Centre for Modern European Literature and Culture

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Lectures and seminars 2018-19

Seminar series 2018-2019

Modern Languages and the Limits of ‘World Literature’

Suspicion of methodological nationalism alongside greater attention to translingual and transcultural writing and a questioning of the category of the postcolonial have led to rising interest in the concept of ‘world literature’. Yet the interaction between modern languages and ‘world literature’ raises as many questions as it answers. The seminar series will explore such questions from a range of perspectives, asking: What does it mean to read and write across borders? What might the concept of ‘world literature’ reveal and conceal about transnational modes of the literary? Do such border crossings look different if seen through the lens of modern languages? What role does difference play in the two fields and how does this relate to the circulation of texts in a global market?

Thursday 11 October 2018
Dr Maeve McCusker, Queen’s University Belfast, ‘Intimate enemies? Representing the béké (White Creole) in contemporary Caribbean fiction’.

Thursday 8 November 2018
Dr Jennifer Rushworth, University College London, ‘Barthes’ Return to Michelet’

Thursday 29 November 2018
Dr Seán Williams, University of Sheffield ‘Barbarism and Literature after Auschwitz. On the Holocaust, Humour, and “Hairdressers” in Fiction’

Thursday 6 December 2018
Professor Elisabeth Herrmann, University of Warwick, ‘Dialogue, Movement, and World Entanglement: Exploring the Validity of the Term ‘World Literature’ for the 21st Century’

Thursday 7 March 2019
Dr Stefan Davies, University of Bristol, ‘Collections in exile: from lost libraries to literary form’

Thursday 21 March 2019
Dr Zoë Roth, University of Durham

Thursday 28 March 2019
Professor Jane Hiddleston, Exeter College, Oxford

Thursday 4 April 2019
Dr Francesco Manzini, Oriel College, Oxford