Call for Papers for Inaugural Issue
"World Literature and the Circulation of Art"
 
Deadline for submissions: May 30, 2022
 
Compendium
Journal of Comparative Studies
Revista de Estudos Comparatistas 
 
University of Lisbon
School of Arts and Humanities
CEComp — Centre for Comparative Studies
 

Compendium: Journal of Comparative Studies | Revista de Estudos Comparatistas is a new open access peer-reviewed academic journal that aims to promote the publication of original research reflecting the diversity of expressions in the interdisciplinary field of Comparative Studies. As a multilingual and international forum, Compendium welcomes different approaches in the humanities across Comparative and World Literature, Film, Art, and Culture Studies, providing academics, scholars, and students with the opportunity to disseminate their work to a diverse audience of peers, as well as professional and non-professional readers.

Compendium invites submissions for the inaugural issue of the journal on the theme of World Literature and the Circulation of Art from 1800 to the present. This special issue welcomes essays that explore world literature as an interart phenomenon which connects the literary sphere with other manifestations of art and culture, thus challenging the boundaries of interpretation and text. 

Art objects and other artifacts participate as mediators in literary creation and companion pieces to texts and books, such as the Convent of Mafra in José Saramago’s novel Baltasar and Blimunda, or the photographs in George Rodenbach’s Bruges-la-Morte, André Breton’s Nadja, and the works of W.G. Sebald. But they can also assert their presence in different ways: as central references (John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Samuel Pozzi in Julian Barnes’ The Man in the Red Coat); sources of inspiration (A.S. Byatt’s The Matisse Stories); objects of intermedial adaptations (Brueghel’s Procession to Calvary in Michael F. Gibson’s exploratory essay The Mill and the Cross); or entirely fictional constructs (the bronze idol in Prosper Mérimée’s La Vénus d’Ille, the narrator’s paintings in Clarice Lispector’s Água Viva, or the “disconnected objects” of Leila Aboulela’s short story “The Museum”).

Prospective authors are invited to look into the different ways in which works of art of all forms and media travel throughout the globe, and in this process contribute to the definition and formation of world literature, allowing it to look beyond the hegemonic centres and safeguarding diversity. They are encouraged to discuss the material or ghostly presence of artifacts and art works in literature, as well as the role of world literature in the international circulation of artistic cultures.

Some of the topics we hope to explore in this issue include:
 
§  the role of intermediality in comparative and world literature;
§  the impact of art and material culture in the global circulation of literature;
§  aestheticism, exoticism, and modern definitions of art;
§  artistic cosmopolitanism and/or regionalism from the nineteenth century to today;
§  art, sex and the genders of world literature;
§  world literature and practices of collecting, connoisseurship, and international travel;
§  showing and telling in film, photography, short fiction, ekphrastic poetry;
§  world literature as visual culture: illustration, adaptation, manga;
§  commercial, imperial and (post)colonial routes in the circulation of art and literature.
 
We especially encourage submissions on topics that reach beyond Western cultures, as well as submissions from doctoral students and early-career researchers. Submitted articles may be written in English, Portuguese, Spanish, or French, and should range between 6,000 and 8,000 words, including notes, references, an abstract of 150 to 250 words, as well as 4 to 6 keywords.

Authors must follow the formatting guidelines listed in the Submissions section under “Author Guidelines” on the journal’s website. Online submission: to register and submit your article for peer review, please follow the hyperlink “Make a Submission” on the Compendium homepage before the 30th of May 2022.
 
Editors of this issue :

Amândio Reis (University of Lisbon)
Stefano Evangelista (Oxford University)