World Literatures in English
  A note on the pedagogy

Q: Is it possible to teach World Literatures in English?
A: No, unless there is a focus in theme.  "No" because "World Literatures in English" include so many regions and nations and cultures, and the "Yes" is given under the condition that some proper themes get chosen to allow the teacher to set up some manageable contexts.

Q: Why are you teaching "South-Asian Literature" (or literature of Indian Subcontinent)when you have not even been to any place in this area, nor do you know any of their languages?
A: No, I am not teaching Indian, or Pakistani, Sri Lankan, literature, and definitely not in the way a native-born academic would teach it.  I am focusing on the literature written by the South Asian diaspora (see definition of Diaspora). 

Q: But are you sure your interpretation of their cultures (Indian, or Indian diasporic) is correct? 
A: No, I cannot be 100% sure, and that is why I need to be careful in learning and doing research about their cultures. 
On the other hand, what is a proper or correct interpretation but an interpretation given and accepted in a given historical/social context?  At the same time I try to understand the other cultures, I am interpreting the texts and culture from a Taiwanese perspective.
To borrow Hans-Georg Gadamer's terms, my interpretation is inevitably and actively a fusion of horizons.

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Texts
  for  Group Report

(to be updated as the class develops)

 

Group Report I: Cultural Identity & Representation of South Asian Women
Feature Films: In Custody, Masala, Mississippe Masala, My Beautiful Laundrette, Fire and other films by Deepa Mehta, Namesake,I'm Kalam, Monsoon Wedding, and other films by Mira Nair, Outsourced (film and TV series), Where is the Friend's Home? (Iran) The Kite Runner (Afghanistan), Turtle Can Fly (Kurd)
Documentaries:  (more. . .)
Literature: Reading Lolita in Tehran (Iran—Chinese version available), Kabul Beauty School, short stories by Rushdie & Narayan; "Her Mother" by Anjana Appachana); "Honor" by Qurratulain Hyder

Group Report II:  West and South Africa
Feature Films: In my Country,   Soweto Green, Cry, my Beloved Country, Yesterday, Cry Freedom, Tsotsi (2005) 黑幫暴徒
Documentaries:  Long Night's Journey Into Day (on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.)  Boys, Toys and the Big Blue Marble, War Dance, Grace, Milly, Lucy..Child Soldiers  
Literature: the novels whose excerpt we read in class, A Long Way Gone, The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African childhood (Liberia: Helene Couper), Long Way Gone (Sierra Leon: Ishmael Beah) (—Chinese version available); “Grief of Strangers” (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie); short stories by Nadine Gordimer

Group Report III: Caribbean Disapora and Survival
Feature Films: Rude, Soul Survivor, My Mother's Place, The Harder They Come.  
Documentaries: Caribbean Poetry
Chinese diaspora: Double Happiness, Mom, Mona and Me, 《浮生》 Floating Life , 《愛在他鄉的季節》, 《三個女人的故事》, Happy Together, etc. 
Literature: the other chapters of Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys), Abeng (Michelle Cliff), Annie John (Jamaica Kincaid), Abeng; short stories by Olive Seniors, or Edwidge Danticat

Others: Central Station(Brazil), City of God (Brazil)

A lot!  Please see me. 

　

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