Multicultural Challenges: Teaching Contemporary American Literature for Russian Philological Students

Contemporary American literature is taught in Russian universities for philological students of different majors, but the methodical basis is still poor. The first fundamental research on Multiculturalism in American literature in Russia was made by M. Tlostanova. Her book The Multicultural Debate and American Fiction of the Late 20th Century was published in 2000. Since 14 years have passed, some statements made there are not urgent today. The only manual entitled The US Multicultural Novel was published by E. Butenina in 2013, but it doesn’t cover all the necessary issues of the problem. Consequently, we as professors need a certain basis for teaching contemporary multicultural fiction. Professors face numerous challenges connected with multicultural paradigm as a part of the postmodern perception of the world. For effective teaching, it is necessary to take into consideration the students’ knowledge and background. We chose the method of direct questioning and offered the students several questions about Multiculturalism and Postmodernism, both in the most general and literary meanings. The students have not studied any of contemporary literature, Postmodernism or Multiculturalism, yet and have no academic knowledge about them. Analyzing the answers we saw that, however, the cultural phenomena of Multiculturalism and Postmodernism are familiar to the students, they can hardly explain how they can be referred to literature. Carrying out this research, we believed that it would help us in teaching Multicultural American Literature in the future. Thus, we made important conclusions and gave the recommendations for the professors dealing with the subject.