Apply - Institute for World Literature (Harvard University, 30 June – 24 July 2025)

The British Centre for Literary Translation, on behalf of the Consortium for Humanities and the Arts – South-East England (CHASE), is pleased to announce two sponsored places at the annual Institute for World Literature (IWL), to be held in person at Harvard University in summer 2025.

The 15th IWL session will take place 30 June – 24 July 2025 at Harvard University.  This ambitious four-week programme includes a total of twelve two-week seminars taught by leading names in world literature today, together with outstanding guest lectures and the opportunity for participants to share their work in colloquia. Participants will have the chance to examine critically the latest challenges of this comprehensive and rapidly developing field, from its theoretical concepts and the history of the discipline to its forms of practice today embedded in a world market.

In addition to attending seminars, participants will give a paper or present a work in progress or a recent project within one of nine colloquia organized around broad themes: World Literature and Production, World Literature and Circulation, World Literature and Translation, Postcolonialism and World Literature, World Cinema and World Literature, Premodern Literature and World Literature, Sociology and World Literature, and Politics, Poetics and World Literature, and including as of this year the Balzan Colloquium on literary responses to environmental crisis. Meeting once each week with their peers under the leadership of one of the postdoc or faculty participants, they have the opportunity to share their work and receive valuable feedback from scholars all over the world working on similar topics, and develop new projects including future ACLA seminars.

The programme includes seminars and guest lectures by faculty including David Damrosch (Harvard University), Matylda Figlerowicz (Harvard University), Debjani Ganguly (University of Virginia), Dominique Jullien (UC Santa Barbara), Françoise Král (University Paris Nanterre), Jahan Ramazani (University of Virginia), Mads Rosendahl Thomsen (Aarhus University), Delia Ungureanu (University of Bucharest), Moira Weigel (Harvard University), Jennifer Wenzel (Columbia University) and Zhang Longxi (Hunan Normal University). André Aciman, the New York Times bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name and Find Me as well as of Out of Egypt will be this session’s special guest writer.

Further details about IWL are available at: http://iwl.fas.harvard.edu/

Applications are welcomed from current PhD students at all CHASE institutions (NB: the scheme is not restricted to students who are already CHASE-funded).  If you are interested in attending IWL 2025, please email BCLT (bclt@uea.ac.uk) no later than Friday 31 January, including a copy of your CV and a 300-word statement describing current scholarly interests and plans, as well as specific suggestions as to how the IWL might further those interests and plans. The statement should also include information about any relevant courses taken and/or taught in comparative and world literature and theory.  BCLT will assess the applications and select those most likely to benefit from the experience.

The successful applicants will be responsible for their own travel, room and board, and incidental costs. They are also initially responsible for paying the tuition fee (at a discounted rate) but will then claim reimbursement of the tuition fee through CHASE.

Please direct any enquiries to Prof. Duncan Large at BCLT (d.large@uea.ac.uk).