IN THE WAKE OF 9/11, PEOPLE OF ALL WALKS OF LIFE HAVE STRUGGLED TO
better understand issues such as the clashing of cultures and national identity. University of Toronto at Scarborough (UTSC) English professor Neil ten Kortenaar feels that the study of how nations are “imagined” in world literature can provide insight into these complex topics.

“People do not just locate themselves on a map. They can identify with the map, and see it as a kind of graphic representation of themselves. But it doesn’t define them as a people,” says ten Kortenaar. “In African literature, for instance, the framework of the state is often felt to be a colonial imposition. But it is also the only political forum African peoples have and therefore provides hope. That’s why African writers talk so frequently about the idea of the nation-state.”

With this in mind, ten Kortenaar focuses on how nations are “imagined” in African, Caribbean and South Asian literature through writers such as Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, Chinua Achebe, Edward Brathwaite and Nega Mezlekia. He deals with nation-states and national construction – both of which refer to the interpretation, through literature, of a community united by a common descent, culture or language.

ten Kortenaar finds one of his more recently developed courses at UTSC particularly rewarding. The course looks at the immigrant experience in literature through stories set in Canada, the United States and Britain about people of Jewish, Chinese, Japanese, Indian and West Indian descent.

“Writers who leave their homelands and immigrate to other countries have a unique way of conveying the idea of the nation state. They have known various experiences of home, belonging and exile, and to read them is to have one’s own understanding of self and place challenged.”

Exploring these topics has been especially fruitful at UTSC, given the campus’s extremely diverse student body.

“The students’ commitment and interest is key. They see much of the literature, particularly South Asian, West Indian and African work, as an extension of themselves. Combining the interest of students with an English department where there are several faculty working in world literature, makes this the ideal environment for me,” says ten Kortenaar, who is currently at work on a critical analysis of Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.

And what is the impact of his research and teaching? “There is no simple answer, but I hope my work enables people to develop their own opinions about how these writers define identity, based on space, family and gender, and how these identities involve all of us.” — Sarah Charlton