Teaching Latin American Literature In The Algerian Efl University: Toward A Critical Intercultural And Decolonial Literary Pedagogy
Auteurs : Meslem Amel .
Résumé
This article examines the theoretical and pedagogical significance of teaching Latin American literature in Algerian university EFL programs. In many English departments, literary instruction remains largely shaped by Anglo-American canonical traditions, teacher-centered practices, and assessment models that privilege historical information and textual summary over interpretive, intercultural, and symbolic engagement. This article argues that the inclusion of Latin American literature in the Algerian EFL university offers a valuable opportunity to rethink literary pedagogy beyond canonical centrality and linguistic instrumentalism. Drawing on reception theory, reader-response criticism, intercultural competence, symbolic competence, postcolonial theory, and conceptual metaphor studies, the article proposes a critical framework for approaching culturally distant literary texts in Algerian classrooms. It contends that Latin American literature is pedagogically productive because it stages complex questions of colonial memory, cultural hybridity, authoritarian violence, resistance, spirituality, myth, and historical imagination. For Algerian learners, such literature opens a space of South-to-South interpretation in which cultural difference and postcolonial resonance coexist. Rather than treating cultural distance as an obstacle, the article conceptualizes it as a productive site for interpretive agency, metaphorical literacy, and decolonial awareness. The article concludes by proposing a model of Mediated Transcultural Literary Pedagogy adapted to the Algerian EFL university context.
Mots clés
Latin American literature ; Algerian EFL ; literary pedagogy ; reception theory ; intercultural competence ; postcolonial theory ; decolonial curriculum ; conceptual metaphor
