Literary Criticism After Brutality

You are all warmly invited to the annual lecture of the Centre for World Literatures.

Speaker: May Hawas (Newnham College, Cambridge) 

Respondent: Professor John McLeod (School of English)

Location: Miall Lecture Theatre (Baines Wing West 2.34) * 

When we speak about world literature we almost always speak about literature that travels. If any text is inextricable from its context, then surely, the larger the context, the more worldly the text. Movement equals worldliness, or at least, a promise thereof. Free circulation is a mark of modernity and liberal progress. These seem like reasonable propositions. The situation is very different when we apply it to people, however: migrants, refugees, outcasts, non-nationals, and Others. Is it enough for world literature criticism to celebrate the mobility of texts in a world that denies the free movement of non-citizens? In our current moment, how do we talk about literature after violence, to tell the stories of people who are not part of our communities? Are these stories also about us? 

May Hawas is Associate Professor in World Literature and Valerie Eliot Fellow in English at Newnham College, Cambridge. She is a comparatist with particular interest in the relations between Europe and the Middle East.  

*This is an in-person event and will not be livestreamed or recorded.