Citizenship through Fiction

Abstract

Abstract This study explores students’ responses to identifying two themes of citizenship, identity, and discrimination in literary texts taught to them at undergraduate level as part of their curriculum at a department of English at a government university in Sindh, Pakistan. The current study takes responses of the students who have read five novels as part of their curriculum, through questionnaires, to find out if they identify the two themes in those novels. Further to the questionnaire data, interviews are conducted under the framework of reader-response theory to investigate the factors that have led to students’ choice of certain texts over others. The study finds that students relate to and identify citizenship themes in the texts that are closer to their socio-geographic cultures. The students, however, do not identify themes in those novels that are difficult in structure as understanding the narrative technique takes up most of the effort of the readers. Based on the findings of this study, citizenship educators and teachers of English can recommend more appropriate texts to teach identity and discrimination through literature wherever explicit statutory teaching of citizenship may not be possible.