내러티브를 활용한 문화교육

Narrative as a Medium of Teaching Cultural Studies in the English Department

With the fall of English Literature in the past couple of decades, a number of English departments in both United States and Korea have proposed to move on from teaching literature to teaching cultural studies. One of its specific attempts was to incorporate film in a literature class. This approach, which have been widely practiced, however, is limiting in that first, it does not offer a wide range of cultural understanding; and secondly, because the films used in literature classes are primarily adaptations of the novels, using film inevitably brings literature back into focus. In this article, I propose narrative as an effective medium of teaching cultural studies. Narrative, being deeply rooted in our lives, links us to the world by providing form and meaning to our experience and events. It can be found in every place, age and society. The pervasive and ubiquitous aspect of narrative can be used as a tool to break through the boundary of literature and expand into cultural studies. This article provides a case study of teaching narrative—specifically, teaching the basic understanding of narrative and the manifold traits of narrative presented in various cultural texts such as novels, the Bible, film, music, newspaper articles, advertisements, paintings, everyday conversation, etc. and finally having the students apply their knowledge of narrative to their own writing of narrative essays.