Thinking and Practicing Reconciliation

Book excerpt: Thinking and Practicing Reconciliation asserts that literary representations of conflict offer important insights into processes of resolution and practices of reconciliation, and that it is crucial to bring these debates into the post-secondary classroom. The essays collected here aim to help teachers think deeply about the ways in which we can productively integrate literature on/as reconciliation into our curricula. Until recently, scholarship on teaching and learning in higher education has not been widely accepted as equal to research in other fields. This volume seeks to establish that serious analysis of pedagogical practices is not only a worthy and legitimate academic pursuit, but also that it is crucial to our professional development as researcher-educators. The essays in this volume take seriously both the academic study of literature dealing with the aftermath of gross human-rights violations and the teaching of this literature. The current generation of college-aged students is deeply affected by the proximity of violence in our global world. This collection recognizes educators’ responsibility to enable future generations to analyze conflict – whether local or global – and participate in constructive discourses of resolution. Ultimately, Thinking and Practicing Reconciliation charts a course from theory to practice and offers new perspectives on the very human endeavor of storytelling as a way to address human-rights injustices. In their focus on pedagogical strategies and frameworks, the essays in this volume also demonstrate that, as educators, our engagement with students can indeed produce practices of reconciliation that start in the classroom and move beyond it.