Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] PARADIGMS: AMERICAN LITERATURE IN INDIA1
The thrust of this paper is threefold. In the first place, I
speak of the introduction of American Literature in Indian
universities. Second, I trace its changing graph, attempting to
explain the shifting paradigms in this field, looking at the
road ahead. Third, I briefly speak of the work that is being
done in India at present. Investigating these major issues, I
tackle related matters pertaining to pedagogy, mainstream
ideology, and canon-formation. I begin with some observations
on the necessity of change and growth in all spheres of life,
including education. The views I express are rooted mainly in
personal experience, based on almost four decades of active
involvement in teaching and promoting American Literature, and
an awareness of the fluctuating graph of the discipline in
India. As a teacher and educationist with some administrative
experience, I am familiar with the manner in which the
1 The arguments in the present paper are based on my personal
research, lectures and publications over the last four
decades. For this reason my views here are likely to echo my
earlier publications on the subject.
1
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] is taught in universities within and outside India.
I choose to see “American Literature” not as a water-tight
category but to see it as a growing, evolving, permeable system
shot through by different beliefs, ideologies, and other
literatures of the world.
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS: THE INEVITABILITY OF CHANGE
“All things fall and are built again, / And those that build
them again are gay.” (WB Yeats)
The twentieth century, as we are aware, has witnessed several
events that have radically changed the world and given the
present age its unique character. I mention just three: in the
first place, decolonization – which is largely responsible for
what is now recognized as the ‘postcolonial’ bandwagon, the
questioning of norms and standards that passed unchallenged
earlier, and that special feeling for emancipation that we have
got accustomed to. “Decolonized sensibilities” emerged during
the 50s-70s in the US, culminating in the Civil Rights
Movement, the Black Power movement, anti-war protests,
2
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected], gay and lesbian movements, all of which contributed
to the demolishing of the WASP cultural homogeneity and an
inclusion of other voices which were previously unheard. Next
in importance one may itemize (and this is a purely arbitrary
list) the impact of globalization, leading to the widening,
merging, even disappearance of rigid boundaries between peoples
and nations: the level playing field as it has been called.
Thirdly, affecting our thinking in the contemporary times is
the emergence of a new world order following the break-up of
the Soviet empire. The list is endless, but let me stop at this
point to see how the changes mentioned have affected scholars
and critics of American Literature. As new power configurations
emerge, new maps are drawn, new territorial limits are defined
and fresh centres of control come into being. With the de-
bordering and re-bordering, with the changing cultural and
political demarcations, literary boundaries also necessarily
change as the balance of power keeps shifting constantly and
the ground is continually contested. How has the changed
political and cultural scenario over the world influenced the
study of literary texts? In particular how has it affected the
3
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] of American Literature? These are some questions that
need to be looked at.
Education involves knowledge / the dissemination of knowledge,
and we know that knowledge is power. The balance of power, the
configurations that determine control and subservience, thus,
are largely responsible for the nature of knowledge that is
disseminated in educational institutions, what is disseminated
and how it is disseminated. How, then, does the changed
political and cultural scenario across the world influence the
study of literatures in the Indian subcontinent? We know that
in Europe first the study of English replaced the study of the
Classics. Then, with the passage of time English Studies itself
underwent changes, to be replaced by subaltern or Oriental or
Commonwealth or Postcolonial studies. The curriculum that is
taught in educational institutions keeps changing as power
blocks change and established canons are replaced by newer
ones.
4
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] AMERICAN LITERATURE IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD:
I will digress briefly at this point and refer to a few
concepts that have been buzzing around over the recent past.
These are concepts related to a centrifugal movement, from the
specific to the general, from the national to the
transnational. Extending the centrifugal idea, we may apply it
to America and what lies beyond its geographical borders. Jane
Desmond and Virginia Dominguez, borrowing Benjamin Lee’s idea
of “new critical internationalism” which retains a sense of
nationalism, refer to scholarship on “transnational flows and
affiliations” (ethnic, religious, etc.) as a very useful
antidote to a rigid idea of nation (Desmond and Dominguez
1999), resituating America (the US) in a global context. This
seems close to Homi Bhabha’s concept of “new internationalism”
as a move from the specific to the general. National cultures
are in the process of redefinition following diasporic
movements across the globe. Consequently, there is evidence of
“transnational and translational sense of hybridity of imagined
communities.” (Bhabha 936) The act of “writing the world” may
sound ambitious (ibidem 941) but what Bhabha advocates is the
5
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] erosion of barriers, of all narrow notions of
nationalisms that break up the world into little ghettoes.
Characters in literature, he points out, do not speak from
fixed or rigid standpoints but from a space “in-between each
other,” exploring interpersonal relationships which are
“historically framed” (ibidem 943).
Before proceeding further, a question needs to be addressed:
What is “American Literature” and why do we restrict the label
to the literature of the US? Why does it not incorporate
literatures from Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Brazil,
Argentina, and other countries of South America (for why should
they not come under the umbrella of “American Studies”?) –
Fuentes, Marquez, Borges, Llosa, Cortazar; writers of the
“internal margins” as W.J.T. Mitchell calls them. (Mitchell
476) Literature of a country like the US involves several
issues in today’s globalized world where distances do not
matter the way they did once. New cartographic lines replace
familiar old lines. The literary map of America, too, changes
6
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] writers from the ‘circumference’ move to the centre. In such
circumstances, is it not desirable that “American Literature”
should be looked at against a broad perspective?
IN THE U.S.:
To begin with, as we know, American Literature courses in the
United States academia were traditionally narrow, biased in
favour of the dominant social groups. The canon was blinkered
and anthologies prescribed for study were not truly
representative before some dedicated scholars made a concerted
effort to change the canon. There was, what Stephen Slemon
called the “adoption of creative revisionism” leading to a
subversion/displacement of dominant discourses. (Slemon, 1988)
Perhaps the first in the marginalized groups to emerge on the
syllabi was the black writer – James Baldwin, Richard Wright,
Ralph Ellison. Paul Lauter speaks of the practical problems
faced by his team while working on his project “Reconstructing
American Literature” which finally led to the publication of
the Heath Anthology in 1990, a collection that includes texts
7
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] or neglected earlier, for example, literatures by women
or by marginalized groups, “familiar but undervalued” (Lauter
xxxiv) writers, literature that represents social and cultural
realities of America, deals with issues and subjects that have
been “downplayed, even avoided,” (ibidem) and that which takes
into its purview the extensive multicultural developments of
America. The questioning of the canon thus resulted in cross-
cultural, diasporic perspectives. New realities emerged
following the interface between the dominant and the
marginalized cultures. Were they really new, though? Or simply
newly recognized?
American literature, which once meant the study of ‘mainstream’
writers like Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, or
Hemingway, now means all that and something more: the inclusion
of literatures from ethnic minorities into the rubric of
American literature makes all the difference. Our perspective
now includes writers from the erstwhile margins – Afro-
American, Hispanic, Chicano/a, Native American, Asian-American,
8
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] gay, the lesbian, et al. – changes symptomatic of the fact
that boundaries have changed, shifted, expanded, even
disappeared. And why not? Boundaries, after all, are man-made,
are they not? How, then, can they remain rigid? As boundaries
shift, expand and disappear, as the various peoples of the
world uproot and re-root themselves in new lands and climes,
new perspectives take birth, new ideas, new identities are
born. Franz Fanon tells us of travellers from the periphery who
arrive at the centre and adopt imperial cultures – which, in
turn, leads to parallel cultures, multiple belongings, plural
identities, not either/or, but this and that. DuBois, in The
Souls of Black Folk, tells us of the “twoness” of vision,
Rushdie’s Imaginary Homelands speaks of “plural and “partial
identities” straddling two cultures, Gloria Anzaldua’s
Borderlands mentions speaking “a patois, a forked tongue, a
variation of two languages” (Anzaldua 55). Anzaldua refers to
the new mestiza consciousness as one of “crossing over,” of
“perpetual transition,” of plural personality. With a woman
writer, other issues may be involved, other perspectives. Take,
for example, Virginia Woolf’s statement in Three Guineas: “As a
9
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a
woman my country is the whole world.” Then, what about the
diasporic writer? Would you place the diasporic writer on the
American soil in the American literature category? Or in the
category of the mother country? So, what is ‘inside’ and what
is ‘outside’? Where is the dividing line? Keeping all this in
mind, how exactly do we define American Literature?
Let us also take a look at developments in American Studies
across the world. Post-1980s, among American Studies scholars,
one becomes acquainted with several new concepts. If, as
mentioned before, Jane Desmond and Virginia Dominguez speak of
“internationalizing” American Studies, Don Pease of Dartmouth
upholds “Transatlanticism”. Tatsushi Narita from Japan and
others write extensively about “Hemispheric American Studies”
playing an indispensable part in seeking a “transnational
direction” for American Studies. (RIAS 1:1, 14). These terms
are telling – what they point to is the desire to cut across
all defining limits and go beyond borders. Whereas
10
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected]“Transatlanticism” seeks connections and relationships between
America and Europe, “Hemispheric” tries to go a step ahead and
“Internationalizing” of American Studies even farther across
geographical barriers, bringing under its banner diverse
nations and academic forums. One would perhaps agree with
Giorgio Mariani who tells us, “Nations and nationalism (in
literature and elsewhere) are no longer seen in terms of
‘organicism’ and teleological design. Routes are favored over
roots, cross-cultural exchanges are highlighted at the expense
of myths of uniqueness, the study of multi-directional flows
and boundary-crossing replaces the attention traditionally paid
to supposedly discrete identities.” (RIAS 1:1, 8)
As American Studies becomes more and more internationalized, I
strongly believe that what we need today is not departments of
literature which have a course called “American Literature”
that treats its subject like an exhibit in a zoo, caged and
labelled. We need departments of literature which treat
American Literature against a broader framework. We need to
11
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] how American Literature measures up vis-à-vis other
literatures of the world. We need to know how Walt Whitman was
different from William Wordsworth, John Steinbeck from Leo
Tolstoy, Norman Mailer from Marquez, and Joseph Heller from
Cervantes. “We have to look at the American experience from
outside as well as from within….” (Davis 47)
AMERICAN LITERATURE IN INDIAN UNIVERSITIES
In India, as elsewhere, the study of American Literature is
inextricably linked with its colonial past: American Literature
programs are invariably housed in Departments of English in
most universities, thus pointing to a strong bias. In the early
stages of its inception, university and college teaching was
structured on the British model, but in the wake of
independence, in 1947, came a questioning of the existing
pattern of education and the need for a broader-based
educational policy. American Studies, by taking the Indian
scholar out of existing confines, seemed to be a step in this
direction. American Literature thus entered Indian Universities
12
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] the mid-twentieth century, in the wake of the Indian
National Movement, a time of great intellectual ferment when
the masses seemed to awaken from their long slumber and
questioned the authority of the colonial masters.
Looking for an alternative to English Literature, scholars and
academics turned to American Literature, a move encouraged by
American diplomacy in the mid-fifties and sixties when the US,
in the post-Cold War era, was making a deliberate effort to
build good will across the world, setting up institutions for
cultural and educational exchange, for example the United
States Educational Foundation in India and the American Studies
Research Centre (ASRC) in India which tried to promote American
Studies in India. There was financial support from the State
Department and American Studies (including Literature) was
promoted in a big way. American Literature courses were offered
in post-graduate departments in universities across the
country. These courses taught writers like Frost, Hemingway,
13
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected], O’Neil, Arthur Miller, and others, all very white,
very male and very traditional.
In the late 1970s the frontiers were radically expanded,
bringing marginalized literatures into university courses. The
ASRC expanded its collection of Black and Ethnic Studies; the
poetry and the women’s studies section expanded under Dorothy
Clarke, the first librarian. Jewish-American literature rose in
popularity while some other ethnic groups – the Native
American, for instance, or the Chicano or the Hispanic –
remained neglected. In the last decade of the twentieth
century, as an off-shoot of the sudden upsurge of interest in
postcolonial/diasporic writing, there was a phenomenal interest
in Asian American writing which became the most sought-after
field, even more popular than African American literature.
Once American literature courses had been introduced in the
Departments of English at Indian universities, its teaching
mirrored more or less the history of teaching American
14
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] in the U.S. So, the earliest courses in India too
were traditionally narrow and comprised almost entirely what is
known as “WMAL” i.e., White Male American Literature. In some
universities even today the courses taught follow the
conservative pattern, focusing on mainstream writers like Walt
Whitman, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams.2 Women
writers find no place in this framework. Nor do the writers
from marginalized ethnic groups. As Women’s Studies gathered
impetus, Emily Dickinson became a part of courses on women’s
writing. With the focus on Confessional Poetry came an interest
in other women poets like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. In
recent years the syllabus has been expanded to include Langston
Hughes and Ralph Ellison. There are still gaping holes (e.g.,
there is still no representation of Native American or Chicano
or Asian-American writing). Perhaps these are unavoidable,
2 The Panjab University American Literature syllabus until a
few years ago, had the following authors: Walt Whitman, Robert
Frost, Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, R.W. Emerson, Hawthorne,
Henry James and Mark Twain.
15
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] in mind constraints of time-schedule and infra-
structure. Other universities in India follow a more or less
similar pattern. While American Literature is being taught at
the postgraduate level in university departments, it is not a
compulsory subject but an optional course of study which fights
for a place with other options like Indian Writing in English,
world Literatures, Australian / African Literatures, etc.
Doctoral research, however, is carried on in areas that are not
covered in the regular curriculum..
During the last decade or so, American Literature, along with
American Studies, has receded to the background in Indian
universities and Indian Writing in English has been fore-
grounded. Not surprising this, as Indian Writing has now come
of age and demands its own place in the academic world. So
American Literature, which earlier had to compete with British
Literature, now has to coexist with Indian Writing in English
and with other New Literatures that emerge on the scene. What
complicates the situation is the cessation of funds from US
16
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected], the lack of support for the study of American
Literature, and the closure of the ASRC in Hyderabad. Research
in American Literature flourished for about three decades,
right up to the mid-’nineties, thanks to the American Studies
Research Centre in Hyderabad which boasted of the second-best
library on American Studies outside the US borders (the best
collection being at the JFK Library in Berlin). Apart from
reading material and books, the ASRC offered study and research
grants facilitating doctoral dissertations and post-doctoral
research, conducted seminars and workshops, and generally
boosted the study of American Literature in India from the
’sixties to the mid-’nineties when, following a change in the
policies of the State Dept, the funding abruptly came to an end
and all incentives for American Studies / Literature came to a
sudden halt.
Despite the hurdles, a lot of activity still takes place in
American Studies and American Literature: the subject is still
taught and conferences / seminars are held regularly. The
17
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] has changed, becoming more comparatist as new critical
perspectives emerge and new literatures appear on the scene.
The frontiers of American Literature have been pushed back.
GAPS AND OMISSIONS:
Missing in the traditional teaching of American Literature was
a connectivity, a “translation” – not just as a literary
exercise but, symbolically, as the attempt to understand,
interpret and reach out to other languages, other cultures and
ethnic groups. Looking back, we note the self-centeredness of
the discipline – a sort of navel-gazing, a self-absorption that
is concerned with matters related to America, by Americans and
for Americans. It is almost as though the system is engaged in
an endless naming or defining of itself, America talking about
itself, American Studies experts dabbling in their own little
sphere, shutting the world out of their debates. American
Literature experts focusing on a select few mainstream writers
to the exclusion of all other voices. The reflection America
sees of itself is predominantly WASP and other ethnic groups
18
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] invisible, they do not seem to matter. The attempt to
translate the experience of the Other remained virtually
absent. In other words, there was in traditional American
Studies a marked resistance to other modes of thinking /
speaking. Such an approach would be fine in a unipolar world
but in a global scenario where new powers are emerging all the
time, we need something more than a myopic vision. If one has
to do ‘transatlantic or international’ studies, surely,
something must be done about it. Realizing this, the contours
of traditional American Studies as also of its literature,
needed to be pushed back to include non-US representations and
interpretations of the US. This change was necessary partly
because of globalization and partly because of the emergence of
other voices and nations that figured nowhere in the earlier
scheme of things.
COLLECTIVE VENTURES: MELUS / MELUS-India/ MELOW:
In the US, one of the earliest factors in the opening up of the
frontiers of American Literature was the formation of MELUS:
19
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the
United States which led to an expansion of the canon of
American Literature. Beginning as a rebel body of scholars
(working on Afro-American and other ethnic literatures of the
US) who demanded their own panel in an MLA Conference being
held in New York City in 1972, MELUS has grown to be an
important forum for scholars and academics from various fields
and locations. It attempted to view American Literature not as
a single mainstream body but as a patchwork quilt of varied
textures and patterns, a rainbow of a myriad shades. Through a
“re-visioning” of American literature, MELUS has fostered a
recognition and acceptance of diversity and difference among
peoples and places: in art, society, and culture; in perception
and expression; it questioned dominant power structures,
encouraged a comparative perspective, a multi-dimensional
viewpoint, an awareness of intercultural, transcultural, and
diasporic issues. The formation of MELUS was the first step,
moving from the mainstream to the margins. In a vast continent
like the US, we need to keep in mind that instead of a
mainstream, there are a number of rivulets flowing in different
20
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected], from different directions their gushing,
polyglottic waters creating a well-orchestrated symphony. Even
if the notes seem to jar initially, they are necessary
ingredients of a whole, a part of what Wallace Stevens
perceived as the music of the spheres, the “harmonium” of the
world.
The study of multi-ethnic U.S. literatures quickly spread
beyond the American frontiers and found its way into India.
Roughly since 1998, multi-ethnic literature of the U.S. emerged
as a growing area of interest, particularly after the formation
of MELUS-India, the India chapter of the US-based Society for
the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States.
The idea of “MELUS” caught on because it corresponded with the
demographic and changing world view of the United States.
Today, with a fuller acknowledgement of African Americans in
U.S. history and the gradual "browning" of the U.S. through new
immigrants from many locations other than Europe, multi-ethnic
literary works have begun to jostle for inclusion along with
21
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] or WMAL literature, demanding a place for itself closer to
the center.
MELUS-India, like the U.S.-based MELUS, wished to provide a
common forum for intellectual exchange, expand the canon of
American Literature, cut across boundaries, de-center the given
canon, and establish an international network of scholars who
shared mutual interests. At the same time, one of its goals was
to encourage a comparative perspective and turn to multi-
cultural Indian literatures with a keener interest. So, on the
one hand, while scholars in India looked outward, establishing
connections with the wide world, they looked at indigenous
literatures, too, and placed them in a global context, actually
putting into practice the idea of the “double vision”. The
organization also aimed at encouraging the younger generation
of scholars to come out of their shells, many of them fresh
postgraduates eager to begin their doctoral research. For them
MELUS-India provided an international forum where they could
22
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] their horizons, meet and interact with senior scholars in
the field.
MELUS moved into India when, in the year 1998, a handful of
academics got together and floated a Society called MELUS-
India, the India Chapter of MELUS. We began to meet at annual
conferences to debate and discuss emerging issues in the
literature produced by minority groups in the US. However,
after a few conferences, the feeling dawned on us that we were
ignoring the “White” segment of American Literature. Why did we
do that? Did we not need stalwarts like Frost or Longfellow or
Whitman? Why leave them out? So we pushed back our limits a bit
to include them. One door led to another. Another conference or
two later we felt we were isolating ourselves from what was
happening in other American countries – why should American
Literature not take cognizance of that? So we broadened our
field to include both the Americas, bringing in Atwood, Llosa,
Marquez and others. Finally, we turned our attention to other
literary traditions outside the Americas and started exploring
commonalities in World Literatures and MELOW came into being –
the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of
23
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] World. This is our small contribution, the contribution of
“Americanists” from India, to the international exchange of
scholarship. Together, MELUS-India and MELOW continue to focus
on American Literature but keep track of its shifting paradigms
in relation to global developments. From time to time, certain
voices get emphasized more than others, but every age, every
culture has its own dominant voices. The voices we hear in
India and also our response to them depends on our socio-
cultural ethos.
THE PRESENT SCENE:
The field of American Literature remains active even now.
American Literature continues to be part of the undergraduate
and postgraduate syllabus in institutions of higher learning.
Research in the area continues unabated. The US embassy
occasionally gives grants to support seminars and workshops on
American Literature; sometimes it brings in visiting writers
and academics from the US. Apart from MELUS-India and MELOW,
there are academic associations like the Indian Association for
24
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] Studies that holds conferences every year. A major
component of these conferences is literature. Dissertations
continue to be written on American authors although the
approach now is more interdisciplinary. A law school in
Rajasthan has introduced a Master’s Degree in International
Studies and American Studies which has a literature component,
too. Karnataka University's Post Graduate course in English
Studies where teaches a comparative study of cross cultural
Feminist narrative - American and Indian – through textual
interpretations. At an individual level there has been
considerable achievement with scholars making forays into
American popular literature and culture, working/publishing on
Batman and other superhero comics. At Jadavpur University there
is a strong thrust on American Studies in several departments,
including English.3
Speaking of my personal contribution to American Literature, as
the chief functionary of MELUS-India and MELOW, I am3 I am grateful to my colleagues, Pramod Nayar, Ravi Kumar,
Shrimati Das, and Sanjukta Bhattacharya, for their inputs.
25
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] for maintaining contact with three hundred and more
Americanists in India, bringing them together (along with many
new faces every year) at international conferences. Through our
website, blog, email, we keep in touch with colleagues across
the world, connect with IASA and other such organizations,
forming a network of like-minded scholars interested in
exchanging ideas on American Studies / American Literature. I
have been part of several American Literature Conferences in
the US and also in other countries. I am often asked to speak
on American Literature / American Studies. I have taught the
subject at the Postgraduate level, written and published on
related topics, and tried to keep abreast of changing
pedagogies. However, my interest in American Literature goes
hand-in-hand with other areas of interest like world
literatures; this is how, rather than isolating myself within
the confines of a discipline, I stay connected with other
developments in literature, too. Cross-connections, for me, are
of the utmost importance.
26
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] American Literature no longer enjoys the status it did
two decades ago, over the last two years or so, there has been
a serious effort to revive American Studies (and with it
American Literature) assisted by the US Embassy. Leading
academicians and scholars from across the country have met
several times and drafted a certificate and diploma course on
American Studies with two courses on American Literature. The
curriculum has been circulated to universities and colleges in
India and it may be adopted for teaching as an “Add-on” course
by institutions.
There are still several challenges facing American Literature
in India. As researchers and teachers we need to keep in mind
the need for interdisiplinarity and the necessity of reaching
out, relating the subject to other disciplines. Instead of
treating it as an esoteric category we need to see American
Literature as part of a whole, a component of World Literature.
Further, we need motivation, opportunities and rewards. There
is no dearth of takers but patrons, givers, organizers and
27
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] are needed who can bring people together under a
shared umbrella. Funds are an important issue, especially in an
under-developed country like India where scholars do not have
access to financial assistance and the international rate of
exchange is forbidding, making it difficult for a scholar from
India to travel abroad, attend seminars and conferences,
interacting with an international community of shared
interests.
Practitioners in the field need to widen their horizons and
relate their field of inquiry with the world beyond,
highlighting the enduring aspects of American Literature which
transcend time and space, giving expression to the indomitable
spirit of man, the spirit which cannot be labelled or confined
within artificial boundaries, which is all-encompassing, which
is free. The aim of such a broadening of horizons is not to
undermine the study of American literature but to further
strengthen it by forging links outside the domain. This is
imperative, keeping in mind the changing colours of the world.
28
Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected] old order will change. With a little effort, we can make it
change for the better.
REFERENCES:
Ahmad, Aijaz. “Jameson’s Rhetoric of Otherness and the
‘National Allegory’,” in Social Text 17 (Fall). Reprintd in
Ashcroft, et. al. 77-82.
Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands: La Frontera: The New Mestiza.
San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareths Griffiths, and Helen Tiffins, eds. The
Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London and New York:
Routledge, 1997.
Azam, Kousar J. Paper presented at the International Conference
on American Studies, University of Iowa, April 1999.
Bhabha, Homi. “The Location of Culture,” reprinted in Rivkin.
936-944.
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Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected], Virginia, and Jane Desmond. Paper presented at the
International Conference on American Studies, University of
Iowa, April 1999.
Davis, Allen. 1990. “The Politics of American Studies” in
American Quarterly 42, 3 (September 90), reprinted in
Singh, et. al. 32-51.
During, Simon, ed.. Cultural Studies Reader. London and New
York: Routledge, 1993.
James, C.L.R. Beyond a Boundary. New York: Pantheon, 1984.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. 1827. Kunst und Altertum.
Grossberg, Lawrence, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treicher, eds.
Cultural Studies. New York and London: Routledge,1992.
Lauter, Paul, General Editor. The Heath Anthology of American
L iterature V. II. Lexington, Mass: D.C. Heath and Co.,
1994.
Marx, Karl. “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” reprinted in
Rivkin. 256-261.
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Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected], Trinh T. When the Moon Waxes Red. New York, London:
Routledge, 1991.
Mitchell, W.J.T. “Postcolonial Culture, Postimperial
Criticism,” Transitions 55, reprinted in Aschroft, et. al.
475-79.
Radway, Janice. Paper presented at the International Conference
on American Studies, University of Iowa, April 1999.
Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998.
Singh, Amritjit, Max Skidmore, and Isaac Sequeira. American
Studies Today. New Delhi: Creative Books, 1995.
Slemon, Stephen. “Post-Colonial Allegory and the Transformation
of History,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 23 (1):
1988. 157-68.
Sollors, Werner. “Who is Ethnic?” from Beyond Ethnicity:
Consent and Descent in American Culture. Oxford and New
York: OUP, 1986.. Reprinted in Ashcroft, ed. 219-222.
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Urbana-Champaign Conference. April 2010Professor Manju Jaidka
Dept of English & Cultural StudiesPanjab UniversityChandigarh, India
[email protected], Gayatri Chakravorty, and Sneja Gunew. 1993. “Questions
of Multiculturalism,” in Simon During, ed., Cultural
Studies Reader. 193-202.
Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas.
<http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200931.txt>
The Author: Professor Manju Jaidka of Panjab University, Chandigarh,India, is the recipient of several national and internationalfellowships including a Fulbright Research Grant to Harvardand Yale Universities, a Rockefeller Residency at the BellagioStudy Centre, a fellowship at the Salzburg Center, aRockefeller Visiting Professorship at the University of Iowa,and the Lillian Robinson Fellowship from the Simone deBeauvoir Institute at the University of Concordia, Montreal. Her research papers have been placed in national andinternational journals. She has also published two novels anda play. She is the Chairperson of the prestigious ChandigarhSahitya Akademi and as the chief functionary of MELOW (theSociety for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of theWorld), she has been organizing international conferencessuccessfully in India every year. She is the ExecutiveDirector of the International American Studies Association andalso serves on the advisory board of several internationalorganizations.
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