Introducing GlobalLIT
GlobalLIT is a five-year project to reinvigorate the discipline of literary studies by looking at non-European approaches and focusing on texts from Islamic cultures. For a brief introduction to our work, watch PI Rebecca Gould explain the motivations behind GlobalLIT…
About Us
Literary theory is often regarded as a 20th century invention. This relegates older discourses on literature to the status of source material, pertaining to literature’s past, rather than springboards for its future. Moving beyond the parameters of modernity the project will look at the many gaps and limits within literary theory’s current structure when it is applied to literature from lesser-known geographies, in this instance the Caucasus and its Arabic, Persian, Turkic and Georgian texts.
Even when non-European literatures are studied, the theory used to understand them often has a bias to modern European traditions. The project will take a more pluralistic approach to literary knowledge, taking into account the radical variance in timescales for the development of different literary traditions. It will explore the different meanings of literature across varying historical and cultural contexts, reinvigorate the discipline of literary studies, and look at new ways of imagining the status of literature, poetry in particular, in the public sphere.
Thanks to our Funders
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 759346 – GlobalLIT).
This project site was compiled and edited by Loubna Bidjiguen, GlobalLit’s Digital Media Disseminator. It was designed by Emma Efkeman, Project Coordinator.