Simone Grimard
4th Year Bachelor of Arts
Intercultural Learning at TRU.
At TRU I have had the opportunity to take a variety of courses with an international or semi-international focus. I have found that many of the courses I have taken are centered around a central theme, such as the Geography of Consumption; however, they always reach to cover how these themes opperate on a global level. Below is a course that I am currently taking that is helping me to develope a broader perspective of the histories and the current realities of the world and is helping me to become a more culturally aware individual. Also below is a link to a reflective essay I have created that talks about how my perspective on Canada as a global leader has changed because of some of the courses I have taken at TRU and the experience I have gained living abroad.
African Literature (Winter 2015):
I am really enjoying the African Literature course that I am taking this semester because I feel that it has already broadened my cultural persepctive on English literature, which I am majoring in for my degree.
Most of the literature I have studied thus far at TRU far has been written from a British, Canadian, or Amercan perspective which are all cultures that I am quite familiar with. African Literature however, looks at the historical and cultural context of postcolonial literature from Africa in the twentieth century and applies the concepts of appropriation and abrogration which suggest that some African writers use the English language to write their texts because they know that in doing so, their works will reach a wider audience. This is an important concept because many of the texts that we have read so far, including Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, tell a story about the effects of colonization and decolonization which have forever altered Africa's nations and culture. This has forced me to think critically about colonization and decolonization and how a region and its culture is impacted when a foreign invader comes in, introduces a new culture with different material, political, economic, social and belief systems and then leaves, taking with it the capital and ability to enforce and support this new culture. The region then is caught in a liminal space between their old culture and this new culture, which they cannot entirely erase, yet cannot as effectively support due to lack of capital and knowledge about how to support this new system.
Overall, this course is helping me to learn how to think critically about the interactions between different countries in the world and is helping me to understand why certain countries are the way they are today because of the colonization and decolonization of Africa. It is also helping to broaden my persepctive of English literature.