Applying Geocritical Theory to the Study Abroad Learning Experience

Abstract

In the face of the almost four-fold increase in study abroad participation over the past seven years, it is imperative to ask some pressing questions regarding how to optimize the study abroad experience, ensuring that students move beyond a superficially touristic mode of uninformed impressionistic response to their host locale into a more sophisticated engagement with its complex social, political, historical, and cultural particularities. In this spirit, this article presents an essay, which will use geocritical theory to inquire into the pedagogical uses and larger social functioning of texts that represent the places to which study abroad students flock in search of knowledge and experience. In doing so, it will ask what are some of the ways texts and the places they represent relate to each other, how do texts set up horizons of expectations regarding places to be encountered, and, as a function of these, how might these texts best be put to use in a study abroad educational context?

A Systematic Review and Research Agenda of Portrayal of Cities in Select Indian English Fiction: Neti Neti: Not This, Not This by Anjum Hasan, The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee and Chennaivaasi by T. S. Tirumurti

“…Asking them to read the writings of local writers would also help them get to know the new place better. Students who migrate to foreign lands for studies are able to acquire a nuanced sense of place through planned efforts [21]. .…”

“…4. 21 The city can emancipate a woman in ways that a rural setting may not; it is a space that enables her to confront her needs and express them as a woman. The city allows for the expression of female identity to be formed, developed and rediscovered, with its complex systems and layers of functioning.…”