This project explores the potential of the New Literatures in English with their
manifold connections to a wide variety of cultures around the globe for exploring
questions of “cultural learning” in teaching literature. The New Literatures
in English not only provide striking examples of transcultural border-crossings
that set up unexpected links between cultures in public arenas as well as in the
innermost recesses of individual identity, but also challenge us to come to terms
with the cultural complexity of a world literary language that combines a global
medium of literary communication with an almost infinite variety of local adaptations
and cultural contexts. Some of the main questions addressed are the following: What
insights about culture are we ultimately aiming for in teaching the New Literatures
in English? How can we utilize the transcultural potential of English as a global
language relating to an immense variety of cultural contexts in our teaching? How
can the transcultural complexity that we encounter both in the literary texts we
teach and in the lifeworlds of our students and pupils become an integral part of
our teaching practices? Are there ways of turning this transcultural complexity
from a liability that complicates the teaching of “cultural contexts”
into an asset that helps us to perceive the dynamics of culture in an increasingly
globalised world? How can our teaching help to overcome widespread notions of cultures
as more or less homogenous and clearly demarcated entities? And how can we move
beyond renewed stereotypes of “other” cultures without giving up an
interest in cultural difference altogether?
Projektleitung: Prof. Dr. Sabine Doff, Prof. Dr. Frank Schulze-Engler
Veröffentlichung: Sabine Doff & Frank Schulze-Engler (Hrsg.) (2011). Beyond 'Other Cultures'.
Transcultural Approaches to Teaching the New Literatures in English. Trier:
Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.
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