Module Content and Indicative Topics 

"Cultural Encounters in World Literature" considers the reception, international circulation and translation of literary texts as part of the wider dynamics of transnational history. Discussions focus on literary writing not in the form of a stable canon, but as an active engagement with diverse and changing cultural environments. Attention will be paid to recent accounts of world literature, a concept which globalization has propelled to the forefront of literary studies. You will assess how literary writing and intellectual debates about literature have widened in response to the pressures of a fast-changing world, marked by new media and networks of communication, the transnational movement of people, capital, and goods, and the shifting of centers of power and cultural production. Hegemonic accounts of world literature will be contrasted with diasporic perspectives, both calling into question traditional nation-based accounts of culture. Topics for discussion include: world literature across the ages, travel, reception and translation studies, exile and diaspora, colonialism and postcolonialism. 

Primary reading may include selections from various authors including Claudia Rankine, Clarice Lispector, Guy de Maupassant, Virginia Woolf, Mario Bellatin, Homer, Nadine Gordimer, V.S. Naipaul, Yoko Tawada. 

Teaching Delivery 

The course convenor will normally teach 40% of the course, the other 60% will consist of guest lectures by other members of the Comparative Literature core teaching team. The course has a dedicated Moodle site reading lists linked to the UCL library website. 

Each weekly session will consist of a one-hour lecture and a one-hour small-group seminar. Both are compulsory. Lectures will engage with general critical theory, with a focus on contemporary debates. Seminars will concentrate on case studies, including literary works from earlier periods. Primary texts will be chosen from different periods and languages, including English. All text will be made available in English or English translation, as appropriate, but may also be read in the original language. 

By the end of the module, you should: 

have gained knowledge and understanding of some crucial debates surrounding World Literature and its implications for comparative literary study. 
	be able to critically consider the broad parameters of the study of the World Literature as a mode of inquiry within a wide, international and cross-cultural domain; 
	be able to read closely and analytically a series of texts and other materials from a range of different cultures and traditions; 
	have acquired essential essay writing skills 