April 12th - THE TEXTBOOK CONTROVERSY IN CALIFORNIA
A discussion with GAUTAM PREMNATH, an Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley about the recent and ongoing controversy about the contents of textbooks in the US
Why have some shoddily written textbooks prescribed for the California Public School Curriculum sparked heated debates among Indian-American groups in the United States? These debates have pitted academics and area experts against prominent members of the South Asian Community and other groups representing religious interests. Do the textbooks in question denigrate immigrant groups and minority religions in the United States? Are some religious communities being singled out for scrutiny? Is the question really about whether we should be teaching idealized versions or balanced portrayals of history and culture?
To give us some perspective about this recent and still ongoing controversy we talked to Professor GAUTAM PREMNATH of University of California, Berkeley.
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
GAUTAM PREMNATH is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley; he taught previously at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His research interests are in Anglophone postcolonial literature (especially from South Asia and the Caribbean), twentieth-century British literature, and literary and cultural theory. Published articles include pieces on Frantz Fanon, V.S. Naipaul, and new understandings of diaspora and transnationalism. His ongoing book project explores the role of Indian writing in English in circulating powerful new ways of understanding the nation-state. He is a member of a faculty committee that studied the proposed changes to the treatment of ancient India in California school textbooks.
