World Literature, Transnational Cinema, and Global Media

"Robert Stam takes on the world—world literature, world cinema, world digital media, even world music—in this heaven-storming encyclopedia that shows what happens to all sorts of entertainment when it crosses national and cultural borders and gets reconceptualized, rebranded, marginalized, reviled, hailed, or all of the above. Although his canvas is vast, Stam is less a synthesizer intent on providing a single authoritative map revealing the relations among world literature, postcolonial literature, and transnational cinema than an effervescent and monumentally well-informed tour guide who wants to raise our consciousness, or a big-top carnival barker who invites us to celebrate carnival culture."

Thomas Leitch, University of Delaware

"World Literature, Transnational Cinema, and Global Media stages a much needed, layered, and illuminating dialogue between the related fields of literature, cinema, and media studies. All marked by a 'transnational turn', these fields share various methodologies and concerns, yet rarely talk to and learn from each other. In a beautifully orchestrated polylogue that engages fresh voices and perspectives, Stam not only addresses but actually moves across various kinds of borders—spatial, temporal, discursive, disciplinary, mediatic, textual—with incredible deftness, scope, and insight. In this invaluable book, border-crossing or 'trans' in all its permutations is not just a buzz word but an epistemological prerogative, a necessary way of thinking and understanding."

Meta Mazaj, Univesity of Pennsylvania

"Robert Stam’s pivotal position in film and literary studies is once again confirmed with this book, a sweeping account of how literature, film and all other arts converse beyond national and medial borders. Stam, like no-one else, can make sense of the jargon of 'trans', 'inter' and 'global' that litters contemporary academic vocabulary. Away from easy sloganeering and drawing on his truly encyclopaedic erudition in art history and theory, he weaves these terms into a 'network of activism', as he calls it, in order to effectively combat ideas of 'primacies' and 'centres' so dear to the colonial project. Stam’s luminous scholarship is ferociously political, but equally compelling for its openness to the beauty of the arts, languages and cultures of the entire world."

Lúcia Nagib, University of Reading

"In the 21st century most cultural fields such as cinema, literature, and music have abandoned their national identities for a global practice in which different traditions and forms pass through new crucibles of creativity. Yet while their critical reception has acknowledged the irruption of the global within them, Robert Stam is the first to demonstrate that global also means the crossing of different fields with each other. This brilliant study of transcreativity across contemporary cultures offers the first analysis of the transformative power of globalization across the media."

Robert J. C. Young, New York University

"Written with encyclopedic erudition, the book can simultaneously be read as a sophisticated reader or "keyword" reference book providing guidance to navigate an increasingly complex body of academic literature [... ] and a much more ambitious essay calling for experimental teaching and research methodologies [...] Stam’s line of arguments transgresses well-established national, disciplinary and historical borders—a gesture that often implies a critical revision of the traditional toolbox of (Western) film scholars."

SYNOPTIQUE Review, Pablo La Parra-Pérez

"Robert Stam takes on the world—world literature, world cinema, world digital media, even world music—in this heaven-storming encyclopedia that shows what happens to all sorts of entertainment when it crosses national and cultural borders and gets reconceptualized, rebranded, marginalized, reviled, hailed, or all of the above. Although his canvas is vast, Stam is less a synthesizer intent on providing a single authoritative map revealing the relations among world literature, postcolonial literature, and transnational cinema than an effervescent and monumentally well-informed tour guide who wants to raise our consciousness, or a big-top carnival barker who invites us to celebrate carnival culture."

Thomas Leitch, University of Delaware

"World Literature, Transnational Cinema, and Global Media stages a much needed, layered, and illuminating dialogue between the related fields of literature, cinema, and media studies. All marked by a 'transnational turn', these fields share various methodologies and concerns, yet rarely talk to and learn from each other. In a beautifully orchestrated polylogue that engages fresh voices and perspectives, Stam not only addresses but actually moves across various kinds of borders—spatial, temporal, discursive, disciplinary, mediatic, textual—with incredible deftness, scope, and insight. In this invaluable book, border-crossing or 'trans' in all its permutations is not just a buzz word but an epistemological prerogative, a necessary way of thinking and understanding."

Meta Mazaj, Univesity of Pennsylvania

"Robert Stam’s pivotal position in film and literary studies is once again confirmed with this book, a sweeping account of how literature, film and all other arts converse beyond national and medial borders. Stam, like no-one else, can make sense of the jargon of 'trans', 'inter' and 'global' that litters contemporary academic vocabulary. Away from easy sloganeering and drawing on his truly encyclopaedic erudition in art history and theory, he weaves these terms into a 'network of activism', as he calls it, in order to effectively combat ideas of 'primacies' and 'centres' so dear to the colonial project. Stam’s luminous scholarship is ferociously political, but equally compelling for its openness to the beauty of the arts, languages and cultures of the entire world."

Lúcia Nagib, University of Reading

"In the 21st century most cultural fields such as cinema, literature, and music have abandoned their national identities for a global practice in which different traditions and forms pass through new crucibles of creativity. Yet while their critical reception has acknowledged the irruption of the global within them, Robert Stam is the first to demonstrate that global also means the crossing of different fields with each other. This brilliant study of transcreativity across contemporary cultures offers the first analysis of the transformative power of globalization across the media."

Robert J. C. Young, New York University