World Literature in Motion: Institution, Recognition, Location is a new publication by Columbia University Press and ibidem Press. The book is the latest in the publishers’ Studies in World Literature Series which aims to collate original and dynamic research on the discipline.
World Literature in Motion involves the collaboration of international academics, including members of the University of Oxford’s Faculty of English: Professor Elleke Boehmer, Dr Michelle Kelly, Professor Peter McDonald, Dr Daniele Nunziata, and Professor Matthew Reynolds, alongside the current DPhil candidates, Yeogeun Sue Kim and Flair Donglai Shi.
The book considers debates about the forms world literature has been taking in recent years and the problems surrounding its classification. As the book’s title suggests, the collection is invested in exploring the ever-changing relationship the field has with questions of transmission, language, and postcolonialism.
In her review of the work, Sarah Brouillette, Professor of English at Carleton University and author of Postcolonial Writers and the Global Literary Marketplace (2007), comments that ‘its chapters provide comprehensive insight into the way that the circulation of world literature is mediated by institutional forces’ and that it ‘is an essential teaching and research resource for anyone who has lamented the Eurocentrism of the book history establishment’.
Professor Stefan Helgesson of Stockholm University, co-author of Literature and the World (2019), observes that ‘this volume contributes substantially to making literary studies relevant in our global age’.
More information on the book can be found on the Columbia University Press website.
