News

Mitsuyoshi Numano receives the Imperial Prize and the Japan Art Academy Prize for outstanding achievements in the field of world literature

May 03, 2026

It gives us immense pleasure to share with the IWL community that our distinguished Executive Committee member, Professor Mitsuyoshi Numano has recently been awarded the Imperial Prize and the Japan Art Academy Prize for outstanding achievements in the...

IWL Executive Committee Member, Professor Mitsuyoshi Numano, laureate of the Tsubouchi Shoyo Grand Prize

December 20, 2025

We are delighted to announce that our IWL Executive Committee Member, Professor Mitsuyoshi Numano , has been awarded the 10th Tsubouchi Shoyo Grand Prize sponsored by Waseda University on December 1, 2025. Tsubouchi Shoyo was a figure who laid the...

IWL Director, Debjani Ganguly, fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities

December 20, 2025

We are delighted to announce that the IWL Director, Debjani Ganguly, has recently been elected fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. According to the Australian Academy of the Humanities that made the announcement this past November,...

"The power to use my original language: the Hungarian language." László Krasznahorkai wins the Nobel

October 12, 2025

One of the greatest living writers, the Hungarian László Krasznahorkai is the laureate of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature. To his visionary linguistic and imaginative force speak his numerous books, from Satantango (1985) and The Melancholy of...

Debjani Ganguly, the New Director of the Harvard Institute for World Literature

September 18, 2025

We are delighted to announce that as of June 21, 2025 the IWL directorship passed on to Professor Debjani Ganguly of the University of Virginia. Harvard remains the home base of the IWL, and Debjani Ganguly has become an affiliate of the Department of...

Gisèle Sapiro awarded the Biguet Prize of the Académie française

July 17, 2025

We are delighted to announce that Gisèle Sapiro has been awarded the Biguet Prize (in sociology) of the Académie française for her book Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur mondial? Le champ littéraire transnational (Gallimard/Seuil/EHESS, Hautes études Collection...

In Memoriam: Prof. Aleksandra Vraneš

June 28, 2025

In Memoriam - Prof. Aleksandra Vrane š - We are deeply saddened to inform you that our beloved friend and first institutional affiliate of IWL from Serbia, Professor Aleksandra Vraneš, a member of the University of Belgrade and the State University of...

Balzan Colloquium: 10 fully-funded places at IWL in 2025

October 25, 2024

A generous award from the Balzan Foundation is giving IWL the opportunity to bring a group of participants from five regions not yet well represented among our affiliates: Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and South/Southeast Asia...

David Damrosch awarded the 2023 Balzan Prize for his work on world literature

October 04, 2023

Each year, the Milan-based Balzan Prize Foundation awards four prizes in emergent fields of scholarship, two in natural sciences and two in humanities or social sciences. This year, one of the four fields was World Literature, and the foundation has...

"Annie Ernaux, ethnographer of symbolic violence" by Gisèle Sapiro

October 10, 2022

The 2022 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded for the first time to a French female author: Annie Ernaux. Since her first novel, Les Armoires vides (1974 / Cleaned Out 1990), Annie Ernaux has explored forms of symbolic violence that are experienced...

In 2023, IWL returns to Harvard

October 07, 2022

The 13th IWL returns to its headquarters at Harvard from July 5 through July 27, 2023. We've assembled a great group that includes Homi Bhabha (Harvard), David Damrosch (Harvard), Jérôme David (U of Geneva), Simon Gikandi (Princeton), Emily Greenwood...

David Damrosch's "Around the World in 80 Books" (2021)

October 26, 2021

David Damrosch's Around the World in 80 Books that saw us through the pandemic last year in blog form has now turned into a book published by Penguin (USA) and Pelican (UK). Below you can find a glowing review by Peter Conrad in The Guardian and the link...