘‘canon wars’’ of the 1980s and 1990s, training in literature changed radically, from the pedagogy associated with New Criticism (‘‘close readings,’’ explications de texte), often formalist in inspiration, to pedagogy based on cultural studies and various reader-centered approaches (the most familiar of which appeared under the rubric of the ‘‘Pedagogy of the Op- pressed’’). On the scholarly front, comparative literature has in many ways led the charge because of its early attention to postcolonial studies, a classic setting for studies of meetings between dominant and nondominant cultures and for debates about the impact of national literature canons. For the most part, however, our classroom practice has not caught up with that shift: we have few http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Comparatist University of North Carolina Press

When Comparative Literature Becomes Cultural Studies: Teaching Cultures through Genre

Arens, Katherine,
The Comparatist , Volume 29 – Jan 25, 2006
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 the Southern Comparative LIterature Association.
ISSN
1559-0887

Abstract

katherine arens When Comparative Literature Becomes Cultural Studies Teaching Cultures through Genre A rapprochement in the classroom between the traditional elements of compara- tive literary study and the political and methodological imperatives posed by the turn to cultural studies is long overdue. The teaching of literature in the 1950s and 1960s was largely an exclusive, intrinsic enterprise, stressing period, genre, and formal features of written texts, and in the comparative context, many of the same habits were preserved. Yet in the course of the ‘‘canon wars’’ of the 1980s and 1990s, training in literature changed radically, from the pedagogy associated with New Criticism (‘‘close readings,’’ explications de texte), often formalist in inspiration, to pedagogy based on cultural studies and various reader-centered approaches (the most familiar of which appeared under the rubric of the ‘‘Pedagogy of the Op- pressed’’). On the scholarly front, comparative literature has in many ways led the charge because of its early attention to postcolonial studies, a classic setting for studies of meetings between dominant and nondominant cultures and for debates about the impact of national literature canons. For the most part, however, our classroom practice has not caught up with that shift: we have few

Journal

The Comparatist – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Jan 25, 2006

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