Time: 3/14/03 8:00 PM - 8:40 PM
Place: Dix Hills Chinese School
Speaker:Dr. Wenxin Li,
Tenure Track Assistent Professor,
Department of English Language
Studies
SUNY/College at Old Westbury
Title: English Studies in the 21st Century
--Literature Background Needed for Our Children to
Become Well-rounded Citizen
The field of English Studies has changed rapidly in
the past several decades: before the 1960s, most
English Departments taught mostly White male authors
and the aim of education was to discover how great
these masters of literature were. Since then, there
has been rapid growth in the literatures of other
groups whose voices have been suppressed. Fo example,
African American, Hispanic American, Asian American,
and women's literatures have flourished, contributing
greatly to the multiethnic culture of the United
States. Contemporary literary theory regards
literature as part of the general cultural production
whose criteria for excellence no longer rely totally
on modernist or postmodernist values. As such,
literature opens up to multiple levels of explorations
and various disciplines, engaging itself more closely
with contemporary life. It is my belief that in the
technology driven 21st Century, literature will play
an even more important role in society.