Presented on May 6, 2016, by GC Public Programs at The Graduate Center in NYC.
In this HarvardX presentation, Martin Puchner explores how the concept of World Literature came into being, describing the conversations of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Peter Eckermann.
Family, friends, and colleagues gathered on campus on October 27, 2015 to hold a memorial service for Svetlana Boym, Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature.
Svetlana-Memorial-program-final
How does modern Sinophone sci-fi reveal the “dark side” of China’s rise to power? How does Sinophone speculative fiction and its transmediated afterlives chart a reparative vision in the face of ongoing ecological and political crises? How do memories of past traumas intersect with future catastrophes in short stories and novels by Sinophone creators? How does speculative fiction produced by women and nonbinary creators forge an alternative path for human-AI collaboration? How do queer, transgressive, and non-human desires coalesce into a flora-fauna-AI symbiosis? How does contemporary Sinophone sci-fi advance inclusive futures for queer, crip, rural, neurodiverse, non-Han, and otherwise disenfranchised individuals in the face of ongoing exploitation? How do translators of Chinese-sci-fi employ a reparative praxis to transmediate trauma for global audiences?
In this course, we encounter an array of sci-fi and speculative fiction authored by Ken Liu, Cixin Liu, Han Song, Regina Kanyu Wang, Hao Jingfang, Xia Jia, Gu Shi, Wang Nuonuo, and Chu Xidao, alongside selections by Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Italo Calvino, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. LeGuin, Ray Bradbury, and Isaac Asimov (reading selections subject to change). We will also examine multimedia adaptations of contemporary Chinese sci-fi, examining the work’s evolution from page to screen to stage. All readings will be available in English and films will be available either dubbed or with English subtitles. By engaging with material through a variety of written, oral, and multimedia responses, you will co-create reparative futures alongside these speculative creators.
Recent years have seen attempts to rethink modernism as a global phenomenon rather than a mostly Anglo-American and West European movement. Center-periphery relations have often been foregrounded in these efforts, and in critiques of them. Building on theoretical statements by Jorge Luis Borges, Oswald de Andrade, Pascale Casanova, Susan Stanford Friedman, Franco Moretti, Oe Kenzaburo, and Roberto Schwarz, this seminar will explore the politics of language, representation, and center-periphery relations in works by Antonio Machado de Assis, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Higuchi Ichiyo, James Joyce, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Franz Kafka, Eileen Chang, Clarice Lispector, Lu Xun, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, and Pramoedya Ananta Toer.ars have seen ambitious attempts to rethink modernism as a global phenomenon rather than a largely Anglo-American and West European movement. Center-periphery relations have often been foregrounded in these efforts, and in critiques of them. Building on theoretical statements and critiques by Jorge Luis Borges, Kenzaburo Oe, Franco Moretti, Pascale Casanova, Emily Apter, Eric Hayot, and Susan Stanford Friedman, this seminar will explore the politics of language, periodization, and center-periphery relations both within and beyond the West, in works by Higuchi Ichiyo, James Joyce, Lu Xun, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, Borges, Kukrit Pramoj, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, and Derek Walcott.
Founded as a graduate program in 1904 and joining with the undergraduate Literature Concentration in 2007, Harvard’s Department of Comparative Literature operates at the crossroads of multilingualism, literary study, and media history.
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