Present Director: Elaine Savory
This new division of NeMLA was established by the Board to be complementary to longer existing emphases on continental, national or single language literatures often taught in the U.S. (such as Latin America, or the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, or Spanish, English, French, German). In addition, Russian and Slavic literatures are slowly becoming more of a presence within NeMLA.
But the Board felt that it was key for our organization to take a leadership role in encouraging those literatures and languages little taught in the U.S., but of critical importance in the future, most noticeably Chinese and Arabic. In order to make a focus on developing those areas, the term World Literature was employed, to designate those areas of literature insufficiently developed within NeMLA. We have been working to strengthen the presence of Chinese and Arabic, as well as other underrepresented literatures and languages, at our annual conventions, and there are signs this is beginning to happen. But we need all our members to help spread the word that NeMLA is a great forum for experts in these fields to talk to members interested in learning more about them, but not sufficiently versed in them to go to specialist conferences. This could have extremely beneficial results for our field within the U.S., and therefore for graduate studies and eventually a broader faculty in these areas.
Of course, we are aware that there is a very intense debate within our discipline as to the nature of the term World Literature (along with related terms such transnational, diaspora, intercultural, globalization, postcolonial). So at the same time, we are developing some panels or roundtables to discuss scholarship around these issues. There is a particularly exciting roundtable scheduled for the New Brunswick conference on transnational literatures, which in its diversity of topics for discussion embraces the world.
The second focus of this division is comparative languages. We are used to the term comparative literature (though again this term is now contested and variously interpreted). NeMLA’s structure includes strong and vibrant divisions devoted to such major areas as Italian, French, German, Spanish and Anglophone literatures. But this new division enables a focus on cross-cultural comparisons between languages, such when a panel focuses on a particular concern, (say medicine or ecology), across languages and cultures.
There is clearly no need to make rigid boundaries by using these terms. NeMLA strongly wishes to see healthy debate about all terms in common use. Many of the panels listed in our division are cross-listed with other divisions, which helps us think complexly about important and fascinating debates in our field which link it to ways our world is being re-imagined.
I invite members to contact this webpage or to contact me personally (Elaine Savory <savorye@newschool.edu>), to talk about this division and its potential growth.
I also look forward to the convention in New Brunswick where I hope to meet and talk to many of you about your ideas for this division and its role in NeMLA for the future.