Cultivating critical self-reflection in an international context: The development of an American studies curriculum in Turkey

College Literature, Summer 2003 by Komins, Benton Jay, Nicholls, David G

Many literature professors in the United States strive to foster skills of critical self-reflection in their classrooms. Through dialogue and debate, written work, and exercises in textual analysis, we encourage our students to think independently by questioning common assumptions and by developing their ideas in ways that are responsive to textual evidence, historical context, and their own implication in interpretive acts. In recent years, our collective concern for critical self-reflection has been augmented by a desire to develop an awareness of others, acknowledging the multicultural reality of American society and our influence in the global economy. However, as this economy has become global, so has the academic job market. Some of us have found ourselves bringing our pedagogical training and concern for critical self-reflection to societies where different notions of the self exist. Reciprocally, many foreign institutions seek out American academics to develop curricula in critical thinking, hoping that their students will thereby be more competitive on a global market. Such intercultural situations, we suspect, will proliferate in the coming years. The negotiation between the pedagogy of critical self-reflection and various concepts of the self will inevitably be particular to circumstance. In this essay, we discuss our efforts as recently trained American literature professors to develop an American Studies curriculum in Turkey that is sensitive to multiple conceptions of the self. During our two years at a Turkish university, we learned a great deal about how very different such conceptions can be. This essay is in many ways a case study, yet it raises questions about curriculum design and pedagogical practices that we believe will be of interest to teachers in many cultural contexts.

In our field, American Studies, scholarship has been changing over the past three decades: the prevalent model of American exceptionalism is losing favor, while critiques of national mythology and efforts to place American cultural history into international (or transnational) contexts are becoming increasingly persuasive.1 These changes, as we have suggested, are part of the current efforts by U.S. academics to recognize the multicultural nature of American society and to relate it to global influences and connections. In the American Studies classroom, many of us teach our students to engage U.S. culture critically, to question national ideology, and to find links to other nations. In Turkey, however, students are not immersed in American culture, but selected elements of its popular culture pervade their lives: "America" is both at home and abroad for them. As Marc Chenetier has written of the challenges posed by teaching American Studies abroad, "Over two thirds of my teaching time is dedicated to the breaking down of cliches. Only one third to the reconstruction of some sort of coherent cultural picture. Gathered semiological scraps act as a blinding screen against the possibility of symbolical apprehension" (1993, 350). America's exported products and influence do not necessarily help students understand the complexity of the United States, yet they provide the possibility for students to ask how their reception of the U.S. is motivated by their own cultural concerns. The cultural hegemony of the United States is well known to these students. This does not necessarily lead them to think reflexively about Turkish nationalism and its consequences for others, however. We tried to develop a curriculum that engaged students as participants in the reception and appropriation of American cultural products while also calling on them to reflect on their cultural assumptions. In the following pages, we describe with some specificity the situation of American Studies in Turkey and our former department's struggle to develop an effective curriculum. We hoped to project an international perspective that would empower our students and contribute to the evolution of American Studies. While we find that much of this new program realizes our goals, we were also challenged mightily by conceptions of faculty governance and academic freedom that we ultimately could not abide.

Why American Culture and Literature?

Why do Turkish students enroll in a department of American Culture and Literature? This question points to the complexity of the Turkish university system, for there is no easy answer. Every spring, over a million and a half Turkish students take a national examination for university placement. The exam, administered by the Higher Education Council (Yuksek Ogretim Kurumu, or YOK), is conducted in two sections, similar to the SAT in the United States. Students also have the option to take an additional examination for language ability. Every department in Turkey announces a quota for new students and indicates the minimum score admitted in the previous year. Once students receive their results, they consult a booklet and see where their score will allow them to enter. Students rank their choices, often with the help of commercial number-crunching firms. Eventually the Higher Education Council's computer analyzes all preferences and places students into departments. For departments of American Culture and Literature, YOK designates the language examination as the benchmark for entry-despite the relevance of other aptitudes for interdisciplinary study. Many administrators tell us that the sciences are the most esteemed in Turkish society; students who place highly on the mathematics examination are likely to choose placement in engineering or the sciences or face scorn for "wasting" a good score. Indeed, as one administrator indicated, the students take the optional language examination as a default-when they feel they are unlikely to score well on the other exams. Unlike North American students, Turkish students do not choose a major based on interest and aptitude.They find a fit between their examination scores and available openings. Sadly, we saw students arrive with the knowledge that they have entered a highly stratified academic culture in which their aptitudes and interests are given little social esteem.