# July 17-27 ## expand\_more ## **David Damrosch, "Globalization and Its Discontents"** This seminar will trace the problematic of global world literature over the course of the modern period, looking at the rise of capitalist markets, the shifting of centers, peripheries, and semi-peripheries, and the interplay of empires and broader global frameworks in the age of (semi-)global English. Works by Molière, Chikamatsu Monzaemon, James Joyce, Higuchi Ichiyo, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Clarice Lispector, Eileen Chang, Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Ang Lee will be explored in light of debates over world literature and globalization from Goethe and Auerbach to contemporary scholars including Pascale Casanova, Franco Moretti, Emily Apter, Shu-mei Shih, and the Warwick Research Collective. **David Damrosch** is Director of the Institute for World Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. His books include *What Is World Literature?* (2003), *The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh* (2007), *How to Read World Literature* (2d. ed. 2017), and *Comparing the Literatures: Literary Studies in a Global Age* (2020)*.* He is the general editor of the six-volume Longman anthologies of British Literature and of World Literature, editor of *World Literature in Theory* (2014), and co-editor of *The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature*, and of two collections in Chinese, *Theories of World* *Literature* (2013) and *New Directions in Comparative Literature* (2010). ## **Proto-globalization** ## **Session 1: World Literature(s)/Weltliteratur(en)** - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from Conversations with Eckermann - Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett, “World-literature” - Erich Auerbach, “Philology of World Literature” - Selections from Apuleius, Hafiz, and Goethe ## **Session 2: Comparing the Incomparable** - Marcel Detienne, “Constructing Comparables” - Sheldon Pollock, "Comparison without Hegemony" - Molière, from The Bourgeois Gentilhomme - Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Love Suicides at Amijima ## **Shifting Centers:** ## **Session 3: Peripheries and Semi-peripheries** - Franco Moretti, “Conjectures on World Literature” and “More Conjectures” - Critiques of Moretti by the Warwick Research Collective - Higuchi Ichiyo, “Separate Ways” - James Joyce, “The Sisters,” “Eveline” - Clarice Lispector, “Happy Birthday” ## **Session 4: Provincializing Europe** - Pascale Casanova, “Literature, Nation, and Politics” - Oswald de Andrade, “The Anthropophagist Manifesto” - Jorge Luis Borges, “The Argentine Writer and Tradition,” “Pierre Menard” - Julio Cortázar, “Axolotl” - Clarice Lispector, “The Fifth Story” ## **Translation in the Global Market** ## **Session 5: The Uneven Playing Field** - Georg Brandes, “World Literature” - Jorge Luis Borges, “The Translators of the 1001 Nights” - Emily Apter, “Untranslatables: A World System” - Selections from translations of The Thousand and One Nights ## **Session 6: Making a World Author** - Stephen Owen, “What Is World Poetry?”; “Stepping Forward and Back” - Selections from Wu Cheng’en, Bei Dao, and Mo Yan ## **Born Global** ## **Session 7: The Politics of Global English** - Gillian Lane-Mercer, “Global and Local Languages” - Rebecca Walkowitz, from Born Translated - Salman Rushdie, “Chekov and Zulu” - Jhumpa Lahiri, “The Third and Final Continent” - Jamyang Norbu, from The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes ## **Session 8: From Shanghai to Hollywood** - Eileen Chang, “Lust, Caution” - Ang Lee, Lust, Caution - Leo Ou-fan Lee, “Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution and Its Reception” \------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ## **Emily Greenwood****, "Fugitive Black Classics in World Literature"** This seminar will examine uses of and responses to ancient Greek and Roman classics in Black national, transnational, and diasporic literature and art from Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. We will consider the relationship between the formation of canons of African and Black literature and fugitive anti-colonial, post-colonial, and anti-racist practices of signifying on Greek and Roman classics in these literatures. In the interests of coherence, the seminar is structured around six archetypes from ancient Greek mythology that recur across African and Black diasporic literatures and arts: Prometheus, Oedipus, Antigone, Demeter and Persephone, and Oedipus. In addition to studying the selected works in conversation with each other, we will also consider the difference that Black responses to and uses of ancient Greek and Roman Classics make to changing discourses of canon(s), classics and classicism, and world literature. **Emily Greenwood** is Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, ![Emily Greenwood](/sites/g/files/omnuum6391/files/iwl/files/greenwood_headshot.jpg) having previously taught at St Andrews University, Yale, and Princeton. She specializes in ancient Greek literature and the plural histories of use that constitute the classical tradition of Greece and Rome, with a special interest in Africa and the Black diaspora. At the heart of her research are the questions: by whom and for whom were the so-called classics of ancient Greece and Rome written, by whom and for whom have they been interpreted and in light of which histories? Her books include *Thucydides and the Shaping of History* (2006), and *Afro-Greeks: Dialogues Between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the Twentieth Century* (2010). She has recently guest-edited a two-volume special issues of the *American Journal of Philology* entitled *Diversifying Classical Philology* (*AJP* 143.2, Summer 2022). Her current book projects are *The Recovery of Loss: Ancient Greece and American Erasures*, and *Black Classicisms and the Expansion of the Western Classical Tradition*. ### **Session 1: Introduction: Create Dangerously? From Writing the Classics Black in Late Eighteenth Century Boston to Edwidge Danticat’s Manifesto for the Immigrant Artist** - Phillis Wheatley*, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral*, “To Maecenas”, “To the University of Cambridge, New England”, “Niobe in Distress for her children slain by Apollo, from Ovid’s *Metamorphoses* VI and from a view of the painting of Mr. Richard Wilson”. - John Levi Barnard, “Phillis Wheatley and the Affairs of State”. - Edwidge Danticat, “Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work”. ### **Session 2: Prometheus** - Frederick Douglass, “The Freedmen’s Monument to Abraham Lincoln”. - Anna Julia Cooper, “Remarks on the Acceptance of a Doctoral Degree from the Sorbonne”. - Jared Hickman “Byronic Abolitionism”. ### **Session 3: Oedipus** - Ola Rotimi, *The Gods are Not to Blame*. - Barbara Goff and Michael Simpson “Back to the Motherland: Ola Rotimi’s *The Gods are Not to Blame*”. ### **Session 4: Antigone** - Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona, *The Island.* - Athol Fugard, “*Antigone* in Africa”. - Grant Parker, “The Azanian Muse: Classicism in Unexpected Places”. ### **Session 5: Demeter & Persephone** - The *Homeric Hymn to Demeter*. - Gwendolyn Brooks, *In the Mecca*. - Rita Dove, *Mother Love*. - Saidiya Hartman, *Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route*. ### **Session 6: Odysseus I** - Aimé Césaire, *Journal of a Homecoming*. - Michelle Zerba, “Césaire: The Colonial Antilles and a Map of One’s Own Spilled Blood”. - Josué Guébo, *Think of Lampedusa*. - Imane Terhmina, “Black Odysseus: Mediterranean ‘Blues’ and Clandestine Migration in Josué Guébo’s *Songe à Lampedusa*”. ### **Session 7: Odysseus II** - Seven Collages from Romare Bearden’s “Odyssey Suite”. \[“The Fall of Troy”; “The Land of the Lotus Eaters”; “The Cyclops”; “Odysseus Leaves Circe”; “The Sirens’ Song”; “Poseidon, the Sea God – Enemy of Odysseus”; “The Sea Nymph”.\] - Farah Jasmine Griffin, “Circe in Black: Homer, Toni Morrison, Romare Bearden”. - Ralph Ellison, “The Art of Romare Bearden”. - Elizabeth Alexander, “The Genius of Romare Bearden”. - Romare Bearden, “The Negro Artist and Modern Art”. ### **Session 8: Pedagogy of coloniality** - C. L. R. James, *Beyond a Boundary*. - Dionne Brand, *An Autobiography of the Autobiography of Reading*. - Selected poems depicting Classics in the classroom in the Anglophone Caribbean (Olive Senior “Colonial Girls School” (1985); Derek Walcott “A Latin Primer” (1987); Howard Fergus “At Grammar School” (1998)). \----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## **B. Venkat Mani, "Tales of Unsettlement: Refugees and / in World Literature"** We are living, once again, in times of forced migrations and refuge. For the year 2020, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimated that there were 82.4 million forcibly displaced people around the world—the highest number on record since the two World Wars. The proliferation of refugees and stateless people in the world has coincided with the resurgence of ethno-religious nationalism and divisive rhetoric centered on securing and insulating borders. The closing of international borders and the massive restrictions on visa processes amid the global coronavirus pandemic, all under the guise of protecting national public health and safety, is just the latest indication of the uncertain journey ahead for migrants and refugees around the world. At this conflict-ridden and volatile moment at the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century, in this seminar we will engage with a variety of texts and historical contexts in the twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries that led to the creation of exiles, migrants, and refugees. How do historical moments of forced migration and refuge impact our understanding of national and world literatures? How does an engagement with exilic and refugee figures broaden and deepen our comprehension of world literature? How does reading history and literature together enrich our understanding of aesthetic and political representations? These questions will serve as catalysts for our seminar, as we explore the position and ambition of the novel as part of refugee narratives. The aim of the seminar is threefold. First, by engaging with conceptual histories of the terms “exiles,” “migrants,” and “refugees,” we will develop a differentiated understanding of “willful” and “forced” migrations. Second, by juxtaposing German/European case studies with those from Asia and Africa, we will try to cultivate a global framework of literary and historical comparison. And third, by locating narratives of exiles, migrants, and refugees at the intersection of “world literature” and “global history”—two terms that have gained traction in the twenty-first century scholarship—we will locate fault lines of race, ethnicity, sexuality, language, and religion in histories of colonialism and globalization. **B. Venkat Mani** is Professor of German and World Literature, past director of Center for South Asia, and currently the Race, Ethnicity and Indigeneity Senior Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ![Venkat](/sites/g/files/omnuum6391/files/iwl/files/venkat.png) He is the author or editor of seven works including *Cosmopolitical Claims: Turkish German Literatures from Nadolny to Pamuk* (University of Iowa Press, 2007) and *Recoding World Literature: Libraries, Print Culture, and Germany’s Pact with Books* (Fordham UP, 2017; winner of GSA's DAAD Prize and MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Best Book in German Studies 2018). He's co-editor, *A Companion to World Literature* (Wiley Blackwell 2020), and editor, most recently for the *German Quarterly* Forum “World Literature: Against Isolationist Readings” (Fall 2021). His public humanities essays can be read in in *Inside Higher Ed*, *Telos*, *The Wire* (Hindi), *The Hindustan Times,* and *The Indian Express*. He has received fellowships and grants from the Social Science Research Council; the Andrew Mellon Foundation’s Sawyer Seminar Grant; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Experienced Researcher Fellowship; the US Department of Education’s Title VI Grant for Center for South Asia; and a DAAD grant for UW’s Center for German and European Studies, and a Residential fellowship from the Zentrum für Literatur und Kulturforschung Berlin. ## **Session 1: Exiles, Migrants, and Refugees: Conceptual Histories** - Arendt, Hannah. “We Refugees.” *The Jewish Writings*. - Said, Edward W. “Reflections on Exile.” *Reflections on Exile and Other Essays*. - Nguyen, “On Being a Refugee, An American—and a Human Being.” In *The Refugees*. - Optional: Guha, Ranajit. “The Migrant’s Time.” *Postcolonial Studies*. ## **Session 2: World Literature, Global History: Critical Approaches** - Damrosch, David. “Worlds.” *Comparing the Literatures: Literary Studies in a Global Age*. - Conrad, Sebastian. “Introduction” to *What Is Global History?*. - Optional: Mazlish, Bruce. “Comparing Global History to World History.” *The Journal of Interdisciplinary History*. - Optional: Mani, B. Venkat. “Introduction: Recoding World Literature.” *Recoding World Literature: Libraries, Print Culture, and Germany’s Pact with Books*. - Optional: Frank Johnson, Alison. “Europe without Borders: Environmental and Global History in a World after Continents.” ## **Session 3: Migration, Forced Migration, and Refugee Studies: Critical Approaches** - Chimni, B. S. “The Birth of a ‘Discipline’: From Refugee to Forced Migration Studies.” - Gatrell, Peter. “Refugees--What’s Wrong with History?” - Nguyen, Vinh. “Refugeetude: When Does a Refugee Stop Being a Refugee?” ## **Session 4: Walls, Borders, Frontiers: Critical Approaches** - Friedman, Susan Stanford. “Migrations, Diasporas, and Borders.” *Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures*. - Loyd, Jenna M. and Alison Mountz. “Introduction.” *Boats, Borders, and Bases: Race, the Cold War, and the Rise of Migration Detention in the United States*. - Optional: Anzaldúa, Gloria E. “The Homeland, Aztlán.” *Borderlands: The New Mestiza = La Frontera*. ## **Session 5: Colonial Legacies I: Politics of Borderlines** - Arudapragasam, Anuk. *A Passage North*. - Butalia, Urvashi. “Return.” *The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India*. - Optional: Gatrell, Peter. “Midnight’s Refugees?”. *The Making of the Modern Refugee*. ## **Session 6:** **The Holocaust: Remembered from Elsewhere** - Desai, Anita. *Baumgartner’s Bombay*. - Seghers, Anna. *Transit*. Translated by Margot Bettauer Dumbo. - Optional: Rothberg, Michael. “Introduction.” *Multidirectional Memory*. ## **Session 7: From the Cold War to the War on Terror: Afghanistan and Iraq** - Rahimi, Atiq. *Earth and Ashes*. - Blasim, Hassan. “The Nightmares of Carlos Feuntes.” ## **Session 8:** **Colonial Legacies II: Unattended Histories** - Erepenbeck, Jenny. *Go, Went, Gone*. T - Gurnah, Abdulrazak. *Afterlives*. \-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## **Stephen Owen****, "The Problem of the Premodern"** “World literature” makes universal claims, but serious issues divide a roughly defined “modern” literature, in which some basic premises are shared across national or cultural inflections, and premodern literature, where families of literatures have no common historical ground or very little common historical ground. We will begin with some of the standard pedagogic models (“great books,” shared “themes,” a queue of specialists), considering their virtues and failings. Then, for most of the seminar, we will consider alternative approaches, both in terms of their intellectual integrity and the practicality of their pedagogy. **Stephen Owen** is a sinologist specializing in premodern literature, lyric poetry, and comparative poetics. ![Stephen Owen](/sites/g/files/omnuum6391/files/styles/hwp_1_1__960x960_scale/public/iwl/files/stephen_owen.jpg?itok=0XrqCFE6) Much of his work has focused on the middle period of Chinese literature (200-1200), however, he has also written on literature of the early period and the Qing. Owen has written or edited dozens of books, articles, and anthologies in the field of Chinese literature, especially Chinese poetry, including *An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911* (Norton, 1996); *The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry* (Harvard Asia Center, 2006); *and The Late Tang: Chinese Poetry of the Mid-Ninth Century (827-860)* (Harvard Asia Center, 2006). Owen has completed the translation of the complete poetry of Du Fu, which has been published as the inaugural volumes of the *Library of Chinese Humanities* series, featuring Chinese literature in translation. Owen earned a B.A. (1968) and a Ph.D. (1972) in Chinese Language from Yale University. He taught there from 1972 to 1982, before coming to Harvard. In acknowledgment of his groundbreaking work that crosses the boundaries of multiple disciplines, Owen was awarded the James Bryant Conant University Professorship in 1997. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, held a Guggenheim Fellowship, and received a Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award (2006) among many other awards and honors. ### **Session 1: TOC of the Longman second edition and Norton fourth edition anthologies (premodern volumes)** ### **Session 2: Trnslation/ Transmission** - Gilgamesh, Longman A. - Somadeva, *Tales from the Kathāsaitsāgara*. Translated by Arsha Sattar. - Cervantes, *Don Quixote*. Longman C. - Cao Xueqin, *Story of the Stone*. Translated by David Hawkes. Volume 1, Chapter 1. - A.J. Arberry, *Omar Khayyám: A New Version Based upon Recent Discoveries* - Makoto Ueda, *Bashō and His Interpreters*. - George L Hart, *Poets of the Tamil Anthologies: Ancient Poems of Love and War*. ### **Session 3: Gilgamesh** - Longman A, 56-97. ### **Session 4: Telling Stories** - Jeffry Gantz, transl. and ed. *Early Irish Myths and Sagas*, “The Wooing of Étaín”. - *The Sagas of the Icelanders*, “The Tale of Thorstein Staff-Struck". - David Staines, transl. *The Complete Romances of Chrétien de Troyes*, “The Knight with the Lion”. ### **Session 5: An Ethnic Verncular: Tamil Poetry** - Longman A, 931-937. - Pollock, Sheldon, ed. *Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia*, “Three Moments in the Genealogy of Tamil Literary Culture.” - *The Study of Stolen Love: A Translation of Kaḷliviyal eṉṟa Iraiyaṉār Akappolul with Commentary by Nakkīraṉār*. ### **Session 6: What to do with the Greeks: The posthumous life of ancestors** - *The Bacchae by Euripides*: commentary Geoffrey S. Kirk. Englewood Cliffs. ### **Session 7: A Woman’s Epic: The Tale of Genji** - *Genji*, Longman B 146-92 (Edward Seidensticker translation). - Murasaki Shikibu, *The Tale of Genji*. transl. Royall Tyler. Chapter 5. ### **Session 8: Complications of Value** - “Patient Griselda,” *Decameron* Longman C. \-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## **Jessica Pressman, "Global Digital Literature: Histories, Theories, Methods"** We live in a digital world, and much (most) of our reading, writing, and literary practices are born-digital or otherwise permeated by computational practices. What are the implications of digitality on literature and literary study? How does the World Wide Web, that global network of computers and culture, inform and shape our understanding of textuality and our study of texts and world literature? This seminar approaches world literature from a digital perspective, providing an introduction to born-digital literature (also called electronic literature or e-lit)— literature created on the computer and read on the computer, wherein computational practices are part of literary poetics— from the 1990s to today. We explore a wide range of genres in a historical lineage— including hypertext, interactive fiction, kinetic poetry, augmented reality, VR, and more—concurrent with central theories and critical methods that emerged in conjunction with the literary works. We pursue a global focus on digital literary production, distribution, and reception with attention to material networks and network theory. Our goal is to explore the impacts of digitality on literature and literary study and begin to appreciate the larger ramifications for our own research, teaching, and living. Readings include e-lit work by Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries, J.R. Carpenter, María Mencía, Tender Claws, and a wide range from across the *Electronic Literature Collections* (Volumes 1-4). Theoretical readings include work by N. Katherine Hayles, Lev Manovich, Rita Raley, Mark C. Marino, Patrick Jagoda, Nicole Starosielski, and more. **Jessica Pressman** is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University, ![Jessica Pressman 2](/sites/g/files/omnuum6391/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/iwl/files/bio_photo_2018_cropped_bw.jpg?itok=1ev4o3W7) where she co-founded SDSU’s Digital Humanities Initiative ([dh.sdsh.edu](https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__dh.sdsu.edu_&d=DwMFaQ&c=WO-RGvefibhHBZq3fL85hQ&r=OOsfXaIMTkeiZHPlI1rffgQJwhTRJtaCn3eelPZ9Wdk&m=ceqAmaV13iB3cl5T0WGtYEwHXrW_zFkb5Xt0gCJVkFYhfO9KoC_fgvrzYDfqnbmq&s=hNWsToby-9gzUlnbMVF_7zC-FQ7eW3Y5gXvIO3jC_h8&e=)). She studies and teaches 20th and 21st-century experimental literature, digital literature, book history, and media studies. Pressman is the author of [*Bookishness: Loving Books in a Digital Age*](https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__cup.columbia.edu_book_bookishness_9780231195133&d=DwMFaQ&c=WO-RGvefibhHBZq3fL85hQ&r=OOsfXaIMTkeiZHPlI1rffgQJwhTRJtaCn3eelPZ9Wdk&m=ceqAmaV13iB3cl5T0WGtYEwHXrW_zFkb5Xt0gCJVkFYhfO9KoC_fgvrzYDfqnbmq&s=0M-m7vJpAzSaOh-7UmibdbBgq5lOqEnssqvfDbfBT6c&e=) (Columbia University Press, 2020), [*Digital Modernism: Making It New in New Media*](https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__global.oup.com_academic_product_digital-2Dmodernism-2D9780199937103-3Fcc-3Dus-26lang-3Den-26&d=DwMFaQ&c=WO-RGvefibhHBZq3fL85hQ&r=OOsfXaIMTkeiZHPlI1rffgQJwhTRJtaCn3eelPZ9Wdk&m=ceqAmaV13iB3cl5T0WGtYEwHXrW_zFkb5Xt0gCJVkFYhfO9KoC_fgvrzYDfqnbmq&s=UOPd3rHkkuf-5DRMEsCXPWSvEdcUzf71rR8QSQbgLbU&e=) (Oxford University Press, 2014), co-author, with Mark C. Marino and Jeremy Douglass, of [*Reading Project: A Collaborative Analysis of William Poundstone’s Project for Tachistoscope {Bottomless Pit}*](https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.uipress.uiowa.edu_books_9781609383459_reading-2Dproject&d=DwMFaQ&c=WO-RGvefibhHBZq3fL85hQ&r=OOsfXaIMTkeiZHPlI1rffgQJwhTRJtaCn3eelPZ9Wdk&m=ceqAmaV13iB3cl5T0WGtYEwHXrW_zFkb5Xt0gCJVkFYhfO9KoC_fgvrzYDfqnbmq&s=jBqV1IuXD5IGY0bV5yrTlz_MrfupaiAzVTCypRTepXo&e=) (University of Iowa Press, 2015). She co-edited two volumes: [*Comparative Textual Media: Transforming the Humanities in the Postprint Era*](https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.upress.umn.edu_book-2Ddivision_books_comparative-2Dtextual-2Dmedia&d=DwMFaQ&c=WO-RGvefibhHBZq3fL85hQ&r=OOsfXaIMTkeiZHPlI1rffgQJwhTRJtaCn3eelPZ9Wdk&m=ceqAmaV13iB3cl5T0WGtYEwHXrW_zFkb5Xt0gCJVkFYhfO9KoC_fgvrzYDfqnbmq&s=L1MjFqRvwZFI3qSxu0_Vf8UtU6KZm8kfZAu5F_DlhIE&e=) (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) with N. Katherine Hayles and [*Book Presence in a Digital Age*](https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.bloomsbury.com_us_book-2Dpresence-2Din-2Da-2Ddigital-2Dage-2D9781501321207_&d=DwMFaQ&c=WO-RGvefibhHBZq3fL85hQ&r=OOsfXaIMTkeiZHPlI1rffgQJwhTRJtaCn3eelPZ9Wdk&m=ceqAmaV13iB3cl5T0WGtYEwHXrW_zFkb5Xt0gCJVkFYhfO9KoC_fgvrzYDfqnbmq&s=LpA8OswAtCHvdi8uceImkQG2scoa1YKwDuS2TZUE18w&e=) (Bloomsbury Press, 2018) with Kiene Brillenburg Wurth and Kári Driscoll. Her full CV can be found at [www.jessicapressman.com.](https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.jessicapressman.com_&d=DwMFaQ&c=WO-RGvefibhHBZq3fL85hQ&r=OOsfXaIMTkeiZHPlI1rffgQJwhTRJtaCn3eelPZ9Wdk&m=ceqAmaV13iB3cl5T0WGtYEwHXrW_zFkb5Xt0gCJVkFYhfO9KoC_fgvrzYDfqnbmq&s=dqiJoXjYf-arvloAhssY4MDktGdEtw_7ZYG2ASJvW-k&e=) ### **READING LIST** ***\*Note: See our seminar website for access to all digital readings\*\**** [**https://jessicapressman.com/IWL\_2023**](https://jessicapressman.com/IWL_2023) ### **Session 1: Introduction to E-Lit as Comp Lit & DH** - Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries[, *Dakota*](https://yhchang.com/) (2002) \[online video of Flash file\] & [*Nippon*](https://yhchang.com/) (2003) \[online video of Flash file\] - Jessica Pressman, “Electronic Literature as Comparative Literature” - Roopika Risam, “The Stakes of Postcolonial Digital Humanities” - Additional Text: Jessica Pressman, “The Strategy of Digital Modernism: Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries’ *Dakota*” ### **Session 2: What is Electronic Literature? What is New Media?** - Tender Claws, [*Pry*](https://tenderclaws.com/pry) (2015) \[app for iPad or phone\] - William Poundstone, [*Project for Tachistoscope {Bottomless Pit}*](http://williampoundstone.net/Tachistoscope/Tachistoscope.html) (2005) \[online video of Flash file\] - N. Katherine Hayles, “[Electronic Literature: What is it](https://eliterature.org/pad/elp.html)?” - Lev Manovich, “What is New Media?” - Henry Jenkins, “Introduction: ‘Worship at the Altar of Convergence’: A New Paradigm for Understanding Media Change” ### **Session 3: Early Hypertext and Media-Specific Analysis** - Deena Larsen, [*Disappearing Rain*](http://w.deenalarsen.net/rain/index.html) (2000) \[online hypertext\] - J.R. Carpenter, “[Entre Ville](https://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/carpenter_entreville/index.html)” (2006) \[online hypertext\] - Robert Coover “[The End of Books](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/27/specials/coover-end.html)” - N. Katherine Hayles, “Print Is Flat, Code Is Deep: The Importance of Media Specific Analysis” ### **Session 4: Translation, Codework, and Critical Code Studies** - Brian Kim Stefans, “[The Dreamlife of Letters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSnq0nMAQQc)” (2000) \[online video of Flash file\] - John Cayley, “[Translation](https://programmatology.shadoof.net/?translation)” (2004) \[online\] - Mez, *\_*[*cross.ova.ing \]\[4rm.blog.2.log*\]\[\_](https://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/mez_cross-ove/Codewurk%20%5Bactual%20work%5D.txt) I (2003) \[online\] - Winne Soon, [*Vocable Code* ](https://dobbeltdagger.net/VocableCode/)(2017) \[online\] - Rita Raley, “Another Kind of Global English” - Mark C. Marino, “Critical Code Studies: A Manifesto” - Additional Criticism: Rita Raley, “Interferences: \[Net.Writing\] and the Practice of Codework” ### **Session 5: Interactive Fiction, Media Archaeology and Platform Studies** - Emily Short, [*Galatea*](https://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/emrhyy7pp0c8bjkjeuhs-g/galatea) (2000) \[online\] - Michael Lutz, “[My Father’s Long, Long Legs](https://ztul.itch.io/mflll)” (2013) \[online\] - Matthew Kirschenbaum, “’Every Contact Leaves a Trace’: Storage, Inscription, and Computer Forensics” - Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, **“Introduction: An Archaeology of Media Archaeology”** - Montfort, Nick and Ian Bogost. “Platform Studies” book series description. Online at ### **Session 6: Web 2.0, Locative/Ambient Literature, and Network Theory** - Jason Nelson, “[Surrounded by Boxes of Dangerous Creatures"](https://elo.conifer.rhizome.org/_embed_noborder/elo/jason-nelson-collection/list/dangerous/b2/20160108140000%24br:chrome:76/http:/www.secrettechnology.com/jnelson_landing/dangerous/index.html) (2011) \[online\] - Duncan Speakman et. al., [*It Must have been Dark by Then*](https://research.ambientlit.com/index.php/it-must-have-been-dark-by-then/) (2017) \[book and app\] - Patrick Jagoda, “Network Aesthetics” - Nicole Starosleski, “Against Flow” ### **Session 7: Generative Poetry, Big Data, and Cultural Analytics** - Nick Montfort, “[Taroko Gorge](https://nickm.com/taroko_gorge/)” - Explore [Taroko Gorge remixes in ELC3](https://collection.eliterature.org/3/collection-taroko.html), including J.R Carpenter’s “[Gorge](https://luckysoap.com/generations/gorge.html)” and **Alireza Mahzoon’s “**[Snowball](https://nickm.com/taroko_gorge/snowball/)**”** \[online\] - Yang Ren, < [醉詠詩Zui Yong Shi](https://yangren.site/zui-yong-shi/)> (2020) \[online\] - Praveen Sinha, “[Leaning Haiku](https://collection.eliterature.org/4/leaning-haiku)" (2020) \[online\] - Lev Manovich and Jeremy Douglass, “[Cultural Analytics - Mark Rothko Paintings - on the 287-Megapixel HIPerSpace Wall at Calit2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YlT1qFhJhk)” - Matt Erlin, Andrew Piper, Douglas Knox, Stephen Pentecost, Michaela Drouillard, Brian Powell, and Cienna Townson, “Cultural Capitals: Modeling Minor European Literature” ### **Session 8: Augmented and Virtual Reality, AI, and Amazon** - Noah Wardrip-Fruin, et. al[. *Screen*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOwF5KD5BV4) (2003) \[online documentation video\] - Caitlin Fisher, “[Circle](caitlinfisher.ca/circle-3/)” (2012) \[online documentation video\] - Explore “[Bots” section](collection.eliterature.org/3/collection-bots.html) of ELC3 - Griffin Smith, “[Visual poetry with GPT-2](https://www.griffinsmithart.com/gpt-2-vispo)”(documentation of AI generator) - Explore Allison Parrish’s [computational AI poetry experiments](https://portfolio.decontextualize.com/) - N. Katherine Hayles, “Prologue: Transforming How We See the World” and “Nonconscious Cognitions: Humans and Others” - Mark McGurl, selections from *Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon* \-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ## **Shaden Tageldin, "World Literature and the Haunts of Comparison"** This seminar takes, as its point of departure, three premises: there is no “world” unriddled by empires; no “comparative literature” that is not entangled in inter-imperial competition—and the politics of language, race, and religion that subtend colonial domination, anticolonial resistance, and translational states between; no “world literature” that is not also, then, a comparative literature. We will examine how empires *make* worlds and otherworlds (in all senses of the term). What sorts of imperial visions of “world,” for instance, do the Moroccan geographer Muḥammad al-Idrīsī, in his world map of 1154 (which gazes downwards from South to North, with Africa on top), or the German geographer Martin Waldseemüller, in his world map of 1507 (considered the first European map to reflect the Americas), encode? We will interrogate the origin stories of modern comparative and world literature, often rooted in Europe, and explore why and how Africa, the Americas, and Asia also were at their center: not simply as receptors of European theory, as they came under Europe’s ever-widening imperial sway during the modern period, but also as powers and producers of theory in their own right. How did acts of literary and epistemic translation construct worlds, world languages, and world literatures along lines of comparison that were nearly always also the *power lines* of empire? And how do anti-imperialist thinkers, in turn, re-code the “worlds” of world literature? Witness the Martinican poet and theorist Aimé Césaire, whose *Cahier d’un retour au pays natal* (*Notebook of a Return to the Native Land*) famously declares “*not* an inch of this *world* devoid of \[his\] fingerprint”—the fingerprint of Black labor; or the British-Pakistani poet Imtiaz Dharker, whose “When the copperplate cracks” reveals the lava of wounding and longing in a global South “bitten” by the needle of imperial cartography; or the Cuban theorist Antonio Benítez-Rojo, whose *The Repeating Island* reimagines the Caribbean as a “meta-archipelago”—a *world*-machine of enslavement and genocide and resource extraction, a transoceanic “soup of signs” historical, poetic, political. Finally, we will ask how we might imagine the “worlds” of comparative and world literature beyond empire, comparatism beyond hierarchy, and literature beyond comparatism—perhaps even beyond “literature.” Is it possible to pursue a world literature that does not subsume modes of creative expression under a single totalizing world or an unexamined conception of literature? Can we imagine a *decomparative* literature? **Shaden M. Tageldin** is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature and Morse-Alumni Distinguished University Teaching Professor at the University of Minnesota, ![Shaden Tageldin](/sites/g/files/omnuum6391/files/styles/hwp_1_1__960x960_scale/public/iwl/files/shaden_tageldin.jpg?itok=7PBm1yAs) where from 2014–2018 she was also founding director of the African Studies Initiative. Her first book, *Disarming Words: Empire and the Seductions of Translation in Egypt*, was awarded the honorable mention for the Harry Levin Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association. Tageldin is completing her second book, provisionally titled *Toward a Transcontinental Theory of Modern Comparative Literature*, and launching a third, *The Place of Africa, in Theory: Of Continents and Their Discontents*. She is also Senior Editor of the *Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature*. Her essays appear or are forthcoming in *Comparative Literature*, *Comparative Literature Studies*, *International Journal of Middle East Studies*, *Journal of Arabic Literature*, *Journal of Historical Sociology*, *Journal of World Literature*, *Philological Encounters*, and *PMLA*, as well as in numerous edited volumes. Among other major grants, Tageldin has held an American Council of Learned Societies Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. ### **Session 1: World/Literature between Empires** - Aamir R. Mufti, selections from *Forget English! Orientalisms and World Literatures.* - Waïl S. Hassan, “Geopolitics of Comparison: World Literature *Avant la Lettre*" ### **Session 2: The Trembling Voice of “Literature”** - Siraj Ahmed, selections from *Archaeology of Babel: The Colonial Foundation of the Humanities*. - Simon Gikandi, “Contested Grammars: Comparative Literature, Translation, and the Challenge of Locality.” - Optional: Michael Allan, “Translation: The Rosetta Stone from Object to Text.” ### **Session 3: The Uneven Ground of the “World”** - Natalie Melas, selections from *All the Difference in the World: Postcoloniality and the Ends of Comparison*. - Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett, selections from *Comparative Literature*. - Image: Martin Waldseemüller, \[World map of 1507.\] *Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii alioru\[m\]que lustrationes*.[https://www.loc.gov/item/2003626426/ ](https://www.loc.gov/item/2003626426/) - Blog: Library of Congress Office of Communications. “Library of Congress Acquires Only Known Copy of 1507 World Map Compiled by Martin Waldseemüller.” 23 July 2001. ### **Session 4: Worlds Apart: Literature, In/comparability, Un/translatability** - Rifāʿa Rāfiʿal-Ṭahṭāwī, selections from *An Imam in Paris: Account of a Stay in France by an Egyptian Cleric, 1826–1831*. - Abdelfattah Kilito, selections from *Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language.* - Rebecca C. Johnson, selections from *Stranger Fictions: A History of the Novel in Arabic Translation.* - Image: Muḥammad al-Idrīsī, \[World map of 1154.\] *Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī ikhtirāq al-āfāq*. - Blog: Carissa Pastuch, “Al-Idrisi’s Masterpiece of Medieval Geography.” - Optional: Emily Apter, selections from *Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability*. - Optional: Shaden M. Tageldin, “Suspect Kinships: Al-Ṭahṭāwī and the Theory of French-Arabic ‘Equivalence,’ 1827–1834.” ### **Session 5: Between Materiality and Metaphor: Market, Labor, Land, Language** - Karl Marx, selections from *The Communist Manifesto*. - Rabindranath Tagore, selections from *Rabindranath Tagore:* *Selected Writings on Literature and Language*. - Lu Xun, “On the Power of *Mara* Poetry” \[“Moluo shi li shuo”\]. - Bhavya Tiwari, “Rabindranath Tagore’s Comparative World Literature.” - Imtiaz Dharker, “When the copperplate cracks.” *Imtiaz Dharker: Poems, no. 15.* - Image: Abraham Ortelius, Aegid Coppenius Diesth and Humphrey Llwyd. *Theatrvm Orbis Terrarvm*. Antverpiae \[Antwerp\]: Apud Aegid. Coppenium Diesth, 1570. - Blog: Frans Koks, “Ortelius Atlas: Abraham Ortelius.” - Optional: Madhumita Lahiri, “Print for the People: Tagore, China, and the Bengali Vernacular.” ### **Session 6: Otherwords/Otherworlds: Translation and the Imperial Unconscious** - Jing Tsu, “Getting Ideas about World Literature in China.” - Gal Gvili, selections from *Imagining India in Modern China: Literary Decolonization and the Imperial Unconscious, 1895–1962.* - Optional: Lydia H. Liu, selections from *The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making.* - Optional: Tamara T. Chin, “The Afro-Asian Silk Road: Chinese Experiments in Postcolonial Premodernity.” ### **Session 7: In the Shadow of Slavery and Colonialism: Cracking the Codes of Machine and Crypt** - Antonio Benítez-Rojo, selections from *The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective*. - Aimé Césaire, selections from *The Original 1939* Notebook of a Return to the Native Land*: Bilingual Edition* \[*Cahier d’un retour au pays natal*\]. - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, selections from *Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance*. ### **Session 8: Toward a Decomparative Literature** - Édouard Glissant, selections from *Introduction to a Poetics of Diversity* \[*Introduction à une poétique du divers*\]. - Walter D. Mignolo, “On Comparison: Who Is Comparing What and Why?” - Optional: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, selections from *Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing*.