Rethinking World Literature/Other World Literature: November 3 & 4

This symposium promises to help participants redefine and rethink the ways they research, teach, discuss, and conceptualize categories surrounding “world literature" and promises to have wide-ranging impact across the humanities.

“World” is often a pure abstraction, an empty container with no specific referent and with content designated by ambitious anthologies and “great books” courses.

In this conference, we want to consider not only the problems world literature presents but also other models or modes for thinking world literature—models that don’t take the world itself for granted and that take other worlds seriously. Can we imagine and practice other world literatures that might disrupt—rather than aid and abet—normative globalization?

This symposium brings together twenty-six leading scholars in the fields of literary and comparative studies to consider together myriad questions posited by current constructions of "world literature." For more information and for a complete schedule of panel discussions and presentations, visit the symposium website, http://www.english.umd.edu/owl