Teaching Native American literature at the university level in Korea presents challenges quite different from those generally encountered when teaching the same material to U.S. college students. In U.S. college classrooms, the first and foremost challenge is getting students to recognize and acknowledge the preconceptions, biases, and stereotypes they have absorbed and normalized from the larger culture; however, in Korea, a lack of knowledge in general about the history, culture, and representations of Native Americans creates a socio-cultural vacuum in which one must try to guide students to understanding of the contextual frameworks and intertextuality of Native American works in order to situate close readings of the texts themselves more meaningfully. How does one teach students to deconstruct stereotypes when they don’t have any knowledge of those stereotypes? How does one teach students to appreciate the engagement of Native American writers with the history of representation in U.S. high and popular culture when they are not aware of either the traditional history or those representations? This paper examines these questions, and suggests the strategy of cultural profiling as a critical and productive approach to the instruction of Native American literature in such a cultural vacuum. Further, this paper suggests that instruction of Native American texts can provide an effective approach to helping students examine larger issues of the canon and the negotiations between categories such as mainstream and marginalized or dominant and emergent.
I. Introduction: The Imperative of Historical and Cultural Literacy
II. Teaching Native American Literature in Korea : “Who is Tonto? And, Who is John Wayne for that Matter?”
III. Critical Approaches to Building Cultural Literacy : Profiling John Wayne and Tonto
IV. Closing: Emergent Practices
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