[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-seo-597580-105":3,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":81,"doc-detail-597580-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"ok",{"site_id":7,"language":8,"slug":9,"title":10,"keywords":11,"description":12,"schema_data":13,"social_meta":74,"head_meta":76,"extra_data":78,"updated_unix":80},105,"en","between-universalizing-and-othering-developing-an-ethics-of-reading-in-the-multicultural-american-literature-classroom","Between Universalizing and Othering - Developing an Ethics of Reading in the Multicultural American Literature Classroom","","Winter/Spring 2013 CEA Forum essay examines challenges in teaching multicultural American literature in predominantly white general education classrooms. It analyzes two recurring student responses: viewing the texts as entirely foreign and universalizing or identifying too easily with them. Drawing on pedagogy theory, it argues for more deliberate instructional approaches shaped by whiteness studies and an “ethics of knowledge,” supported by discussion of specific texts. 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readers.",{"name":70,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":71},"What are the “twin pitfalls” the essay says pedagogy should help students avoid?",{"text":72,"@type":64},"The essay emphasizes avoiding universalizing and othering when engaging multicultural American literature.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":32,"og:type":75,"og:title":10,"og:site_name":45,"og:description":12},"article",{"robots":77,"canonical":32},"index,follow",{"doc_id":79,"site_id":7},597580,1792171253,{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":83},"success",[84,88,92,96,101,106,110,114,119,122,126],{"id":22,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":85,"show_sort_weight":86,"slug":87},"Story & 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Reading in the Multicultural American Literature Classroom  \nAnn-Marie Dunbar  \nWinona State University  \nThis essay seeks to explore some of the common challenges facing teachers of multicultural American literature, particularly in the general education classroom. More specifically, I address two typical student responses to this body of literature: the tendency to see the literature as entirely foreign and the tendency to universalize or to identify in a facile way with the text. Drawing on recent pedagogy theory, I argue that teachers of multicultural American literature need to be much more deliberate in our efforts to help students develop other, more productive ways of engaging multiethnic texts. In particular, I explore the implications of whiteness studies and what Tina Chen has called an “ethics of knowledge” for the multicultural American literature classroom. Finally, I discuss several specific texts with an eye to pedagogical strategies that help students both to see and to avoid the twin pitfalls of universalizing and othering. In my experience, foregrounding some of the theoretical and ethical questions raised by the study of multicultural American literature in a (predominantly white) university classroom can help to make students more self-conscious, ethical readers, with a much clearer sense of their own positionality in relation to textual others.  \nTHE CEA FORUM  \nWinter/Spring 2013  \nOne of the most persistent and invigorating pedagogical challenges I face at my fouryear, comprehensive state university is teaching race and ethnicity in general education literature classes. Like many schools of its kind in the upper Midwest, my institution lacks significant racial, ethnic, and geographical diversity in its student body. Though we have a large number of international students, primarily from Asia, most classes are comprised of predominantly white students; my most recent multicultural American literature class, for example, included one African American student, two Asian international students, and 24 white students, many of them from suburbs and small towns in the upper Midwest. Thus, my multicultural American literature class often presents the challenge, familiar to many teachers of general education courses that fulfill “multicultural” or “diversity” requirements, of engaging students of widely varying skill and interest levels in the study of texts, histories, and ideas with which they have very little familiarity or personal experience. Although my multicultural American literature courses explore a range of multiethnic literatures, I will focus here on Asian American texts; while many students have at least some cultural and discursive framework for studying African American literature, I have found that they struggle when it comes to other multicultural literatures, including texts by Asian American writers. One persistent challenge is getting my students to see Asian Americans as fully American.1 Resistance to this idea manifests itself in all sorts of ways—talking about characters’ Asian traditions and beliefs as though they are from Asia, rather than third-generation Americans, for instance; or continuing to refer to characters—even the California hipsters in Justin Lin’s 2002 film Better Luck Tomorrow—as Chinese and Korean rather than Asian American. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the tendency of students to equate their own experiences with those of characters shaped by radically different  \nTHE CEA FORUM  \nWinter/Spring 2013  \nhistorical, social, and cultural forces—the shy, upper-middle-class, white suburban woman whosees herself as the protagonist of Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1975), for instance. One big question for me, thus, has been how to teach multicultural American literature in a way that, on the one hand, minimizes students’ sense that these texts are foreign and ","cbCaigu8YXKPwleQ","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaigu8YXKPwleQ","pdf",166667,23,"English","# Teaching race and ethnicity in general education literature\n## Two student responses: foreignness and universalizing\n# Ethics of knowledge and whiteness studies in the classroom\n## Pedagogical strategies using specific texts","[{\"question\":\"What two student responses does the essay focus on in multicultural American literature classes?\",\"answer\":\"It focuses on students treating the literature as entirely foreign and on students universalizing or identifying too easily with the text.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the essay connect whiteness studies and “ethics of knowledge” to reading multicultural texts?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that these frameworks can guide teachers to support more productive ways of engaging multiethnic texts, helping students become more self-conscious and ethical readers.\"},{\"question\":\"What are the “twin pitfalls” the essay says pedagogy should help students avoid?\",\"answer\":\"The essay emphasizes avoiding universalizing and othering when engaging multicultural American literature.\"}]","Between Universalizing and Othering - Developing an Ethics of Reading in the Multicultural American Literature Classroom | PDF",1792085281,58]