B: Michaelmas Term
The B-course for the MSt in World Literature strand introduces students to the methodologies and theories of bibliography, manuscript studies, textual scholarship, and book history. These are framed specifically within the broad concerns and methodologies of world book history and the emergence and institutionalisation of the categories of world and postcolonial literature within global and local literary spaces and the publishing industry.
The course has two different components:
(i) Material Texts (Michaelmas and Hilary Term)
(ii) Primary Source Research Skills (Michaelmas Term)
Material Texts will be taught in weekly two-hour seminars taught over ten weeks in Michaelmas and Hilary Terms introducing a range of debates and methods in material approaches to literary culture relevant to world book history. Primary Source Research Skills will be taught over six weeks in Michaelmas Term and will focus specifically on working with literary archives, modern literary manuscripts, digital archival materials and institutional archives. Please note in the schedule below that seminars do not take place each week for both courses in Michaelmas Term; the seminars in each course have been coordinated to speak to one another and there is a rationale for the order of the seminars.
The course assumes no prior knowledge of material approaches to literary culture. The seminars will introduce a range of theories and debates in the field. We will circulate a detailed bibliography at the start of Michaelmas Term to guide your reading as you engage with the topics of the seminars. You may be asked to prepare particular tasks for seminars, but there will not normally be a list of required reading. Instead you are encouraged to read further in line with your developing research projects, which should draw on the skills and methods that the course introduces. There will be opportunities to discuss your project in one to one consultations in Michaelmas and Hilary Terms, and the course will culminate with presentations and feedback on your essay projects in Hilary Term. For now, we ask that you read as widely as possible in the suggested Introductory Reading below, which has been selected to offer you a taste of the different critical approaches possible within the B Course.
Michaelmas Term
(i) Material Texts
Week 1 Instituting World Literature I
Week 2 Introduction to Bibliography
Week 3 Introduction to Book History
Week 4 The Industry of World/Postcolonial Literature
Week 5 Orality and Literacy
Week 6 Cross-strand Material Texts Over Time
Week 7 No class this week
Week 8 Initial essay consultations (one to one)
(ii) Primary Source Research Skills
Week 1 Reading Modern Literary Manuscripts
Week 2 The Writer’s Archive
Week 3 Making Meaning in the Archive
Week 4 No class this week
Week 5 Working with Digital Archives
Week 6 No class this week
Week 7 Institutional Archives I: Publishers OUP
Week 8 Institutional Archives II: Prizes Booker Prize Archive
Hilary Term
Material Texts
Week 1 Instituting World Literature II
Week 2 Student presentations
Week 3 Student presentations
Week 4 Student presentations
Week 6/7 Final essay consultations (one to one)
Introductory Reading
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Edited by Randal Johnson. Cambridge: Polity, 1993.
• Casanova, Pascale. The World Republic of Letters. Trans. M.B. DeBevoise. Cambridge, MS: Harvard University Press, 2007. Trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan.
• Chartier, Roger. “Language, Books, and Reading from the Printed Word to the Digital Text,” Critical Inquiry 31.1 (Autumn 2004): 133-152.
• Darnton, Robert. ‘What Is the History of Books?’ Daedalus 111 (1982): 65-83. • Eggert, Paul. ‘Brought to Book: Bibliography, Book History and the Study of Literature’. The Library 13.1 (2012): 3-32.
• Finkelstein, David, and Alistair McCleery, eds. The Book History Reader. London: Routledge, 2002.
• McDonald, Peter D. “Ideas of the Book and Histories of Literature: after Theory?” PMLA 121.1 (2006): 214-228.
• McKenzie, D. F. Bibliography and the Sociology of Text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Murray, Simone. Introduction to Contemporary Print Culture: Books as Media. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021.
• Price, Leah. What We Talk About When We Talk About Books: The History and Future of Reading. New York: Basic Books, 2019.
• Steedman, Carolyn. Dust. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001.
• Willis, Ika. Reception. Abingdon: Oxon.: Routledge, 2018
