Dr Anna Bernard is Head of Comparative Literature at Kings College London and and a MULOSIGE Critical Friend. Her first book, Rhetorics of Belonging: Nation, Narration, and Israel/Palestine (2013), examines Palestinian and Israeli writers’ responses to the expectation that their work will ‘narrate’ the nation. Bernard is currently working on a book called International Solidarity and Culture: Nicaragua, South Africa, Palestine, 1975-1990. 

Dr Anna Bernard, Kings College London

International Solidarity and World Literature

Reading List Description:

This reading list 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. It includes some of the poetry anthologies that arose in connection with anti-colonial struggles in Palestine, South Africa, and Nicaragua, and that were circulated through movements of international solidarity, to draw attention to the interlinking of national liberation movements through literary works. These readings thus call into question the assumption that world literary studies necessarily entails the transcendence of national frameworks.

This reading list developed out of a talk given by Dr Anna Bernard 7th December 2016 at SOAS. You can listen to the podcast here.

Download the reading list here: International Solidarity and World Literature