What do scholars of comparative literary studies gain when we shift our attention to the document—a bureaucratically inflected term that conjures up the selective processes of “fact-assembly” (Trouillot) by which historical narratives become legible; the “know-show functions” that are embedded across media ecologies (Gitelman); and the “historically specific condition that is possible only when documents (most commonly a visa) are required for lawful admission” across borders (Ngai)? Who selects—that is, authorizes—documents? Where within the genre systems of literary texts do documents and their subgenres belong? What claims are made by documents? What interpretive protocols are necessary when reading documents produced by empire, slavery, war and/or everyday life? What tactics and strategies exist across different states of documentation?  

This seminar especially welcomes presentations that examine the vexed relationship between document and proof—or, in slightly different terms, what Trinh T. Minh-ha has described as the relationship between “documentary” and “reality on the run.” We are interested in the institutional processes by which documents become authorized as well as the claims documents authorize in comparative literary studies.

We invite presentations thinking about documents broadly construed, such as government-issued documents (passports, vital records); authors’ papers (correspondences, drafts, ephemera); and aesthetic genres that index the document concept (documentary poetry, documentary film). Without endorsing a notion of document as a transhistorical category, we welcome presentations that approach documents across historical periods, languages, and theoretical orientations.

Possible approaches or thematics might include:

• documents and archives
• lost, missing, or forgotten documents
• forged or fabricated documents
• documents and textual studies
• collecting, storing, and accessing documents
• state archives and their absences, e.g., censored texts, redacted documents
• documents and immigration
• unauthorized documents, e.g., community archives, family archives
• documents and publishing
• paperless documents, e.g., born-digital documents, documents vis-à-vis oral traditions