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2014 Program Overview

The Institute will hold its fourth summer school session from June 23 through July 17, 2014, at City University of Hong Kong. We have prepared an ambitious four-week program that includes two sets of six two-week seminars taught by leading names in world literature today, together with outstanding guest lectures and opportunities for participants to share their work in affinity groups, as well as panels on pedagogy, program development, publishing, and the job market. The program will be supplemented by outings and cultural events to build community beyond the boundaries of the formal sessions. Our participants will have the chance to examine critically the latest challenges of this comprehensive and rapidly developing field, from its theoretical concepts and the history of the discipline to its forms of practice today embedded in a world market. Our seminars will be taught by a mix of distinguished senior faculty and innovative younger scholars of world literature:

  • Dudley Andrew, Yale University
  • David Damrosch, Harvard University
  • Theo D'haen, Catholic University, Leuven
  • Jacob Edmond, University of Otago
  • Eric Hayot, Pennsylvania State University
  • Svend Erik Larsen, Aarhus University
  • Leo Ou-fan Lee, Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • Ronit Ricci, Australian National University
  • Jing Tsu, Yale University
  • Karen Thornber, Harvard University
  • Zhang Longxi, City University of Hong Kong

Our 2014 guest lecturers are Professors Glenn Most (Scuola Normale, Pisa) and Gisèle Sapiro (CNRS and EHESS), two noteworthy figures who have made major contributions to the discipline of comparative literature, challenging and redefining from different perspectives the boundaries and key issues of classical and modern philology and sociology. Special panels composed of IWL faculty and participants will discuss professional issues of pedagogy, building syllabi, designing and redesigning world literature courses and programs, and strategies for moving into the job market and for publishing.

In addition, our participants will have the opportunity to share their current work together within our eight affinity groups organized around broad themes: Sociology of World Literature, World Literature and Production, World Literature and Translation, World Literature and Circulation, Postcolonialism and World Literature, World Cinema and World Literature, Premodern(ity) and World Literature; Politics, Poetics and World Literature. Meeting once or twice each week with their peers, our participants will discuss and refine current dissertation or book projects.

Our participants’ work will benefit from using the resources of the Run Run Shaw Library of the City University of Hong Kong, renowned for its wide-ranging collection including more than a million volumes in print and over 2.4 million volumes of electronic books, as well as other media resources.

To feel the pulse of the city and its surroundings, we will organize casual outings (free or at minimal cost such as museum entrance fees). For art lovers, we will arrange a visit to the Hong Kong Museum of Art, famous for its extended collections ranging from the art of the ancient Chinese world to that of contemporary Hong Kong Art. Of special interest is the Xubaizhai Collection of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy. A visit to the Avenue of Stars, from which you can have a great view of the Victoria Harbor, is a must.