ATHENS, Ohio -- More than 20 Ohio high school teachers are coming to Ohio University this weekend to study selected classics of Indian and Chinese literature.

"These texts allow us to enter Indian and Chinese cultures at points these cultures themselves regard as crucial and representative," said event coordinator and Hamilton, Baker and Hostetler Professor of Humanities Dean McWilliams. "Participants in our workshop will be initiated to the profundity and beauty of these literatures in a way that will encourage them to read further and to discuss Indian and Chinese literatures with their students."

Many teachers and scholars now recognize that traditional humanities classes often exclude important contributions of non-Western cultures to our understanding of the human condition. As a consequence, Ohio schools are now required to give greater attention to world literature. The workshop is designed to introduce teachers to two of the oldest and richest civilizations outside of Europe, the civilizations of India and China.

This workshop will focus intensively on selected texts which are regarded as classics within their respective traditions: "The Ramayana," an Indian epic from the fifth century B.C., and poems and stories from China's T'ang and Sung dynasties, roughly the seventh through the thirteenth centuries.

By completing additional work under the direction of one of the instructors, participants may earn three hours of graduate credit in English.

The workshop is sponsored by the Ping Institute for the Teaching of the Humanities with the support of the Ohio Humanities Council and Ohio University's College of Arts and Sciences.