Global Circulation Project

Listen to an Introduction and Call for Papers by Editor-in-Chief Regenia Gagnier here.

“We can create for global studies in literature a ‘histoire croisée’ with a highly dialectical accent that takes full account of the force of empires. The timely launch and open-ended form of the Global Circulation Project can stimulate this research.” Laura Doyle. “Notes Toward a Dialectical Method: Modernities, Modernisms, and the Crossings of Empire.” 7.3 (2010)

“To ask how literature can be understood with relation to the global rather than just the empire-bound circulation of goods, peoples and monies, as well as ideas and ideologies, is a question that must work with but also extend and reorient postcolonial studies’ geographical scope and methodological framework.” Paul Young, English Literature in Transition (2011)

“The point of cross-cultural comparison is not to reify the reassuring opposition between two distinct identities but to force each side to ask: could we understand ourselves otherwise in the other’s terms?” (908) Hon Lam, Ling and Dahlia Porter. “Hybrid Commodities, Gendered Aesthetics, and the Challenge of Cross-Cultural Comparison: A Response to Moretti’s ‘The Novel: History and Theory’” 7.9 (2010)

“Rather than focusing on the origination and reception of forms such as the naturalist novel, studies of world literature should focus on the conditions of travel through which such unexpected transformations occur. [...] Here perhaps is the principal lesson for the study of the circulation of literary forms that we might draw from the history of the naturalist novel: the most important encounters happen on the road.” Christopher L. Hill, “The Travels of Naturalism and the Challenges of a World Literary History.” 6.6 (2009)

The Global Circulation Project is a global map and dialogue on how key Anglophone works, authors, genres, and literary movements have been translated, received, imitated/mimicked, adapted, or syncretised outside Britain, Europe, and North America, and, conversely, how key works from outside these areas have been translated, received, imitated/mimicked, adapted, or syncretised within Anglophone literary traditions. It asks, what forms of intertextuality, reception, etc. are generated through cultural contact?

Any authors, works, or genres with evidence of significant global/international circulation and impact from any time period may be the subject of an article. We welcome proposals and submissions to the Global Circulation Project. Essential to the dialogic nature of the GCP is the participation of scholars outside Britain, Europe, and North America, and we especially encourage submissions of paired articles and responses across international boundaries.

Articles of up to 5000 words (excluding notes and bibliography) may be submitted for peer review through Literature Compass’s normal scholarly channels. Shorter and less formal responses to published articles are especially welcome to cultivate dialogue on global circulation. These will be reviewed by the Editor in Chief and at least one subject specialist in the appropriate language(s) of literary circulation.

All submissions must include full scholarly apparatus for notes and Works Cited. We apologize in advance to the scholarly community that at this time we are only able to consider submissions and responses in English; this may change as the dialogue and network grow.

Because our intellectual priority is to promote a global circulation of ideas in the present as well as to study such circulations in the past, we ask our readers to read differently, to welcome the difficulty of reading unfamiliar inflections and entering unfamiliar critical frames. For, even as articles are published in English, we plan to practice an editorial policy flexible enough to foster communication across languages and scholarly traditions. We do so in two ways:

we publish essays whose syntax may carry the inflections of the scholar’s home language rather than always seeking to erase or dissolve those traces within standard English-language syntax; and

we publish essays whose critical interests may diverge from those of dominant western critical schools, for instance essays working within indigenous aesthetic or philosophical frameworks that are quite removed from western political or theoretical frameworks.

Our goal is to allow differences in style and approach to be heard, as much as is possible, across linguistic and cultural differences, so as to generate new international dialogues.

For more information or to submit a proposal email Phil Smith at Philip.Smith@wiley.com

Articles by volume:

Volume 9 (2012)

Dialogue and Dialectic: A Response by Linda McJannet to Laura Doyle’s “Notes towards a Dialectical Method: Modernities, Modernisms, and the Crossings of Empire” (pages 225–228)
Linda McJannet
Abstract | Full Article (HTML) | PDF(54K) | Request Permissions

Volume 8 (2011)

Joyce in Southern Africa: A Response by Derek Attridge to Ariela Freedman’s ‘Global Joyce’ (pages 870–872)
Derek Attridge
Abstract | Full Article (HTML) | PDF(46K) | References | Request Permissions

The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages I: Race Studies, Modernity, and the Middle Ages (pages 315–331)
Geraldine Heng
Abstract | Full Article (HTML) | PDF(619K)

The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages II: Locations of Medieval Race(pages 332–350)
Geraldine Heng
Abstract | Full Article (HTML) | PDF(845K)