Across global literary traditions, forms approximating what contemporary readers understand as something singular and unique, “the novel,” appear semi-independently throughout the modern and early modern world, if not earlier as Steven Moore has suggested in his “alternative history” of the novel. Even as questions of singular “beginnings” might presuppose problematic conceptual orientations, the evocativeness of comparative approaches can hardly be denied. Is there something to the human mind that renders the form of the novel a resonant modality for artistic expression, or should a more materialist framework be adopted, where the novel form is understood as a convergence of factors whereby historically situated identity formation finds expression within the limits of the physical page and the exigencies of commercial text production? At the crossroads of past, present, and future, in the liminal space between the real and the imaginary, the novel form since its inception appears deeply in dialogue with questions of meaning, desire, transgression, and expression. Often, dissimilar and unconnected cultures even produce strikingly similar popular genres: the romance and the detective story being two examples. Does the appearance and reappearance of genre as something “generic,” something recognizable, and “translatable,” across cultures call for positing transcendent, “transhistorical” forms of being human, or should one resist this inclination, instead insisting upon a rigorous materialist historicization of everything, up to and including the desire for honor, recognition, and love that protagonists of genre fiction the world over tend to evince? Is the existence of “tropes” coterminous with the novel as a commodity form in the age of mechanical reproduction, or are there other ways to explain recurrent commonalities in literature and in life? How do questions of gender and authorship historically interweave with questions of genre and literary value? This panel invites scholars, researchers, and educators from all over the globe studying any and all literary traditions where the form of “the novel” figures prominently who are interested in providing their own answers to these kinds of longstanding questions lying at the heart of the study of historical literature and genre fiction. Broadly comparative approaches are just as encouraged as regional studies and more particularized research, including papers focusing on specific works and more specific literary phenomena.