engleski

Teaching Western Canadian Literature in Croatian Context (a Case Study)

The chapter focuses on challenges and advantages of teaching Western Canadian literature in the Croatian context and explains the course’s areas of concern and the peculiarities of the topic in the Croatian classroom. The areas of concern include: the western genre, its traditional traits vs. the pluralities of the postwestern, anti-western and new western varieties ; the creation of the myth of the American West and the West above the 49th parallel ; the strategies of mythmaking i.e. the creation of grand narratives such as official history and national identity ; the counter-histories to the official history of the ordered settlement of the Canadian West. The course designed in such a way also sets a game of detection before the students: while prima facie appearing as a course on a popular genre, it in fact uses that genre as a gateway to probe, confront and destabilize the received truths about Western Canadian history by replacing it with alternative histories. The specificities of teaching such a course in a non-North American classroom include a thorough introduction to Canada’s history, culture, politics since Canada in these aspects largely represents an unknown to Croatian students. The objective of the course is designed to stimulate the students to take their theoretical knowledge and analytical skills outside of the classroom and to apply them to the current affairs of Croatian, European and global politics, economy, society and culture, that is, to become critical of any account presented as a ‘received truth.’

classroom, western, post-colonial, west, myth, history

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