Here, and Here, and Here: Multifocal Approaches to Premodern Literatures

Despite the internal variety of its subject matter, the academic study of premodern literature is dominated by historicism. This focus is maintained by the very nature of area studies departments and region-centered programs and by longstanding conventions of publishing, hiring, and promotion, such as the undervaluing of collaborative research in the humanities. When scholarship on premodern literature does cross linguistic or cultural borders, the warrant for comparison is often the pursuit of antecedents or corollaries to the story of how modern literary cultures came to be shaped by global connectedness. Literature thus becomes a component of national history or of the (modern) world.

This symposium brings together scholars whose work is driven by the urgent need to widen the aperture of literary studies while at the same time reimagining the scope, style, and stakes of comparison. We will question the role of historicism in the comparative study of premodern literatures and explore possible alternatives. To what degree do we need to ground literary comparison in shared historical contexts? What becomes possible when the grounds for comparison are not limited to direct contact, physical proximity, or genealogical kinship? If scholars have full license to look here, and also here, and maybe also here, simply because they want to—might such freedom of selection make it possible to pose different sorts of questions, to experiment with new modes of comparison, and to develop alternative methods and styles of reading across traditions? As we share and discuss projects that range across literary and intellectual cultures from non-proximate premodern traditions, we will also think collectively about how to theorize multifocal scholarly practice without necessarily subordinating our work to much-critiqued totalities such as “world literature,” “the global Middle Ages,” and the arising of “modernity.”

Organizers: Lucas Bender & Jane Mikkelson