Professor Hayot (Comparative Literature, Penn State University) will be discussing issues that are central to comparative literary study today: literary "worldedness," the possibilities of global history, and the kind of data that literature is or may aspire to be.
The current President of the American Comparative Literature Association, Professor Hayot has published widely on comparative literary modernisms and on East/West cultural relations. He is the author of Chinese Dreams (2004), The Hypothetical Mandarin: Sympathy, Modernity, and Chinese Pain (2009), and On Literary Worlds (2012), among many other works.
Professor Hayot will refer to two short documents:
The Introduction to On Literary Worlds (request a pdf at
The text of a talk from January's MLA Conference (http://arcade.stanford.edu/content/what-data-literary-studies-1)
A reception will follow the seminar; both are open to the public, students and faculty.