Lexington Books
Pages: 274
•
Trim: 6⅜ x 9
978-1-7936-1184-0 • Hardback • November 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)
978-1-7936-1185-7 • eBook • November 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)
Susan Ingram is associate professor in the Department of Humanities at York University.
Irene Sywenky is associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Alberta.
Introduction, Susan Ingram and Irene Sywenky
Section 1: Opening Salvoes
Chapter 1: Arguments for Comparative Literature Book Projects, Joseph Pivato
Chapter 2: For a Renewed “Linguistic Turn”: Comparative Studies and the Language-Department Model, Jerry White
Section 2: Comparative Literature in and across Linguistic and Locational Contexts
Chapter 3: Plurilingualism and Collaboration in the Comparatist Emerging Scholar Community in Canada, Jeanne Mathieu-Lessard
Chapter 4: Other Languages of Comparative Literature and Caribbean Poetry about Language, Doris Hambuch
Chapter 5: The Languages of Comparison, Nasrin Rahimieh
Chapter 6: What Is the Continental Identity of Canadian Literature?, Albert Braz
Chapter 7: Comparing Diversities: Morphopoetic Variations, Amaryll Chanady
Chapter 8: The Price of the Future: Crisis and Risk in Contemporary Dystopian Speculative Fiction, Jerry Varsava
Section 3: Critical Engagements
Chapter 9: Reforming Critique: Critical Making as Method and Practice, Monique Tschofen, Nataleah Hunter-Young, Lai-Tze Fan, Daniel Browne
Chapter 10: Pedagogy, Writing, and the Future of Comparative Literature, Eva-Lynn Jagoe
Chapter 11: Responses to Jagoe, Kevin G. Wilson, D.R. Gamble, Jan Plug, Keith O’Regan, Heather Macfarlane, Karin Beeler and Stan Beeler
Section 4: Publications in the Age of Digitality
Chapter 12: The Library in Ruins: Digital Collections and the Idea of the University, Joshua Synenko
Chapter 13: Canadian Comparative Literature in Bits: The Impact of Open Access and Electronic Publication Formats, Markus Reisenleitner
This comprehensive and well-organized volume is a must-read for all scholars of comparative literature around the world. It presents a very strong case for Canadian comparative literature, indeed all comparative literature, in its focus on the problematics of multilingualism and multiculturalism, critical theory, indigenous and settler colonial writing, and its continental and hemispheric orientation, showing a path forward for a comparative study of literature with the potential to decolonize mainstream literary studies. Its criticism of U.S.-dominant comparative literature is trenchant and timely, as is its reflections on the pedagogical and institutional practices of comparative literature in the digital age. To read this book in juxtaposition with similar books from the U.S. is to be reminded of how US-centric and English-centric much of American Comparative Literature has been. I recommend this to those soul-searching American comparatists and to all other comparatists around the world.
— Shu-mei Shih, University of California, Los Angeles; University of Hong Kong