How Students in Eritrea and Norway Make Sense of Literature

How students in Eritrea and Norway make sense of literature Juliet Munden PhD thesis Faculty of Education OSLO UNIVERSITY June 2010 ii iii Summary This study is about how people make sense of literature. More specifically, it explores how Eritrean literature in English is read by students at two institutions of teacher education, one in Norway and one in Eritrea. It is therefore a comparison of two interpretive communities. One underlying assumption is that culture, especially how national identity is constructed, maintained and challenged, influences the discoursal positions and interpretive strategies available to readers. The students‟ responses are analysed in the light of their national cultures and the social, educational and institutional contexts that they share. A second assumption is that each individual response cannot be completely accounted for by these factors. Readers, then, give meaning to texts, and texts achieve meaning first when they are read. But a text limits the coherent interpretations available to a reader. There are few qualitative comparative studies about how people make sense of literature, and this in itself is a rationale for this study. What comparative studies there are typically organise respondents by nationality, but refer only briefly to their culture and context. An important component of this study is therefore a methodological discussion of what a comparative study of nationally defined groups of readers entails. A further motivation is that there is currently virtually no research in the humanities in Eritrea. The bulk of the material is provided by twelve Eritrean and ten Norwegian students of English, who wrote about three Eritrean literary texts: a fable, a short prose narrative and a play. They also answered a questionnaire about their experience and expectations of literature. To contextualise the literary texts I review the political and aesthetic space of literature in Eritrea, and provide an overview of Eritrean literature in English. Both groups of students reported finding fiction useful because it expanded their horizons and gave them an opportunity to learn about other cultures. Unlike the Norwegian students, most of the students in Eritrea looked to literature first and foremost with the expectation that it should contribute to upholding a moral society and their own moral integrity. The students in Eritrea were fairly consistent in being assertive in response to all three texts. Unlike the students in Norway, they were confident of having found the meaning of the texts they read, using strategies apparently developed through encounters with oral literature, the literature of which they had had most experience prior to their studies. The students in Norway were more likely to point out the individuality of their responses, with the possibility of there being other interpretations. The responses of the two groups were most similar in regard to a previously unfamiliar literary text about young people, where both were concerned with the importance of friendship and the innocence of childhood. They responded most differently to the nationalist play The Other War. The students in Eritrea consistently reproduced a national narrative template which was not available to the students in Norway, whose preferred interpretive strategy was to offer an understanding in terms of the characters‟ interaction, emotions and earlier experiences. This strategy, which they brought to all three texts, did not necessitate an understanding of social and political contexts, nor a moral standpoint. Student texts provided a rich material and they were well-suited to a research situation where transparency was an important consideration. A broader understanding of context than is found in most earlier studies of reading has proved conceptually valuable in accounting for the strategies and discoursal positions of the two interpretive communities. iv Acknowledgments I would like to thank many people who have helped me on my academic way. In Norway my thanks go first and foremost to my supervisors, Rita Hvistendahl at the University of Oslo, and Tom Egan at Hedmark University College. Rita was the one who believed that this project was doable, at a stage when I thought of it as an unlikely fantasy. She gave thorough and thought- provoking comments on each chapter, and consistent support at all stages. Tom I would like to thank for his good colleagueship, his prompt and incisive feedback, and for letting me disturb him with questions three times a day during my first two hectic terms, and stepping back when I insisted on moving off and going my own way. Then I would like to thank „my‟ students, in Norway and in Eritrea, who have shared their response to literature with me, and allowed me to publicise their voices and my understanding of them. I was extraordinarily lucky to be able to work with two such willing and interesting groups of people. Thanks are due to Aud Marit Simensen and Sylvi Hovdenak for their useful feedback at the mid-term review, and to Andreas Lund for his encouraging, thorough and constructive criticism after reading the entire thesis. I am grateful to the Faculty of Education at the University of Oslo for providing such a good educational package for its doctoral students. I am extremely grateful and proud to have been given this chance to complete a Ph.D at Hedmark University College. I have many colleagues to thank. At an early stage of the project I learned from working closely with Anne Thorbjørnsen. Svein Foss helped me use Word better, Kristin Rygg championed an earlier research application and Eva-Marie Syversen unwittingly kick-started my analysis by presenting her own project in an erudite and accessible way. I value that Bjørn Berg invited me to be part of the college‟s collaboration with Eritrea, and that Lise Iversen Kulbrandstad supported my application for research funding. Several members of staff have been of great assistance along the way. I would like to thank Karianne Hagen for patient and good-humoured library and Endnote help, and Joke Dewilde for transcription and both Joke, Anne Skaret and Mari-Ann Igland for helpful conversations. Throughout these four years my colleagues in the English Department – Anne-Line, Tom, Gro, Ian, Jan Espen and Susan – have been a source of merriment and good company. I would like to thank Susan especially for her willingness to get involved in the details of this project, for the healthy rivalry between us and for the academic rigour which she brings to her work. I also thank her, along with Gro, John and Angela, for sitting mid-winter in the sauna anteroom of my house and recording The Other War, and Petros Araya for reading a Tigrinya poem so beautifully. Towards the end I have appreciated the distraction of other projects that Einar Hugo and Gry Handberg have put my way. I am indebted to Bård Uri Jensen for stepping to the electronic rescue time and again when my document became unmanageable. Other people have contributed in ways I could not have done without. Ulla Madsen, Kjetil Tronvoll, Tekeste Negash and Marcus Balslev supplied good advice about working in Eritrea. Hanna and Ingrid tested out the Norwegian questionnaire, and Abdirizak worked with me on the other. Lasse Rom kept me in working order with fortnightly massages. Piirko Riihonen, Elisabeth Reizer and Astrid Myhre worked with commitment on other book projects that I have been involved with. Ilka Willis put together a Masters in Reception at the University of Bristol, v part of which I attended, and she provided the single most surprising cultural encounter when she refused to shake my hand because she felt it was an outmoded macho practice. Nazareth Amlesom has been a prompt linguistic resource whenever I needed her. Jon Smidt gave me good advice and appreciation at a critical phase, as well as the chance to go back to Eritrea to facilitate a writing workshop with him. Thanks also to Christine Matzke and Andrew Smith for making their work available to me. Especial thanks to Hannah Cole, true friend, who proofread the thesis diligently, swiftly and with great sensitivity. Any remaining errors are my responsibility alone. In Eritrea Alemseged Tesfai and Rahel Asghedom have been an inspiration, because of their integrity as writers, their freedom of spirit and their intellectual generosity. I am grateful to many people at the Eritrean Institute of Technology, especially to Ghebrebrhan Ogubazghi who gave me so much of his time and guidance despite his complicated and demanding job as vice- chancellor, and to colleagues Tewolde Tesfamariam and Ali Suleman for their tenacity and efficiency. I have fond memories of graduate assistants Selam, Senait, Carmel and Solomon, who helped and humoured me. I am also indebted to Abraha Assefa at the University Library and Negusse Araya at the British Council. And a heartfelt yekeniele to the staff of Sunshine Hotel, Asmara, for their warm welcome and friendly and efficient service. Thanks to my friends for all the walks and talks, commiseration and laughter. Uncountable thanks to my children, Ellen, Jo, Hanna, Vilde and Emma, for their energy, their adventures, their sanity and their music. Thanks to all the other young people, friends of children and wards, who are part of my life. Thanks to Lars Paalgard for putting me up whenever I needed a bed in Oslo. Thanks to my dear family in Cornwall, for always being just a phone call away, and for being so interested and believing that I know what I am doing. Most of all, thanks to my husband Jørn, who knows better. Thank you for more than three decades of life together, for taking on the whole undertaking of children and home-making whilst I have worked abroad, and for giving me perfume to help me finish this thesis.

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