 Today, in world literature, we conclude our course of study. We have looked at authors from Europe, Asia, and Africa, and we have studied the cultures in which these authors wrote. What do we take away from such a course? I want to leave you with four thoughts. They are for you to accept or reject, but they deserve, in any case, your attention. First, we must always understand the context in which literature emerges. Let's be both specific and direct. White civilization, from Spanish Inquisition to Nazi Holocaust, has perpetrated horrors that are neither imaginable with or without God. Unfortunately, these horrors also include assumptions of cultural inferiority. Here, for example, is Macaulay's famous Minute of 1835 on Indian Education. I have no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic, but I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanskrit works. I have conversed both here at home with men distinguished by the proficiency in the eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the value of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny a single shelf of good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the Oriental plan of education. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the paltry of bridgements used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or moral philosophy, the relative position of the two nations is nearly the same. Would that this had never been written? Would its consequences not have been put into place? The errors of the past can never be, indeed must never be forgotten lest they occur again. This sense of context is important in that we who live in the West must charge ourselves again and again with attempting to understand the cultures and literature of others. If we do not, we fall into cultural constructs such as those Edward Said described in his books such as Orientalism, The World and the Text, the Critic and Culture and Imperialism. We need to mediate between Western and non-Western, as Said suggests, and we cannot do this without rejecting the notion of us and them. We must be responsible for creating within ourselves an awareness of those cultures different than our own. Second, we must attempt to think in specifics. As any thoughtful reader will notice, the material covered in this course is only a fraction of the story. While it is true that the entire history of any culture is unknowable, it is also possible to know much more than we do know. Unless we're careful, however, we'll begin to speak and write in generalities that will be meaningless. That is, why so often in the course we have suggested that you look carefully at one particular story in palm and related to another work. You'll recall, for example, our suggestion that you look in both Muhammad, Dib and Albert Camus for treatments of the Algerian War. Such connections must and should be made in the study of world literature. Third, we must be committed to writing about literature. Writing restructures consciousness, Walter Ahn has told us, and he is correct. As we write, we rethink our assumptions, recast our views. The more careful we write, the more careful, the more circumspect we become. It is important to share your writing. While we close the door to put our thoughts down, we must open it again to communicate those thoughts to others. The best discussions of literature have never occurred in a vacuum, and so it is important for you to communicate your thoughts about what you are reading. And as a note, it's my hope that some of these authors will compel you to write fiction and poetry and plays. Literature need not be a high thing, it must only be a human one. What a wonderful thing it would be to have students movement in literature in which there was a sharp break away from the kind of literary production most sanctioned by the university, the term paper. What a splendid thing it would be to have students forming communities of writers and establishing community publishing ventures using both traditional print and electronic media. How wonderful it would be if students were charged with energy about expressing their own voices. Fourth, we must try to transfer what we have learned outside the classroom. In my business, this is referred to as lifelong learning, and it is difficult to achieve because students take college life one course at a time. How to get around this dilemma? Read and read and read, and don't stop exploring and enjoying the pleasures of the text. Read widely and wildly and passionately. It is just possible that your own individual liberation may occur within the pages of a book. Read authors from Africa and Asia and Europe and North American, Latin American and Australia. Read broadly and well and forget to ask what is real literature and what is entertainment. Such pie as verities will get you nowhere. Say to yourself, this month I'm going to read another novel by Achebe or another play by August Wolster or other book of poems by Pablo Neruda. Expand and include. In conclusion, it's been my great pleasure to present this series with my colleagues in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at New Jersey Institute of Technology. During the year that it is taken to prepare, present, and edit this two-course series, my colleagues and I have often remarked that indeed presentations aimed at bringing students into the world of literature is why we all major in literary studies in the first place. Our own sense of community has grown. It's grown greater. It's grown stronger. And so it is that we remind ourselves of the pleasures of the study of literature.