American Literature and Other Curricular Issues in Syria

During the academic year 1998-1999, I was the Senior Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Aleppo in Syria, where I taught American literature to third-year, fourth-year, and diploma students. Perhaps it is the nature of how I came to teach American literature in Syria, a stretch in terms of my background, that made me particularly aware of my environment in relation to who I am and what I was expected to teach. I had originally applied to do research on accessing pre-colonial British literature in a postcolonial context in Sri Lanka; in late spring of 1998, my assignment was changed to Syria. In teaching appointments in the United States as well as Denmark and Bulgaria, I have primarily taught Medieval and Renaissance literature; I have, though, taught one class specifically focused on American texts, namely, multicultural literature. In the course of my peripatetic twenty-year career I have also inevitably taught a number of American texts in introductory literature classes. It is the multicultural literature class, however, which I chose to adapt for my Diploma or firstyear graduate class in Syria. The Diploma classes are the only ones in the curriculum in which teachers are given freedom to choose the required texts. I decided to teach multicultural literature for a number of reasons: I had experience teaching the course; I had published an article on teaching multicultural literature; I assumed students would be least familiar with multicultural American literature, in fact with any very recent literature; and, most importantly, it made the greatest sense to me within the context I found myself. This paper describes my experience teaching non-canonical American texts in a graduate class and canonical American texts in third-year and fourth-year classes. It also examines the sense of responsibility and obligation I felt teaching American literature in another culture