Learning About the Cultural Diversity of the Gender through Literature and

Diversified teaching
Zaneka Stergiani
Ph.D. of philology, Teacher of 1st Lyceum of Chania, Crete, Greece

One of the most effective and appropriate ways to develop cultural awareness
is through literature. Literature can transmit messages that are relevant to students'
lives and that have the power to positively shape their cultural consciousness.
Reforming efforts in the field of literature teaching can revitalize students'
interest in reading the works of national literary traditions. They can also change the
way of teaching, in that text-based teaching isolates the literary event into the closed
circle of aesthetics of production and representation. The traditional practice of
interpretative prejudices and the prefabricated interpretation of the texts gradually
degenerated the literary interests of the young into the reading audience, shifting the
center of interest from the "text-centered" teaching to the teaching adapted to the
participation and collaboration of the reader-student. This requires, however,
corresponding changes in teachers' thinking and attitudes, since by focusing on the
reader's recruitment skills, the professor is obliged to move from the position of the
puzzling narrator, called analysis and editing of texts, to his position a simple
coordinator of literary interpretation (Κάλφας A., 1994, p. 72).
The basic didactic approach of the literary texts, which are included in the
anthologies of the lesson of Modern Greek Literature, is based on their treatment as
texts. The exclusively text-centered examination of literary work, as usually done in
didactic practice, isolates the text from a multitude of parameters that exist in the
external environment and results in an incomplete and ineffective interpretation. An
overall approach to the literary texts requires and presupposes their inclusion in an
interpretive framework that goes beyond the text and includes extra-textual and
inter-textual elements. The linking of the texts by the students to the perceptions and
stereotypes of the era in which they are recorded and their transformation in the
present time can produce another text from them at the level of transcendence
(Genette G., 2001, p. 110-111) . Thus, from this intersection of the two temporal
viewing horizons of the texts, the refining of the reader's visual angle through
yesterday and today, two different interpretational access paths are constructed, one
on the historical axis of synchrony and one on time. The emergence of this
interpretative framework, the link between text, extracurricular and inter-textual
data, and the creation of a multimodal transition from the students can effectively
contribute to the introduction and use of digital tools in the teaching process.
Literature as a social and communicative phenomenon takes place in three
phases: the phases of production, distribution and consumption of the literary
product. The recruitment theory focuses more on its critical interest in the third phase
as it is wholly mentioned in a general shift from the author and work to the text and
the reader. According to one of the main representatives of modern interpretive,
Gadamer, a literary work goes from one cultural context to another and can acquire
notions that its author has not predicted. So understanding a text is the realization of
its possibilities, a kind of transformation, which is achieved by the "merging of the
horizons". Our historical horizon, it merges with the historical horizon of the text
(Πεσκετζή Μ, 1994, p. 65).
The teaching proposal is compatible with the curriculum of the Pedagogical
Institute as it responds to its aim to stimulate pupils' interest in literature and to
enhance their critical ability by comparing parallel texts from different periods of
literature. The teaching of the module is compatible with the objectives of the new
Lyceum's curriculum because it is based on collaborative learning and computer use,
makes the student a co-producer of knowledge by completing and presenting
worksheets, creating digital products and giving roles to students. Various teaching
techniques are used, such as brainstorming, cinema, music, and the study of the
historical, social and political environment in which the heroes of the texts in question
lived in comparison with modern times.

Αpplying a differentiated teaching on "Gender in Literature"

Students are invited to identify through the comparative examination of the
proposed texts how the social perception of the sexes has been shaped over time, to
link these perceptions to the historical and temporal conjuncture of these texts and
to the present day.
During the first phase of the three-hour sessions, students are divided into
groups, exploring their subjects and recording their conclusions in presentation
software. During the second phase, which also lasts three teaching hours, each group
presents the results of their research while the other groups comment and evaluate
the content of each presentation. Finally, their work is published on the school's
website or in a wiki environment.

Themes to study
The first group will study the power of love as recorded in the texts that will
be given to them.
The second group will comment on the social role of women, the stereotypes
that surround them and the relationships between the two sexes in the historical and
social context in which the texts are written.
The third group will examine «Stella Violandi» as a feminist symbol of
Xenopoulos' homonymous novel and theatrical play in the light of the view that it is
the first female protest against patriarchal power in the history of Modern Greek
literature.
The fourth group will comment on the institution of dowry, commercialization
and forms of abuse of women in the historical and social context in which these issues
are written in the texts.

Teaching objectives: Knowledge about literature and the world

• Be aware of the historical nature of texts, the complex interaction of the texts
with the historical context in which they were born and read.
 • Be aware that roles and gender are determined by the historical, social and
cultural context.
• Understand that gender identity is constructed through the use of the word
of various textual items, particularly literature.
• Investigate social stereotypes about gender and literary images of gender
identities.
• Understand that literature can reproduce but also modify or reverse social
stereotypes
• Interpret their remarks based on space, time, ideology of the time and the
writer, and the narrator.
• To compare two or more texts, to identify similarities and differences in the
handling of the subject, having on the axes of observation subfields of the central
theme and as criteria of interpretation the space, the time, the ideology of the time
and the author.
• Detect social stereotypes in any kind of text, as well as control whether the
literary text reproduces or prevents them.
• Link the above comments from texts with works of other arts but also from
their experience of everyday life.

REFERENCES
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Γαρέφη, εκδ. Βιβλιοπωλείον της Εστίας, Αθήνα.
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