Learning is 360 degrees

It is not every day that you get to sit in a seminar room with World Literature. That is pretty much how IWL feels like: 

actual people from every continent, their faces, their life-long or emerging interests in style, form, craft, interpretation, social content... second-guessing everything and learning even more, all at once. Learning is 360 degrees, as the convergence of literary traditions and communities is very real. I attended a summer session at Harvard in 2013 as an Assistant Professor and came back to teach in 2019 as an Associate. My two published monographs and overall scholarly trajectory have been punctuated by IWL conversations. I got to meet scholars at various points of their intellectual journey—which is rare already—and simply vibrant interlocutors who combined seriousness of pursuit and conviviality in just the right measure. New reading suggestions flew hither and thither. A sense of the changing profession worldwide, and the more elusive if indispensable dilettantism that sustains it, was quick to emerge. 

Héctor Hoyos

2013 IWL alumnus & 2019 IWL faculty

Professor and Director of Iberian and Latin American Cultures and Professor, by Courtesy, of Comparative Literature

Stanford University