(Post) World Literature: A Comparatist’s View from a (Post) Colony
A Lecture by Professor Ipshita Chanda
Thursday, November 21, 2013 3:30 PM EST
3300
World literature has become a hot topic among literature scholars and students in the United States, but from an Indian perspective it has important limits. Professor Chanda will discuss this issue, along with giving insights from an Indian perspective on two key figures associated with world literature studies. Gayatri Spivak’s translations of Mahasweta Devi have sought to introduce readers of English to a major representative of non-Anglophone Indian literature, while Franco Moretti’s theory of the spread of the novel as a genre can be supplemented with insights from the history of other, non-Western genres, such as the “Namah” from West and South Asia.
Professor Chanda is Professor of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India. She is teaching this year at Georgetown University as Indian Council of Cultural Relations Chair Professor of Indian Studies. Her recent books include Shaping Gendered Discourse: Women's Writings from Bangla Periodicals in Translation (1865-1947); Locating Cultural Change: Theory, Method, Process, with Partha Pratim Basu; and Packaging Freedom: Feminism and Popular Culture. She has also translated a novel and a book of stories by Mahasweta Devi, the leading Bengali author.
Co-sponsored by the Department of English, the Department of History and Art History, the Cultural Studies Program, the Women and Gender Studies Program, the Center for Global Studies, and the India Advisory Committee.
