Teaching Canadian Literature in the University of Nairobi

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses experiences of teaching Canadian literature in the Department of Literature, University of Nairobi, Kenya. For a long time, the University of Nairobi syllabus required that teaching Canadian literature, or any foreign literature for that matter, should be related to an African experience. This paper explores a few possible but unworkable ways on how one could relate teaching Canadian literature to an African experience as a way of establishing its relationship to students in Nairobi, Kenya, which is over 10 000 kilometres away from Canada. On the whole, the paper argues that an effective approach to teaching the literature has been formalist that takes into account fidelity to the nature and function of literature, even as it reveals the universal in the particular that makes the form and content of Canadian literature relevant to Kenyan as well as to African experiences. In the end, the paper points out the past experience of teaching and learning Canadian literature must have been valuable to both student and teacher as two seminars held outside the university demonstrate that Kenyans can relate to it for — after all — literature is universal in the particular.

KEYWORDS:

• African experience
• Canada
• Canadian literature syllabus
• Kenya
• Margaret Laurence
• Nairobi
• teaching literature
• universal in particular
• University of Nairobi

Notes

1. A variant of this saying is, ‘Do not judge your neighbor until you walk two moons in his moccasins.’ Available at: https://www.google.com/search?q=canadian+indian+quote%2BGreat+Spirit,+grant+that+I+may+not+criticize+my+neighbor+until+I+have+walked+a+mile+in+his+moccasins.&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=638&site=webhp&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiapLCAoKPSAhVCVRQKHSlfDGwQsAQIGA#imgrc=2S7UoMVMUIuZSM. Accessed 7 April 2017.

2. The seminar papers appear in two unpublished collections: African Research Centre (1992) and African Research Centre (1993).