Themes
Alongside genres and periods, another way to analyse world literary exchanges, institutions, and network is through a focus on specific themes. Literary agents around the world and throughout history were often faced with the same political and aesthetic challenges, and a focus on themes allows us to identify how literary geographies took shape around specific sociopolitical discussions and sociopolitical changes. Significant themes, in other words, activated significant geographies, or made other geographies less significant.
Through themes, we can link literature sociopolitical processes, and in particular, for the modern era, to the processes of global political and economic integration. Across our three case studies, authors saw education and pedagogy as a space to intervene in society (Education and Taste), problematised ideas of sexuality, masculinity and femininity (Gender and Queer Studies), wrote about the relationship between humans and nature and more recently engaged with digital technologies (Digital Humanities and Archiving).
Exploring innovations and disruptions created in the digital sphere.
Exploring the gendered formation of the world literature canon.
Examining the ideological state apparatuses, mechanisms of social reproduction, hegemony and counter-hegemonies that influence literary production.