World literature is a much-debated concept. Literary scholars have attempted to define the concept from the perspectives of circulation, literary values , literary capital , distant reading, translation and others. These efforts focus primarily on the “idealist” version of world literature, or to put it simply, what a world literature should be like in the future. This seminar calls for a “realist” examination of world literature, that is, world literature as it exists and as it was in literary history. If the term is tinted with an unspoken agenda for an expanded canon and a critique of Eurocentrism, the realist version does exactly the same: it explores forgotten connections, minor nodal points, hidden networks, unexpected encounters, excluded expressions and marginalized literary forms due to imperial, anthropocentric, gendered, hegemonic discourses. In the decentered scene of world literature, these connections are weak, decoupled, destroyed, yet the fragments contribute to a rounded image of the literary map of the world—— “the strength of weak ties.” 

To be a realist is not to be a pure empiricist but a pragmatist. The seminar does not stay in collecting, resuscitating, or repeating the literary facts of the past, but invites scholars to look into the “as ifs.” The future anterior of the weak ties speaks to us who live in a world of climate crisis, gendered violence, ugly feelings, and new cold war. Wai Chee Dimock calls for a “non-sovereign theory.” It also means to reflect on the “literariness,” not so much in following the methods of New Criticism as in meditating on new critical modes of reading: affect, postcritique, reparative reading and surface reading. Also, (inter)weaving pays equal attention to the multiple forms of literary criticism in the hope for rejuvenating the steam of critique. 

While the seminar focuses on literary history, we also welcome contributions that consider the textual aspects of visual culture from transnational, transhuman, and interdisciplinary perspectives. We particularly welcome contributions on literary histories of global subalterns, written/performed in unsystematized languages. 

Questions to consider:

How does strong and weak theory contribute to the study of world literature? Is there a transnational agency in the weak ties? 

How does world system theory contribute to a comparative study of early modern novel? 

 How does the negative/ugly/weak feelings in literature contribute to the understanding of race, gender, class, migration, climate crisis and capitalism? 

Are there any other modes of reading/literary criticism in both modern and premodern context that gives the study of literature a fresh look? 

How does the Cold War in the twentieth century shape our understanding of world literature today? 

How are the networks in climate fiction and ecocinema contribute to our understanding of the human-nonhuman relationship in the era of the Anthropocene?