160073 VO Literary Cross-Currents (VO): Theoretical Approaches to World Literature (2011W)

In this course I take what I see as important topics for the discussion of world literature today, broken down into 4 weekly sessions, each of which will deal with two topics. The Vorlesung is accompanied by a Reader (electronically available via the university website) containing a (selected) number of key texts for possible discussion following the lectures. The sessions are closely tied to a book of mine which is in press right now, and which will appear with Routledge towards the end of 2011 or the beginning of 2012. Most sessions have both a thematic and an historical angle to them; most start from Goethe’s pronouncements on Weltliteratur and all end up at the present, as I think this is most interesting to present-day students. On the way we will deal with critics, theoreticians and literary historians such as Hugh Macauley Possnett, Hugo Meltzl, Georg Brandes, Erich Auerbach, Leo Spitzer, Ernst Robert Curtius, Walter Benjamin, René Wellek, René Etiemble, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Pascale Casanova, Franco Moretti, David Damrosch, Emily Apter, Ning Wang, and many more. At the end of the course students should have a good grasp of the intensely raging discussion on world literature today

12-14 October 2011
Introduction - The Name and Concept of World Literature
Goethe’s Weltliteratur the Humanist Ideal

16-18 November 2011
World Literature and Comparative Literature
World Literature as an American Pedagogical Construct

14-16 December 2011
World Literature as System
World Literature and Translation

11-13 January 2012
World History, World Literature, (Post)Colonialism, Littérature-Monde
World Literature and the Literatures of the World- Conclusion