For each region, we ask where ideas of what constitutes “good” literature and even literature itself comes from.
This reading list was contributed by Dr Anna Bernard and challenges the choice between nation and transnationalism that has often seemed central to theorizations of world literature, but which has tended to bypass internationalist networks of anti-colonial writers working within discrete national contexts.
Professor Francesca Orsini and Laetitia Zecchini compiled Part II of the Special Issue: The Locations of (World) Literature: Perspectives from Africa and South Asia - Worlding Genres and Refractions. Orsini, Francesca and Letitia Zecchini (eds.) Special Issue: The Locations of (World) Literature: Perspectives from Africa and South Asia - Part II: Worlding Genres
This excerpt is taken from an interview with Professor Kantor and Dr Fatima Burney about Kantor's upcoming book Even If You Gain the World: The Rise of South Asian Literature in Light of Latin America.
Explore MULOSIGE's Special Issue of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Dr Florian Mussgnug (UCL) provides a reading list on World Literature and Planetary Catastrophe.
The conference programme for "Reading Together" in Multilingual Contexts Beyond Monolingual Methodologies, to be held in Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale, Naples 11-12 April 2019.
The Postcolonial Print Cultures Conference was convened at SOAS University of London on the 11-12th January 2019. The methodological conditions behind the conference are to consider the historical moment of the Cold War in ways other than by splitting the world into two spheres.
Laetitia Zecchini discusses the politics of literary translation and publication, particularly surrounding the journal Quest funded by the International Council for Cultural Freedom, itself backed by the CIA. She examined the editor Nissim Ezekiel’s own positions and motivations, noting that for him Quest’s purpose was the create the conditions in which the magazine would provide the freedom to debate, argue, and hold different theoretical positions, creating a space of cultural independence which could in turn realise political independence.
Professor Francesca Orsini (SOAS), examines the production and re-production of short stories in Hindi literary magazines in the 1950s, offering a case study of the Hindi magazine Kahani (Short Story, 1954). She argues that world literature can only be envisioned and produced through local views, rather than under one overarching banner of what constitutes “world literature.” Her talk highlights the medium of the magazine as a site of non-state literary activism that placed readers and young writers at the center, the preference for the story as opposed to the novel, and the multilingual knowledge that animated reading practices, even when publication occurred in a single language (Hindi).
Christie Cheng is currently enrolled in the Masters in Cultural Studies programme at SOAS and is particularly interested in understanding contemporary Southeast Asian cultural production through film and literature. Prior to her MA course, she read English Literature at the National University of Singapore and worked as an Arts Manager for the Literary Arts
