Crossing Multicultural Borders: Students, Faculty, and Difference in the University Classroom

Authors

  • Wanda Creaser

Keywords:

teaching, diversity, multiculturalism

Abstract

Scholars and teachers with PhDs in English are well-versed in identity studies, gender studies, ethnicity studies, and postcolonial studies. They are very good at talking and writing about these subjects in the abstract. However, when facing a classroom of students who come from cultural backgrounds considerably different from the hypothetical college student’s, with identities, values, faiths, beliefs, and myths unlike those of mainstream America, they—we—are woefully ill-prepared.

Author Biography

Wanda Creaser

Wanda J. Creaser is an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M International University, specializing in eighteenth-century British literature. She is also the university’s Technical Writing Coordinator. Her research interests include Jonathan Swift, identity, the history of medicine, and teaching the eighteenth century. Her publications include “‘The most mortifying malady’: The Dizzying World of Jonathan Swift,†Swift Studies, 2004, and “Teaching Satire on the Border: It’s a Long Journey Back to the Eighteenth Century,†in Teaching the Eighteenth Century, 2009.

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