Teaching in Times of Crisis

Applying Comparative Literature in the Classroom

Mich Yonah Nyawalo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000370577
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria para la literatura comparada

Teaching in Times of Crisis explores how comparative methods, which are instrumental in reading and teaching works of literature from around the world, also provide us with tools to dissect and engage the moments of crises that permeate our contemporary political realities.

The book is written in the form of a series of classroom reflections—or memos—capturing the political environment preceding and proceeding the 2016 US presidential election. It examines the ways in which the ethics involved in reading comparatively can be employed by teachers and students alike to map and foster "lifelines for cultural sustainability" (to borrow the term from Djelal Kadir's Memos from the Besieged City ) that are essential for creating and maintaining a healthy multicultural society.

Nyawalo achieves this through comparative readings of postcolonial films, LGBTQ texts, French slam poetry, as well as episodes from Star Trek: The Next Generation, among other materials. The classroom reflections captured in each memo are shaped by the Appalachian setting in which the discussions and lessons took place. Inspired by this setting, the author develops pedagogic ethics of comparison—a method of reading comparatively—which privileges the local educational spaces in which students find themselves by mapping the contested cultural politics of Appalachian realities onto a world literature curriculum.

Index

1. 120 Beats per Minute (film) 3
2. 1921 labor uprising 39
3. 1965 Levin Report 51
4. 2020 US presidential election, and mail-in ballots 1
5. academia see US academia
6. academic institutional networks 21
7. academic institutions, ties to slavery and 113
8. academic publications 28
9. academic space and region, situatedness of 29
10. Achebe, Chinua, analysis of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness 38
11. Adichie, Chimamanda 27
12. Afghanistan 48
13. African Americans, civil rights of 1
14. African continent 10; queer sexualities and spaces on the 68
15. “African” culture, homosexuality and 77
16. African diaspora 22
17. African LGBTQ activists 76
18. African Literature Association 49
19. African-American community 27
20. Against World Literature (Apter) 13, 44
21. Alpert, Avram 9
22. alterity, delivered 16, 21, 28
23. alterity, domestication of 28
24. analysis, classroom dynamics and 29
25. anti-colonial gestures 74
26. Antiguan society, postcolonial critique of 20
27. Anti-Homosexual Bill, in Uganda 75
28. Appalachia: caricatures of 32–33; as an internal colony 33, 34, 41; as an internal periphery 34, 41; mirroring African continent’s queer sentiments 68
29. “Appalachia: America’s Mineral Colony” (Weller) 39
30. Appalachian activists 33, 41; and postcolonial theory 36
31. Appalachian appropriations 34–35
32. Appalachian coal miners 38, 39, 41
33. Appalachian culture 27; denigration of 34
34. Appalachian dialects 18; denigration of 34
35. Appalachian English dialect see Appalachian dialect
36. Appalachian environment 38
37. Appalachian LGBTQ communities 62; inv...