Feature

Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,
I would like to thank Sumaiya Ahsan and Sarah Z. H. for their report on “Colonial Contacts and the Caribbean Context” covering the recent seminar organized by BRAC University (Campus, October 18). However, the impression given by the writers that “Commonwealth Literature” is not taught at the University of Dhaka is not correct. I would like to set the record straight.

What I had said at the seminar was that in 1989 the Department of English, University of Dhaka, organized a conference on Commonwealth Literature, hoping that a new course covering South-Asian, Caribbean, and African writers writing in English would shortly be offered. UPL published several of the papers presented at the conference in Other Englishes (1991). But, to our surprise, we found that some senior faculty members in our department did not approve of a course, which included writers in English whose skin colour was not white. Their comment, that these writings did not constitute “great English literature,” discouraged students from studying it for a number of years. Subsequently, however, some students did take it up despite the opposition. Today, the course, under a different title “Postcolonial Literature and Theory” continues to be offered at the University of Dhaka.

Sincerely,

Niaz Zaman
(Supernumerary Professor, Department of English, University of Dhaka and Adviser, Department of English, Independent University, Bangladesh)