 Fulbright
Scholar Stories |
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Mathias Mbuh, Lecturer, Department of English, University
of Yaounde I, Yaounde, Cameroon
Lecturing: History (non-U.S.), World and Minority
Literature
Host: Trident Technical College, S.C.
Scholar in Residence
January-December 2000
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African scholars, often used to intense workloads, enormous class
sizes, a lack of teaching materials and resources for research
and an academic bureaucracy too overburdened to worry about faculty
satisfaction, the experience of lecturing in the United States
can transform their perception of what it means to teach. Such
was the experience of Mathias Mbuh, an expert in minority literature
from Cameroon's University of Yaounde I.
Mbuh spent the spring 2000 semester teaching courses on world
and minority literature at Trident Technical College in Charleston,
S.C. In both offerings, Mbuh highlighted not only regional and
genre diversity, but also the ways in which literary movements
and cultural traditions interact. As the class sizes were small
in comparison to those he teaches in Cameroon, he had the opportunity
to develop strong relationships with individual students. "One
of the enduring lessons I will leave the college with," Mbuh
said, "is a new conception of the teacher-student relationship.
. . . I suddenly found myself in an environment where the student
was supposed to be first and foremost a friend to be understood
and directed."
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