Cultural Crossovers in Literature: Circulation, Translation, Reception

Course goals

In this course, students are introduced to key concepts and fundamentals of the field of contemporary literary studies, as well as to the specific fields of translation studies, World literature and transnational reception studies. After completing this course, students will know the basic conceptual tools relevant in these fields. They will be able to analyse and evaluate literature from a transcultural perspective and be able to practically apply their knowledge in written and oral form. Students will learn to historically situate and contextualize recent developments of global literary transactions, to identify different approaches to these phenomena, and to practice academic writing. 

Content

Colonialism, globalization and digitalization have had a significant impact on the production and circulation of literary texts. The literary market today is double-layered: language-based, on the one hand (many readers enjoy reading in their own language) and translation-driven, on the other (readers are eager to read across languages and cultures, accessing texts in translation). Already since the 1960s, writers from postcolonial contexts express their discontent with Eurocentric cultural perspectives and challenge the reading public, as well as literary critics and scholars, to broaden their frameworks. With these transformations in mind, the course examines the contemporary transnational and cross-cultural exchange of literature, focusing on the key parameters of circulation, translation and reception, all of which help to spread literature across the globe.