International Symposium on Global Literary Studies: Key Concepts

The International Symposium on Global Literary Studies: Key Concepts is a conference organized by the Global Literary Studies Research Lab (GlobaLS, 2017 SGR 1143), at the IN3-UOC (Barcelona), and by the ERC StG project ‘MapModern – Social Networks of the Past: Mapping Hispanic and Lusophone Literary Modernity, 1898-1959’, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No 803860). PI: Diana Roig-Sanz.

This symposium is celebrated on May, 20-21st, 2021. Due to the current circumstances caused by the coronavirus, the conference will be held virtually (via Google Meets). Registrants will receive an email with the link to the event as the date approaches.

Summary of the conference:

While the very existence of Global Literary Studies as an institutionalized field is not yet evident, the growing interest to engage with questions that involve a global perspective of study in the various established disciplines in literary studies and the humanities is overwhelming. This impulse has led literary critics and cultural historians to find new concepts, new methodologies and to face serious challenges both concerning the conceptualization of their object of study as global and the adoption of a global critical approach. Within this framework, this international symposium responds to a double demand: on the one hand, it discusses these notions (global, globalization, world, cosmopolitan) within an historical perspective, providing a thorough intervention in the state of the art. On the other hand, it proposes different case studies that help develop further the global perspective in four key research avenues: global translation flows, the global novel, global literary environments, and global cinema.

Through the aforementioned lines, this conference aims at a better understanding of: 1) the development of new conceptions of space in global literary studies; 2) the novel ways to integrate unforeseen layers and scales that allow us to combine local, national, regional and continental features, and a global reach; 3) the new or unknown relations that emerge, as well as the role of connectivity and its unevenness; 4) the historicization and periodization of theories, approaches and methodologies in global literary studies; and 5) agents participating in the circulation of literary and cinematic products, as well as in cultural transformation processes, and global subjects that are being modelled in literature and film. In that respect, we also consider a gender perspective and different forms of cultural mediation.

The symposium gathers international scholars with expertise in various areas of research (sociology of literature, novel studies, narratology, cultural transfer, translation studies, ecocriticism, digital humanities, global cinema, and gender studies) to reflect on the current and future paths of global literary studies from an interdisciplinary perspective. The conference will structure these areas of research and concerns through the concepts of space, scale, connectivity, time, and agency. We understand that all these concepts have a twofold approach, poetic and sociological, that we assume as specific features of Global Literary Studies. At the same time, we also understand as specific of the field the purpose of finding new methodologies for global literary research that, in many cases, are both qualitative and quantitative.

> More details about the conference, its program and the registration process