The Global Novel Research Project’s final conference gathers scholars pursuing research on the contemporary novel from a global perspective, from any literary and linguistic tradition. The conference topic aligns with the project's objective. We are interested in a new, more integrated, and decentralized perspective in the study of the emergent genre of the global novel, defined as a narrative form that aspires to represent and think about the contemporary world from a global perspective. This new approach will help us better understand how the global novel contributes, discusses and builds global discourses through specific exploratory poetics. Simultaneously, it will help map the uneven circulation of these works within the literary space. Working from a comparative perspective, the conference seeks to cross the poetic and sociological approaches to the genre, the separated adoption of which is now producing contradictory definitions and simplifications. Through this crossing, we aim to understand how contemporary novels address global matters, such as global violence, inequality, migration, or climate change, as well as how novels circulate in the international literary market. We aim both to contribute to the global novel debate as well as to interrogate its conceptualization, scope, and behavior.
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Conference Program
Wednesday, 24 April 2024
9:30am - 10 am | Opening Session
Welcome addresses
Introduction - Organizers
10am - 11am | Opening Keynote: Debjani Ganguly (University of Virginia), Planetary Realism, Science Studies and Speculative Form
11:00 - 11:30 Coffee Break
11:30 - 13:15 Panel 1 | The Global Novel in Theory
11:30 - 11:50 Nadia Butt (Goethe University Frankfurt), The Global Novel and Its Theory
11:50 - 12:10 Aurea Mota (Universitat Abat Oliva), Where are the Literary Boundaries of the Globe? A Discussion about Circulation of Global Novels in Terms of Gender, Race, and Place of Origin
12:10 - 12:30 Jernej Habjan (Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts), The Global More-than-Novel
12:30 - 13:15 Discussion
13:15-15 Lunch Break
15:00 - 16:45 Panel 2 | Local-Global Tensions
15:00 - 15:20 Petra Bakos (Central European University in Wien), Local Borders – Global Frontiers: Decolonial Perspectives Interrogating the Global in the Contemporary Novel
15:20 - 15:40 Natalya Bekhta (Tampere Institute for Advanced Study), The Global Novel in Contemporary Ukraine
15:40 - 16:00 Ana Kvirikashvili (IN3-UOC), The Ambivalences in the Internationalization of Georgian Literature: The Case of Nino Haratischwili and The Eighth Life
16:00- 16:45 Discussion
16:45 - 17 Coffee Break
17:00 - 18:45 Panel 3 | Transnational-Translation Processes and Poetics of the Novel
17:00 - 17:20 Albert Jornet Somoza (Universitat de Barcelona) and Elsie Cohen (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales), Transclass Literature as Global Novel: A French-Spanish Comparative Perspective
17:20 - 17:40 Laura Fólica (IN3-UOC), ‘The Task of the (Woman) Translator’: Between the Fictional Turn of Translation Studies and the Global Novel
17:40 - 18:00 Jorge J. Locane (University of Oslo), Tropical Norway. On Mengele Zoo, by Gert Nygårdshaug
18:00 - 18:45 Discussion
DINNER
Thursday, 25 April 2024
10 - 11 | Keynote 2: Marco Caracciolo (Ghent University), Algorithmic Uncertainty and the Global Scale in the Contemporary Anglophone Novel
11:00 - 11:30 Coffee Break
11:30 - 13:15 Panel 4 | Worlding Narrative Modes
11:30 - 11:50 Chi-she Li (National Taiwan University), A New Mode of Global-Novel Narration: Attention to Murmurs in Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness
11:50 - 12:10 Francesco Eugenio Barbieri (University of Bergamo), Contemporary Japanese Literature and Global Appreciation: Reframing Kawakami Mieko’s Fiction
12:10 - 12: 30 Jordi Serrano-Muñoz (UOC), Care, Nature, and Dystopia: Affective Ecocriticism of Tawada Yōko’s Kentōshi and Fernanda Trías’ Mugre Rosa
12:30 - 13:15 Discussion
13:30 - 15:00 Lunch Break
15:00 - 16:45 Panel 5 | Editorial Practices for a Global Readership
15:00 - 15:20 Diana Roig-Sanz (IN3-UOC), The Global Novel and the Branding of Hybrid Voices: the Cases of Samanta Schweblin and Ariana Harwicz
15:20 - 15:40 Joan Vázquez Salvador (UB), Blurbs: The Quest for Global Readership in English and French Literary Markets
15:40 - 16:00 Paulo Lemos Horta (NYU), The Multiverse of Delirium: The Editor and the Latin American Novel in Translation
16:00 - 16:45 Discussion
ACTIVITY
Friday, 26 April 2024
10am - 11am | Keynote 3: Treasa De Loughry (University College Dublin), Realist Form, the Frankfurt School, and Interrogating “Polycrisis” in Contemporary Global Literature
11:00 - 11:15 Coffee Break
11:15 - 13:00 Panel 6 | An Ocean Planet in Contemporary Novels
11:15 - 11:35 Aina Vidal-Pérez (UIB), Mediterraneanism Meets the Anthropocene. On Authenticity and Global Green Discourse in Elif Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees
11:35 - 11:55 Ignacio Martínez Armas (UIB), Ocean’s Vengeance against Humanity: Catastrophic Villains in The Abbys (1989), Ponyo (2009), and Aquaman (2018) under Ecocinema Lenses
11:55 - 12:15 Laia Ventayol-García (UIB), The Wall: Virtuality as Potentiality
12:15 - 13:00 Discussion
13:00 - 13:30 Final Discussion and Farewell
If you would like to attend, please enroll the conference here before April 22nd.
There is no conference fee.