Cultural Forms in Comparison

This strand (2016-2017) aimed to highlight comparative research as it pertains to cultural forms, particularly as they travel in multiple directions. This travel includes from metropole to colony and back; South-South travel and of course travel across languages within the same “geography” or beyond it. By cultural form, we mean anything from literary genres and styles to institutions of cultural production such as salons and performance settings (the public square, the storytelling circle, etc..). At the heart of the strand was an exploration of the politics of form as well as the power relations involved in its travel. The strand was in direct dialogue with Fiction and Other Minds as it aims to explore ways of thinking through the novel and of the novel as form across cultures. It was also in synch with the Translation and Criticism strand in that it took translation as a means of travel and of a mediation which takes place within set power relations.