Challenges and channels: English language and literature at a crossroads of cultures

This book deals with the "challenges of teaching the English language and literature" in the Middle East and North Africa region, with a special focus on the Gulf countries. It consists of different articles by an international group of educators and scholars who have first-hand experience in teaching the English language and its literatures in this region. The contributors not only investigate student attitudes, cultural, political and administrative obstacles and challenges, but they also embark upon soul-searching journeys in which they examine their own attitudes, teaching strategies, cultural prejudices and preconceptions, and personal responses to their teaching environments. They also explore, from their own personal experiences, the 'crisis in the humanities', cultural hegemony, ethics in translation, cross-cultural encounters, pedagogical challenges, textuality, and second language acquisition, among other issues and concerns. As such, the book represents both a scholarly investigation and a colorful palette of personal experience and response to human encounters in the classroom.