ENG41570

Throughout the last decade, materialist theories of literary criticism have adopted world-systems frameworks in order to generate new modes of comparative socio-historical analysis of world literature. These modes of critique might be collectively designated “world-literary criticism,” indicating methods of literary analysis that are comparative in their thrust and attuned to the ways in which literature mediates the structural and geographical divisions of the modern capitalist world-system and the intersections of hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Using critical frameworks that draw on world-systems theory, world-ecological criticism, globalization, this module will explore “global” novels and literary forms (including speculative fiction and experimental poetry) that attempt to map the local experiences of globalization and combined and uneven development in relation to the larger world-system and world-ecology of capitalist modernity. In particular, we will attempt to define “world-literature” and ask what kinds of new forms and aesthetics are invented in the attempt to represent ecological and economic crises at planetary scales. We will read novels, short fiction, and poetry alongside extracts of theory from the fields of world-literary criticism, resource criticism and the energy humanities. Literature from countries including India, Australia, Africa and the Americas will be positioned alongside extracts of theory from Jason W. Moore, Immannuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi, Leerom Medovoi, Michael Niblett, Benita Parry, Imre Szeman and others.