Feminism as World Literature

The contributors of Feminism as World Literature highlight the transformative potential of feminist methodologies in the field of World Literature. By rejecting the supplementary condition of feminist studies in relation to World Literature, the contributors illuminate the powerful renegotiations and transfigurations that feminist studies can perform in relation to this field. Through the reassessment of traditional literary canons and heuristic paradigms, the contributors confront the hierarchies and binaries that underpin literary studies, redefining not only World Literature scholarship but also highlighting the power of feminist reconceptualizations to imagine worlds beyond these paradigms. * Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory *
Feminism is at once a paradigm and project of globality but, as Robin Truth Goodman points out in her introduction to this trenchant collection, the world-making of feminism has not always been acknowledged as a pivotal condition of world literature as such. Divided into sections examining genres, strategies, and themes, the book assembles leading critics in the field to reconstellate the parameters of world literature as a feminist imperative. Whether reading the political imaginary of Mahasweta Devi or confronting the question of the 'human' in the work of Maryse Condé, the contributors offer vibrant ways to understand the complex cultural genealogies of feminism in a global frame. A timely intervention. * Peter Hitchcock, Professor of English, Baruch College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, USA *
Feminism as World Literature is a major critical intervention, which offers a much-needed renegotiation of world literature through the framework of feminism. The volume’s compelling introduction and seventeen chapters authoritatively establish feminism as an integral part of world literature, while also offering a nuanced account of how a world-literature perspective recasts feminist terms and assumptions. This discipline-defining book will be required reading for scholars and students of world literature as well as of feminism and its legacies. * Anna Watz, Associate Professor of English, Linköping University, Sweden *
A much-needed contribution to the 'as World Literature' series, Feminism as World Literature critically reads feminism through the prism of world literature and vice versa. Presenting a wide geographical, historical and thematic range, its engagement with feminist planetary world-making and environmental, gender, and racial justice, as well as with different genres (e.g., hip hop, science fiction) and strategies make it an important contribution to both feminist scholarship and to the study of World and Comparative Literature. * Liedeke Plate, Professor of Culture and Inclusivity, Radboud University, Netherlands *
[T]his volume engages in a crucial conversation about the complexities of world literature. Looking through the lens of feminism, Goodman and her fellow contributors offer new perspectives and understandings of genres, theories, canons, and strategies of reading that have traditionally been associated with world literature. ... [T]his book as a whole provides an integral entry point to the conversation of feminism in world literature. Summing Up: Highly recommended. * Choice *
[Feminism as World Literature] both challenges – and attempts to go beyond – the universalism of World Literature through the different methodologies in the chapters ... The book offers a range of new perspectives on the existing ideas of World Literature and feminism, making it a unique attempt to bring them together and opening a new field for discussion. -- Mrinalini Raj & Sarbani Banerjee * Journal of Gender Studies *