This course introduces students to the concept and practice of world literature. It seeks to understand world literature not as a collection of national literary canons created in different linguistic and cultural locations, but as a field of knowledge about literature as a cross-cultural and translingual system of production and circulation. We will study literary works that circulate globally as world literature and read a selection of seminal statements on world literature in order to learn about its historical formation, its methodology and scope, and its politics and limitations.
Topics to be discussed include:
- Possible definitions of world literature
- The (im)possibility of a world literary canon
- How literature circulates across borders, including ideas of influence, plagiarism and translation
- Bilingual writing, linguistic power dynamics, and the relationship between major/minor languages
- Intercultural and interlinguistic encounters in world literature
- Global, multinational and delocalized fictions
This course aims to introduce students to a variety of topics in world literature, including concepts of “crossing,” “intersectionality” and “transference.” Students will learn to consider literature as a global phenomenon and cross-cultural product and will develop a multicultural and cross-cultural appreciation of literary motifs and genres. Students will develop an analytical framework and a critical language for their study of works of world literature, and will learn to analyze texts thematically, comparatively and through close reading.
2 hours a week. Course meetings will be a combination of lectures, group discussions, and group work.
Assessment (100% coursework):
- Participation (includes attendance, in-class discussions, and pre-class preparation exercises): 10% for attendance, 10% for active class participation.
- 3 essay exams: 80% (25% for Exam 1, 25% for Exam 2, and 30% for Exam 3).
Students will read a combination of literary and theoretical/critical work. Literary works could include the writing of Edwidge Danticat, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jamaica Kincaid, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ken Liu, Jorge Luis Borges, Frantz Kafka, and Haruki Murakami. Critical works could include the writing of David Damrosch, Debjani Ganguly, Gayatri Spivak, Edward W. Said, Pascale Casanova, and Ankhi Mukherjee.