Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

I have been studying citizenship from an interdisciplinary perspective. If we define citizenship as the quality of an individual’s response to membership in a community, then I am interested in citizenship because I have been studying individual responses to encounters with difference in a community. However, most of my subjects are fictional. I am an English professor, and this is where the interdisciplinary part enters. I have been analyzing American Literature under the lens of Study Abroad theory, namely, Milton J. Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity, which is applicable to studies in citizenship, for modeling individual relational responses to difference promotes integration, an essential aspect of citizenship within communities becoming increasingly diverse. In this paper, I present a cutting of my sensitivity analysis to illustrate how American Literature advances citizenship. The cutting I have chosen is from one of our earliest American writings, a trickster tale, Ikto Conquers Iya, the Eater. “A cultural standard respecting the supremacy of age, a shared standard, alluded to early in the tale with the younger brother referencing and repeated to establish its significance, prevails as Ikto, the elder, our protagonist, prevails in a conflict thanks to his sensitivity, his acceptance of and integration with his antagonist.” My book, whose working title is American Literature and Civility, is a survey of these model behaviors. My hope is that delegates will have some brilliant ideas as I move deeper into the revision and editing process.