01 MTH1 CAC 07926 MANGHARAM HC-S124
Encountering the Other in World Literature
World literature has often been theorized as a ‘window into the world,’ provided by circulating texts - in translation or in English - that are consumed by an elite, global audience. But what are the stakes of gazing through that window to observe cultures and peoples different from ourselves? Is world literature bound to end up as an exploitative consuming of difference, or are there other ways of reading, other texts, other theorizations of world literature that can challenge the problematic implications of the institution of world literature today. We will be reading some canonical writers that have acquired popular global audiences including Chinua Achebe, J.M. Coetzee, Junot Diaz, Amitav Ghosh, Elena Ferrante, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Han Kang, and Viet Thanh Nguyen.
