CFP: Comparative Literature and Globalisation Today

CFP: Comparative Literature and Globalisation Today

Inaugural Seminar of The Northern Comparative Literature Network

Saturday 24 October 2015, Birmingham City University

Globalization, and the various nationalist, religious and cultural resistances to it, might be said to be the paradigm of the present. This has had, and continues to have, wide-ranging ramifications for Comparative Literature. Is the discipline to be subsumed under the broader economic, political and cultural spread of Globalization? Or can it offer points of resistance and critique – alternative ways of understanding the spread of culture and language in the twenty-first century? Comparative Literature could be said to offer an historicizing view of cultural exchanges, movements and clashes which are not primarily economic; but it may also be understood to have contributed to, or be complicit in, the spread of economically-motivated globalization. Perhaps we might think in terms of ‘globalizations’ and ‘comparative literatures’, and view their multiple and multiplying processes, intentions and effects, as still very much in progress and to be accounted for. These issues have been raised in recent scholarship, for instance in Haun Saussy’s edited collection Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization (2006), and this seminar seeks to further develop and widen the scope of the debate.

Contributions are welcome on any aspect of literature and related disciplines, including drama, visual arts and cinema. Topics for papers might include but are not limited to:

Globalization

‘European Literature’

Migration and border crossing

World Literature or Comparative Literature

Colonial/Postcolonial Literature

Literature and the Other

Translating texts, translating cultures

Post-national and transnational literature

Responses to recent critical work in the field, such as Saussy’s collection noted above

The reception of a particular work, author or movement in other language(s) or culture(s)

We welcome abstracts and expressions of interest in the group from established scholars, postgraduates and researchers. Abstracts of 250 words for papers lasting around 20 minutes should be forwarded to Peter Jackson peter.jackson@bcu.ac.uk or Tom Knowlesthomas.knowles@bcu.ac.uk by Thursday 24 September 2015

About The Northern Comparative Literature Network

The NCLN is a group of scholars from the Midlands and the North of the UK who have come together in order to foster research, teaching and collaboration in Comparative Literature, and to promote its importance in the curricula of higher education. The seminar is a space for those active in the field to share their work and ideas, but also a chance for those engaged in other disciplines to think about their own field in international, inter-linguistic and inter-cultural terms.

Please do to get in touch if you are interested in joining NCLN or wish to attend a seminar.