Teaching Responsibility
LJMU Schools involved in Delivery:
Humanities and Social Science
Learning Methods
Lecture
Seminar
Tutorial
Module Offerings
6117ENGL-SEP-MTP
Aims
1. To introduce students to the concept of ‘world literature’ through a selection of texts from the twentieth to the twenty-first centuries in relation to the rise and expansion of a global modernity
2. To examine on-going critical debates around key areas of research in the global humanities: a singular modernity, the politics of translation, the periphery and the world system
3. To compare literary and critical perspective on the political and aesthetic stakes of the concept of world literature in relation to current global affairs
Learning Outcomes
1.
To understand and contribute to on-going debates on the concept of world literature.
2.
To develop independent intellectual interests in relation to the main areas of interest of this module: global modernity, the periphery, the politics of translation and the world system.
3.
To adopt secondary material and critically engage with theoretical perspectives on world literature.
Module Content
Outline Syllabus:A Singular Modernity? (Peripheral Views)
1. Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity
2. I, Rigoberta Menchu’ / David Damrosch, What is World Literature
3. Ama Ata Aidoo, Anowa / Pascale Casanova, Literature as World
4. Saadat Hasan Manto, Bombay Stories / Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity
Globalism and Translation
5. Ghassan Kanafani, Men in the Sun / Franco Moretti, Distant Reading
6. Ngugi, I Will Marry When I Want / Ngugi, The Language of African Literature
7. Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary Maps / Gayatri Spivak, Translator's Preface
8. Ousmane Sembene, God's Bits of Wood / Emily Apter, Untranslatable
Representing the System
9. Lu Xun, Diary of a Madman / Fredric Jameson, Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism
10. Alex La Guma, A Walk in the Night / WReC, Combined and Uneven Development
11. Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story / Toni Negri and Michael Hardt, Multitude
Module Overview:
This module will introduce the concept of 'world literature' through a selection of texts from the twentieth to the twenty-first centuries in relation to the rise and expansion of a global modernity. You will examine on-going critical debates around key areas of research in the global humanities: a singular modernity, the politics of translation, the periphery and the world system.
This module will introduce the concept of 'world literature' through a selection of texts from the twentieth to the twenty-first centuries in relation to the rise and expansion of a global modernity. You will examine on-going critical debates around key areas of research in the global humanities: a singular modernity, the politics of translation, the periphery and the world system.
Additional Information:The periphery is where the future reveals itself’ (JG Ballard). This module draws on recent debates on the concept of world literature and the relationships between centre and periphery in global modernity. It considers how a world-system perspective can shed light on literary representations of an uneven and unequal world. The module focuses on the key debates that animate this field of research: the concept of a singular modernity and its links with capitalism, the problem of distant vs close reading, the politics of translation, the ideology of globalism, the position of the cosmopolitan writer, and the representation of the ‘unrepresentable’ totality of capitalism beyond Europe and North America.