For the last twenty years or so, the issue of ‘world literature’ has become one of the central issues of literary studies. As the neoliberal narrative of globalisation has long lost its credibility in the humanities and as the planet is increasingly subject to fundamental transformations ranging from mass migration through climate change to never-ending asymmetrical warfare, literature as a cultural phenomenon is facing the challenges of the global. But even as ‘world literature’ or ‘global literature’ are moving to the centre of critical attention, new questions arise: What does the term ‘global’ actually mean when it is attached to literature? Is there such a thing as a ‘literary globality’ that is distinct from other forms of the global? What kind of world do we imagine when we speak of ‘global literature’? And what are the temporal dimensions of this globality? Is world literature an object of study or is it a set of methodologies? How, if at all, does world literature fit into literary history? These are only some of the questions that this course will have to address. Course work will primarily consist of reading and discussing a selection of seminal contributions to the world literature debate. The required texts will be put at the students’ disposal via Blackboard at the beginning of the teaching period. The course will be taught in English, with the vast majority of the texts being in English. But there will also be one or two texts in German – a competence of German at the level of C1 or higher would therefore be helpful. close