Globalizing Literature Pedagogy: Applying Cosmopolitan Ethical Criticism to the Teaching of Literature

Abstract

With global risks such as terrorism, fundamentalism, and xenophobia permeating our everyday consciousness, there is a pressing need for educators to cultivate in their students a cosmopolitan hospitality toward multiple and marginalized others in the world. Yet, despite growing interest in ethics among literary scholars, theorizations of ethical criticism are predominantly observed among scholars working in university settings rather than at high schools, and major scholarly texts on ethical criticism focus on literary texts that provoke ethical responses rather than on pedagogical strategies. In this essay, Suzanne Choo aims to address these two gaps by arguing that cosmopolitan ethical criticism should be a core feature of literature pedagogy in schools and by describing its potential for developing students as global ethical thinkers. The article situates cosmopolitan ethical criticism by distinguishing it from two other disciplinary practices, aesthetic criticism and didactic ethical criticism. It goes on to describe what cosmopolitan ethical criticism may look like in the classroom by examining pedagogical approaches to teaching literature employed by four high school teachers in Australia, Singapore, and the United States.