To make their stories more accessible for new readers, superheroes have their origins and defining moments updated regularly. However, due to the eternally repeating nature of comics, any innovations or changes are soon reversed, and the narratives return to their original status quo. The much-hyped 1992 Death of Superman multi-crossover storyline is a prominent example, when after the eventual return of the Man of Steel even his hairstyle would soon revert to the original.

One of the writers who had a more lasting impact on the characters they tried to redefine is Frank Miller with his two runs on Daredevil. In his first run (#168-#191, 1981-1983) he transformed Bullseye and the Kingpin into major adversaries of Daredevil and introduced his love interest/ninja-assassin Elektra. In his second run Miller, with artist David Mazzucchelli, wrote his ultimate Daredevil storyline: Born Again (1986). In this 7-issue (#227-#233) series Miller had Daredevil meticulously destroyed by the Kingpin, so he had to be reborn to defeat his archenemy. All the characters mentioned above, and the story patterns established by Miller are still major elements of the Daredevil storyverse, even in the current series, restarting with #1 in 2023. This paper aims to analyze Miller’s lasting impact on Daredevil and comics.

In my presentation, I explore how "The Wicked + The Divine" by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie reimagines superhero narratives by queering archetypes and blending Western traditions with global mythological reinterpretations. Set in a world where reincarnated gods drawn from various myths and religions enjoy fame and power only to die within two years, this series uses superpowers as extensions of (queer) embodiment, rejecting the expectation of superheroes to conform to normative heroics. Thus, members of the Pantheon embody superhero archetypes in ways that disrupt traditional good-versus-evil binaries as their superpowers (and their use) are fluid, plural, morally ambiguous, and culturally transformative.

Drawing on queer theory and comics studies (most notably research on the intersections between mythology and superhero genre), I explore how the series queers the ethics of superpowers by linking it to broadly understood queerness and intersectional identity. To start with, Lucifer queers the archetype of a rebellious superhero by rejecting rebellion as duty, using flames as an act of personal and performative defiance. Moreover, Inanna subverts the super-heroic healer archetype by blending care and intimacy as well as defying expectations of altruistic sacrifice. Baal’s leadership reveals the compromises of systemic power, queering the archetype of a leader by exposing the burdens tied to fame and ethnic and racial identity. Finally, I bring together all the elements of the presentation and highlight how by engaging with diverse mythological traditions (including South Asian, Japanese, and Mesopotamian) and subverting the superhero archetypes, the series critiques the universality of Western ethics of heroism.

A comic book cover becomes a threshold across which multiple meanings and contrasting ideas manifest themselves. Divorced from the sequential order of the comic, the encounter with the cover more closely resembles the encounter with a painting than a comics page. Functioning as a singular work of art, a comic cover captures a snapshot, a fleeting moment, the pulse of the story, a dominant affect, a dynamism that one must brace for, or a bold style.

The comic book cover incorporates the reader in an active meaning-making process. The unnerving depictions of monstrous figures presented on Metal Hurlant absorb the beholder into the face of the monster. I argue that the gaze, as theorized by John Berger and Laura Mulvey collapses the tenuous divide between heroes and villains, self and other. The monstrous other performs a pivotal deconstructive function in its “subversive relationship to established epistemic binaries” (Sewel, Tom. Spirit in the Gutters, 2023. 158). The monstrous body, as a source of this epistemic instability, is not only the object of our gaze but also a gazing subject. Compelled by the doomed urge to classify or categorize the monster, the reader’s gaze becomes the first interpretive act of the comic reading experience. In their unstable significations, comic covers evade such easy interpretation.

Through the dual processes of projection and objectification, I argue that visual depictions of otherness lend themselves to a complication of the hero villain dichotomy, and the starting point for this complication is cover art. I analyze a selection of Metal Hurlant covers published between 1975 to 1980, as well as classic superhero covers as the earliest visual representations of heroism in Superman (the 1938 cover of Action Comics #1) and Batman (1939 cover of Detective Comics #27), interrogating whether heroism is signified in these graphic depictions or imposed retroactively. I analyze the necessity of sequentiality in Sergio Toppi’s comic Sharaz-De: Tales from the Arabian Nights. Gaze theory, as an active interpretive tool, deconstructs comic covers, explaining how such visual depictions of otherness demand theorization before text can unpack every possible interpretation.

I show how cover art raises interesting questions regarding otherness and its representations. Metal Hurlant covers encapsulate thematic concerns through amalgamation instead of simplification, rejecting neat archetypes in favor of strange bodies trembling with potentialities.

Over the last 70 years, the superhero has grown from one genre among many in mainstream US/UK comics into the most prominent genre of graphic narrative in both the US and UK. From the brightly-coloured moral certainties of the Golden and Silver Ages to the fraught and trammeled, ethically ambiguous figures of millennial comics, the figure of the superhero has often been used as a weathervane to understand the tensions and anxieties of its contemporary era.

This paper argues that this seeming flexibility of the superhero figure is misleading, and that in actuality, the figure of the superhero has always been, and is always already, an avatar of fascist politics of one kind or another. While such figures may be deployed to diverse political ends, in the forms of satire or parody, I argue that the idea (still held by many progressively-minded comics writers and scholars) that the superhero can be rehabilitated or recovered from its inherently fascist origins is an illusion.

I analyze some of the works of the British Invasion writers, including Moore, Morrison, and Ellis, to develop a critique of the fascism of the superhero through close attention to the precise configuration of the figure of the superhero in their works (Watchmen, The Invisibles, Planetary). I look at representations of the most prominent superheroes of bygone eras, and read their political valences through Fredric Wertham, Walter J. Ong, and Umberto Eco. I look at key moments in comics history, from Captain America punching Hitler, to Judge Dredd delivering summary justice to perpetrators, to think about how the figure of the hero (and especially the superhero) in comics conditions the reader to desire “the blandishments of strong men who will solve all their social problems for them – by force” (Wertham 34).

I use the theory of Rey Chow to think about how the idealization of the individual is the central aesthetic principle of fascism, and turn that apparatus towards superheroes to show how even where the figure of the superhero is deployed as satire it cannot avoid running foul of the tendency to idealize, idolize and ideologize.

M’quidech est un personnage mythique du patrimoine culturel algérien, plus précisément berbère. Il s’agit d’un petit garçon courageux qui lutte contre les dangers qui s’infligent sur les gens de sa petite communauté. Â partir de 1969, ce personnage fut exploité dans le cadre du roman graphique algérien, en bande dessinée, par Ahmed Haroun (considéré comme l’un des premiers illustrateurs algériens) . Cette bande dessinée illustre les aventures de m’quidech dans un cadre oscillant entre l’héroïsme mythique, le folklore oral et la culture algérienne. Dans notre présentation, nous allons plonger dans le paysage culturel et mythologique algérien tout en analysant le roman graphique en question selon, premièrement, une perspective sémio-narrative, ensuite transculturelle. Tout en mettant au centre le caractère d’héroïsme comme caractéristique principale de la construction narrative du personnage principal, notre étude se focalisera également sur les représentations socioculturelles de la notion d'héroisme dans les communautés nord africaines en général, et algérienne en particulier; le tout selon une perspective plus large avec les grandes formes graphique mondiales. Cette recherche se basera sur une comparaison littéraire et transculturelle de la notion d'héroisme dans la littérature graphique dans ces différentes traditions: européenne, nord américaine et asiatique ainsi que leurs dimensions éthniques et culturelles.

Graphic narratives have long been expert at portraying differing feats of heroism: this includes narratives of cape-wearing superheroes, but also, arguably, more recent medical memoirs about people living with illness. In my talk, I want to focus on a different kind of “heroism”: the heroism inherent in living a lesbian adolescence. In the past decade, there has been a plethora of lesbian coming-of-age narratives in comic form, including Maggie Thrash’s Honor Girl (2015) and Lost Soul, Be at Peace (2018), Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell’s Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me (2019), Eleanor Crewes’ The Times I Knew I was Gay (2020), Molly Knox Ostertag’s The Girl from the Sea (2021), Jillian and Mariko Tamaki’s Roaming (2023), and much of Tillie Walden’s oeuvre. I am interested in how within comics, which as an art form has long been linked to adolescence, creators have now carved out a space for a particular kind of adolescence – a lesbian one – to be put on the page. (Although arguably, there is a lesbian/bisexual precursor as far back as Wonder Woman.) In my analysis, I want to particularly focus on Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me and The Girl from the Sea, two texts which at first glance seem vastly different: while Laura Dean is set in a high school and features only human characters, The Girl from the Sea is about a human girl falling in love with a female selkie, a Celtic mythological creature living in the sea. Both graphic narratives have a strong sense of place. In my talk, I want to explore how these texts depict lesbian desire, and a lesbian adolescence, both as something ordinary—something very much of a piece with the rest of the characters’ lives—and as something otherworldly and transporting, with the high school rendered just as strange as the sea’s edge.

In Tessa Hulls' graphic memoir Feeding Ghosts (2024), the convergence of visual and textual storytelling creates a uniquely powerful medium for exploring intergenerational trauma within Chinese American experience. This paper examines how the distinctive properties of graphic narrative enable the representation of trauma, postmemory, and cultural healing in ways that conventional narrative forms cannot achieve. Through close analysis of Hulls' visual-verbal strategies, this study reveals how the comics medium provides sophisticated tools for articulating experiences that often resist traditional narrative representation.

Drawing on Marianne Hirsch's theoretical framework of postmemory and Hillary Chute's groundbreaking work on graphic narratives as trauma texts, this analysis demonstrates how the formal elements of comics—including panel structure, page layout, visual metaphor, and text-image interaction—create a dynamic framework for processing inherited trauma and facilitating intergenerational healing. The study focuses on three crucial aspects of Hulls' work: the spatial architecture of comics as a mirror for traumatic memory, the visual-verbal representation of postmemory, and the transformative power of artistic creation in cultural healing.

First, the research examines how the structural elements of comics, particularly gutters and panel transitions, parallel the fragmentary nature of traumatic memory and its transmission across generations. Second, it analyzes how the synthesis of visual and verbal elements enables the complex representation of postmemory through techniques such as nested narratives, visual echoes, and temporal layering. Finally, it explores how the act of drawing itself becomes a method of cultural healing, enabling the reconstruction of fractured family narratives and the integration of disparate cultural identities.

This research makes a significant contribution to both trauma studies and comics studies by illuminating the unique capabilities of graphic narratives in representing and transforming inherited trauma. Through its examination of Feeding Ghosts, this paper demonstrates how the graphic memoir format serves not only as a witness to traumatic histories but also as a powerful vehicle for processing and transforming intergenerational trauma through artistic creation. The findings have implications for understanding both the theoretical foundations of trauma representation and the practical applications of graphic narrative in therapeutic and cultural contexts.

Cha Cha on the Bridge, written by Yoon Pil and illustrated by Jaeso, is a 60-episode webtoon that was first published in weekly installments in 2018 and later published as a two-volume graphic novel. It was the Grand Prize winner of the 2019 Science Fiction Awards in Korea. The soft-toned black and white pencil sketch illustrations provide a sharp contrast to the futuristic setting where human labor have been replaced by AI robots and massive data centers accessible to only a tiny handful of the elite can store and manipulate information to achieve desired outcomes.

In this webtoon, the two main protagonists are AI robots. “Cha Cha” is a humanoid robot that was introduced in the year 2030 to prevent humans from killing themselves on Mapo Bridge, a site notorious for its alarming suicide rate. “Ai,” who owns and operates a nursing home for the elderly, eventually learns about Cha Cha from the numerous residents who reminisce about “the Bridge” where they had almost ended their lives. Cha and Ai heroically save lives in a postmodern, posthuman society where robots have been programmed to be kind and perform tedious tasks, while humans have become cold and calculating machines that act upon their selfish impulses, heartlessly abusing and discriminate against children, women, and migrant workers.

“Cha Cha on the Bridge” explores what it means to be human, and how behaving like a warm, friendly human is so rare in contemporary society that the simple act of sharing a meal together, or making time to chat about personal matters with a colleague, seems to be a heroic feat. It also uncovers the arbitrariness of human values, such as when a War Robot’s killing of a human can make you a murderer or war hero, depending on circumstances. A few exceptional robots begin to think on their own, act and think as if they have free will, and desire to become human.

This comic can also be analyzed through the framework of Groensteen’s “postmodern turn.” The work is characterized by narrative disruption. Flashbacks from past and present are made confusing because the robots do not age and retain the identical appearance even after decades have passed, whereas the human characters show signs of wear.

Comic book Westerns began to appear in Poland in the interwar period, and these were mostly translations and adaptations of American or European works, although several Polish Western comics were published at that time, too. The Second World War interrupted the development of the art of comics in Poland, and its aftermath was far from conducive to the revival of the genre because of the strict control of the publishing market by the authorities. It was in the 1960s that authors could again create comics with a greater sense of freedom, and this is when the comic book Western re-merged in Poland, largely thanks to the work of Jerzy Wróblewski, one of the most prolific Polish authors of comics of the second half of the twentieth century, who employed a range of popular genres in his work. He was the only Polish comics author who can be said to have specialized in the Western, and the paper will concentrate on the construction of heroes and anti-heroes in his Westerns. In the 60s and 70s he produced a series of sensational/adventure formulaic Westerns, featuring what might be called romantic Western heroes—lone men with exceptional fighting skills and a good sense of justice. Some of them set out on a search for beloved women who have been kidnapped, which enhances the aura of romance. In the 80s. Wróblewski continued to work on Westerns, but completely changed the convention into a cartoonish, parody representation. He created a series of stories about sheriff Binio Bill, who always takes the upper hand, but before this happens he faces adventures the depiction of which resembles gags in a slapstick comedy. The aura of heroism that traditionally surrounds the Western hero is thus completely dispelled.

This paper examines Eric Drooker’s 2010 graphic adaptation of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl as a reinterpretation of Ekphrastic Beat poetics in visual form. By translating Ginsberg’s charged rhythms into sequential art, the adaptation fleshes out the poem’s core tension between resistance and repression. Moloch will be read as a visual embodiment of faceless, mechanized power, a modern anti-hero, while Carl Solomon stands as a symbol of human vulnerability. The paper attempts to explore the shared ground between Beat poetry and comics, both of which challenge conventional narrative through fragmentation, reworked structures, and rhythm. The incantation of the unsymbolisable , the inchoate, and the essential sense of uncontainment of the poetry is transfigured into panels of abandon and colour. The adaptation brings to the surface the psychic dissonance at the heart of Howl—where language falters before the trauma of modern life, and the image steps in to express the ‘untranslatable.’

The Asterix comics, created by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo in 1959, have for over half a century played a vital role in contextualizing life under the Romans. It is in fact oftentimes the very first contact its younger readers might have with Antiquity.

The stories have transported fans of all ages to several of Rome’s provinces, offering a pointed critique of imperialism while also delineating the benefits of cross-cultural interaction. Asterix is a hero whose physical strength derives from his community: he is a regular Gaul who drinks the magic potion brewed by Panoramix, the druid, as an act of resistance against the Romans. In his travels, he meets many peoples who attempt to resist in their own ways.

By telling the stories of martial glory through a graphic narrative, it could be said that the Gauls would be reclaiming a very Roman narrative strategy, as Roman Emperors were famous for commissioning detailed retellings of their victories over one people or another (see the Arch of Titus or Trajan’s Column). Julius Caesar, himself the antagonist of Asterix, went as far as to write “The Conquest of Gaul”.

In this paper, I will argue that Uderzo and Goscinny caught on to the similarities between Gaul in the first century BC and France in the 20th century AD, effectively using the ancients to speak about their present. While some of the grand themes of the comics, such as national identity, are retroactively imposed on Antiquity (see Hobsbawm, 1990, “Nations and Nationalism since 1780”), other major topics, like Imperialism, have roots in Classical Civilisation (see, for instance, Loren J. Samons, 1999; E. Babian, 1968, for Greek and Roman Imperialism respectively).

Several comic books, graphic narratives, and manga depict both citizens’ and soldiers’ experiences during war. For World War II history, notably, we can point to George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy, wherein he describes his childhood experience in a Japanese internment camp. Showa: A History of Japan by Shigeru Mizuki uses the graphic narrative genre to describe his life and military service during the war era; Art Spiegelman’s renowned Maus depicted the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. Perhaps less known is James Kugler’s Into the Jungle! A Boy’s Comic Strip History of World War II notable because a young man from a small Nebraska town does not depict first-hand experience in war, but his own interpretation of events based on news accounts and other media.

The Korean War has similarly been depicted in texts like The Waiting by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim and “Cold War Correspondent,” included in Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales series. Such a range of texts for these historical events is important, as comics creator, scholar and authority Hilary Chute explains in Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form, because “they incline the [graphic narrative] form to the expression of witness, to picturing subjectivity and the paradox of history’s layered spaces and temporalities” (p. 69).

This paper proposes to feature other war heroes. Like Kugler himself, these heroes come from a town that’s not generally well-known: Gallup, New Mexico. The more famous of them are the Navajo Code Talkers, whose story is depicted in texts like Tales of the Mighty Code Talkers, edited by Arigon Starr, Janet Miner, and Lee Francis IV, canonical figures in the Native American comics industry. Another text is the Graphic Library’s Navajo Code Talkers: Top Secret Messengers of World War II. Juxtaposed with the images from this text, I’ll include images of artifacts collected in a museum in Gallup dedicated to the Code Talkers.

Related thereto, I’ll also present on another Gallup World War II hero, Hiroshi Miyamura. As a noted Korean War hero, many local institutions (a bridge, a school, and more) are named for Miyamura. However, his life and valorous service in the war have been immortalized in the Association of the Unites States Army’s comic book series, Medal of Honor: Hiroshi Miyamura.

While most often, concepts of the hero in the comics and graphic narrative world focus on superheroes, this presentation takes a different tack: demonstrating how real-life heroes can come from tiny towns and become renowned for their actions. They’re not from Smallville, Kansas, but instead from Gallup, New Mexico.

Superheroes in komiks (Philippine adaptation of comics) possess a unique ability to reflect cultural values and societal issues through their narratives, making them an important medium for critical analysis. Interestingly, the term "Third World" is used in contemporary Filipino superhero narratives in this study, framing local socio-political realities within a global context while challenging its traditional implications. My paper contends that the Filipino superhero genre, with its hybridity and engagement with the concept of the "Third World," challenges dominant narratives and redefines the genre. The study analyzes Filipino Heroes League by Paolo Fabregas (2009–2019), 3rd World Power by JV Tanjuatco and Jim N. Jimenez (2022), and Sixty Six by Russell Molina, Ian Sta. Maria, and Mikey Marchan (2015, 2020) using superhero genre elements (powers, mission, and identity) and the general narrative structure of superhero stories. These texts utilize genre conventions not only to engage with global archetypes but also to reflect on issues of poverty, corruption, and inequality within urban Philippine contexts. Through genre analysis, this chapter highlights how Filipino komiks blend Western influences with distinctly Filipino elements, using the superhero narrative as a medium to critique socio-political realities while reimagining and ultimately redefining the concept of the "Third World."

In the early eighties Comics Forum obtained the publishing rights of Marvel superheroes in Spain that until then had been in the hands of Ediciones Vértice and Editorial Bruguera. Forum’s success was based on the creation of a close link with the reader through sections such as fan mail and other similar ones. This link meant the creation of a fandom that, together with the decline during those years of the European-style magazine model, meant an Americanization of the publishing paradigm associated with comics in Spain in the nineties. From that moment, most publishers adopted to a greater extent the comic-book format of the U.S. market. This meant that series created by Spanish authors began to appear in this format, some of which included stories featuring superheroes. This paper will analyze one of these initiatives, that of the Iberia Inc group, which is particularly interesting because it shows how this process of Americanization reflected in the adoption of the figure of the superhero is adapted to the tradition of Spanish comics, so that the series is a mixture of conventions related to the history of comics in both countries that allows us to analyze what popular culture was in Spain in the eighties and the enormous influence that the United States had in its configuration. In addition, the analysis of this group of superheroes allows us to study how the ideology of the superhero adapts to the circumstances of Spanish society, very different from that of the United States, in years not too far removed from the process of transition from dictatorship to democracy that happened in Spain after Franco’s death.

Li Jiugong (?-1681), a scholar in the late Ming Dynasty, was named Qixu, and his brother Li Jiubiao (date of birth and death unknown, named Qixiang) was from Futang, Fuqing area, Fujian. In 1628, he met Giulio Aleni, “Confucius from the West” in Fuzhou and actively preached after converting to Catholicism. “Lixiu Yijian” is a testimony and achievement of Li Jiugong’s preaching. Li Jiugong “selected the simple and interesting stories from the eighteen kinds of Tianxue books and wrote them down”, and compiled them into “Lixiu Yijian” (1639-1645, two volumes) , “to help encouraging scholars to self-cultivation”.

Belgian sinologist Erik Zürcher paid attention to Li Jiugong’s “Lixiu Yijian” at an earlier year and called it “Strange Stories from a Late Ming Christian Manuscript” (1985); in recent years, several English papers have been published, such as Valentina Lin Yang Yang’s master’s thesis in Traditional East Asian Studies at Oxford University: “The religious world in late Ming China as seen through the 勵修一鑬 Lixiu yijian” (2018), and her latest paper “Building Communities through Rituals: Glimpses into the Life of Chinese Christian Communities in the 17th Century” (2024) , and Xu Yunjing “Late-Ming Book Culture and the Fujian Christian Community: A Late-Ming Book Culture and the Fujian Christian Community: A Case Study of Lixiu yijian 勵修一鑑 (A Mirror to Encourage Self cultivation) ” (2024). This study explores “Lixiu Yijian” from the perspective of literary genre, and believes that the nearly two hundred short classical Chinese sermon stories compiled in the book are very similar to the traditional Chinese Biji novels(笔记小说). Thus the stories collected by Li Jiugong in 勵修一鑬 Lixiu yijian form a prominent Catholic Biji novel in late Ming China.

In 1922, the French newspaper La Politique de Pékin（《北京政闻报》）published Les chevaliers chinois, roman de mœurs et d'aventures, which is currently widely recognized by academic circles as the earliest French single-volume translation of "Water Margin"（《水浒传》）. The translator, Panking, was described as a "French scholar," but there are varying opinions on which chapters of "Water Margin" he translated. This French single-volume edition bears the Chinese title "武松说荟," and it selectively translates the portions featuring Wu Song from chapters 22 to 32 of "Water Margin." In reality, Panking was Pan Jing, a native of Nanhai, Guangdong Province. Pan Jing was not only a student at the Imperial University of Peking, one of the last batch of jinshi (highest degree in traditional Chinese imperial examinations) in the late Qing Dynasty, but also one of the early officially-sent students to study in France. After returning from France, Pan Jing primarily served in the political sphere and later engaged in education and cultural and historical work. In the history of Sino-French literary exchanges, Pan Jing actively participated in the external communication and translation of Chinese culture. His writings possess both distinct era characteristics and a strong personal style and unique ideological perspectives. During a time of social unrest and intense ideological and cultural change, while Pan Jing was not a pivotal figure capable of turning the tide, his ideological concepts and cultural horizons were nurtured in this era of transition between old and new. His writings document the culture and thought of modern China and European society, reflecting the cultural identity, value orientations, and spiritual demeanor of a generation of Chinese scholars. His rich and forward-thinking Sino-French cultural exchanges and literary practices directly participated in the construction of the world identity of Chinese literature and culture. From the list of students at the Imperial University of Peking, government gazette appointments, and notes and articles by figures such as Qian Zhongshu, among other documents, we can roughly outline Pan Jing's life trajectory of academic pursuit and political career. However, it is through his poetry, prose, and translations, to which he devoted great effort, that we gain a deeper understanding of Pan Jing's cultural horizons and ideological concepts. Although his thoughts and voice lie deep within history and memory, they still shine brightly.

Thomas Aquinas is an important theologist and philosopher in the Middle Ages in Europe. His theory of love is rich in content and has important research value. Aquinas’ classification and meaning of love constitute his view of love, and his view of love has a perfect form of love. Aquinas divides love into affection, friendship and charity. Behind it is the emotional care of the holy love, which is the true feeling of Aquinas knowing love and belongs to companion’s love in psychology of love. As a devout Christian religious believer, Aquinas’ love is deeply influenced by Christian doctrine, which reflects that religion has a certain relationship with love. Religious ideas can affect love and love can also affect religious concepts, both of which have certain social and cultural attributes.

The term Ekphrasis implies “literary representation of visual art”. Traditionally, research on ekphrasis has been concentrated within classical studies and modern literary theory, but it is believed that the study of ekphrasis needs to return to the oral poetics, and re-understand the essence in the oral tradition represented by Mongolian epics .Unlike literal text, performers must evoke mental images instantly, transforming listeners into spectators. This participatory dimension enhances the linear auditory experience, constructing a multidimensional spatial perception. Yet, the relationship between language and imagery is intricate, with layers of evocation and contradiction. Gaps may exist between the performer's linguistic imagery and the listener's mental images, leading to incongruities between individual mental images and actual images. Moreover, language imagery can magnify the absence of actual world, and the poetic tension of epics resides within this dialectical interplay of language and imagery.

The genre of fictionalised autobiography, what Laura J. Beard terms as the creation of “political discourse and artistic practice", paves way for addressing the diverse experiences of women in the post-colonial era who are trying to discover their positioning in the hierarchical structure and reclaim their voice in the established Anglophonic literary tradition. Writers like Anita Desai and Arundhati Roy have used their fictional writing as a tool to challenge and resist the dominant cultural order which is primarily misogynistic and patriarchal. At the same time, the semi- autobiographical nature of their fictional works suggest the attempt of these writers to take control of the narratives that seek to topple this patriarchal world order. By undertaking the critical study of Anita Desai’s Clear Light of the Day and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, this paper presentation aims to recount the destabilising effects of these writings in exposing the societal hypocrisies and reclaiming the agency of female voice. Both these works are set in the neighbourhoods in which these writers spent their childhood, revolve around the complexities of families that define the journey of the characters and are narrated in a non- linear narrative. This provides an ample scope to trace the intersection of feminist, postcolonial, and postmodern critical perspectives in the formation of narrative resistance and comprehend how these fictionalised autobiographies assume power to speak an essential feminist experience.

The Partition of India has been extensively documented, yet the varied experiences of Dalit refugees remain largely excluded from dominant narratives. This research aims to address this knowledge gap by examining the fractured histories of Dalit refugees during and after Partition, focusing on their (under)representation and significant absences in literary texts and oral narratives.

Recent scholarship emphasizes the importance of oral testimonies and histories in recovering Dalit experiences. This study draws on oral histories, archival materials, and literary texts to contextualize the experiences of Dalit refugees within the broader historical, socio-political, and cultural context of Partition. This raises critical questions: Can historical resources—oral testimonies, archives, memoirs, visual materials, books, and documentaries—adequately capture Dalit histories? Can there be an objective rendering of Partition? How do Dalit oral histories challenge dominant narratives? What role does caste and class play in shaping Dalit experiences? How did displacement impact Dalits spatially and temporally? And what is the role of memory in their post-Partition lives?

By situating the arguments within relevant historiographical and theoretical debates, this research seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of the intersections of class, caste, and identity in shaping Dalit experiences. The study humanizes the historical narrative, highlighting the importance of acknowledging and preserving the forgotten histories of marginalized communities which is crucial for constructing a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of the past and its enduring impact for the future.

Bonobibi, a guardian deity of the Sundarbans, is revered by both Hindu and Muslim communities as a protector against tiger attacks and a symbol of ecological balance. Her legend, primarily oral and deeply embedded in regional folklore, exemplifies themes of human-wildlife coexistence, interfaith syncretism, and environmental ethics. This study positions Bonobibi within the framework of comparative literature, examining how her myth intersects with broader traditions of guardian deities across cultures. By employing Digital Humanities methodologies, including AI-driven textual analysis, folklore mining, and network visualization, this research tracks thematic shifts and linguistic patterns within various iterations of Bonobibi Johuranama, while also identifying cross-cultural resonances through comparative myth analysis. Drawing on ecocritical and postcolonial perspectives, this study explores how Bonobibi’s narrative engages with global discourses on ecofeminism and environmental justice. GIS mapping and spatial storytelling further contextualize the geographical dissemination of Bonobibi’s worship, demonstrating how mythological traditions adapt across time, space, and socio-political landscapes. Folklore network analysis, facilitated by tools such as Gephi and Palladio, uncovers intertextual and interreligious dimensions of Bonobibi’s myth, positioning her as a transnational figure within global mythological studies. By integrating AI-assisted textual and spatial analysis, this research highlights the intersections of folklore, ecology, and gender within comparative literary traditions. Ultimately, this study underscores the relevance of digital tools in preserving and analysing oral traditions, while situating Bonobibi as a crucial site of inquiry in comparative mythology and world literature.

The study of theatre has been broadly the study of texts and themes, devoid of its intermediality and theatrical public sphere. There is a need to decenter the text and bring in the sonosphere of performative traditions into the center of comparative studies. This paper attempts to highlight the sonosphere of Parsi theatre in South and South East Asia during the late 19th and early 20th century.

Indar Sabha, is a Hindustani play written in 1851 by Agha Hasan Amanat, attached to the court of Wajid Ali Shah at Lucknow. The play was first performed in 1853 in Lucknow and was subsequently published in 1854. Curiously, the first Parsi theatre, Parsi Natak Mandali, too came into existence in 1853 in Bombay, the same year in which the first performance of Indar Sabha took place in Lucknow. The most remarkable aspect of Parsi theatre was the introduction of enchanting music and dance, spectacular stage craft and the skill in taking it to the cities in South and South East Asia to create a new sensibility among the public. The Victoria Parsi Theatrical Company, founded by Khurshedji Balliwala, not only travelled all over India but also visited Colombo (1889), Rangoon (1878), Penang, Jakarta and Singapore (1878), Mandaley (1881), London (1885), Nepal (1901) and Guyana, making Indar Sabha and other plays of its repertory and their music highly popular.

Parisi theatre’s itinerary, absorptions, diffusions and circulations lead not only to the emergence of a Indian national theatre but also a pan-Asian theatre. Several local multilingual Indian communities, Parsis, Arabs, Sinhalese, Burmese, Malays and communities with absolutely unconnected to India constituted its audience, many of them not even conversant neither with the language of the play nor its music, enjoyed the productions of Parsi theatre. Parsi theatre’s musical vocabulary included Ghazal, Qawwali, Thumri, Dadra and Hori and the common musical instruments were Harmonium, Clarinet, Sarangi, Tabla and Nakkara drums. In South East Asian visits, a wooden Xylophone (Gambang) was added. In addition, Parsi theatre also borrowed singing and performing styles not only from the European opera but also from the native Courtesan-Tawaif repertoire. Within this background, this paper attempts a history of the sonosphere of the Parsi theatre problematizing issues like print culture and textuality, spatiality of itinerary performative traditions provided by nineteenth century developments, colonial modernity and reaction to it, circulations within the theatrical public sphere, and the issue of (non)translation. In brief, it is an attempt to understand the social epistemology of music in Parsi theatre in time and space.

This panel examines how world literature, translation, and cultural transfer shaped Soviet and Cold War intellectual contexts. Artem Serebrennikov (HSE/Gorky Institute) explores Valentin Parnakh (1891–1951), a peculiar figure of the 1920s cosmopolitan avant-garde. Poet, dancer, jazz musician, and scholar, writing in French and Russian, Parnakh left behind an eclectic and overlooked legacy. The paper argues that much of Parnakh’s 1920s literary output centers on the anxiety of language and identity. Struggling with anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia, unwilling to embrace the religious aspects of Jewish culture, and fascinated by France, Parnakh sought a resolution to his dilemmas, a reconciliation of antiquity and modernity, nationalism and cosmopolitanism. He found his answer during a 1914 trip to the Levant among Ottoman Sephardic Jews, who impressed him with their unabashed Jewishness, modern outlook, and use of French as a cultural language. In Paris, Parnakh studied Sephardic converso poets persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition, employed Sephardic imagery in his poetry and memoirs (Pension Maubert). The paper argues that although Parnakh’s quest was deeply personal, it echoed similar processes in French, German, and Spanish cultures. Both Jews and Gentiles used the image of the lost Sepharad as an alternative to mainstream Ashkenazi culture.

Peter Budrin (QMUL) analyses the reception of early modern modes of intellectual self-fashioning in Soviet intellectual culture. Budrin demonstrates how models of early-modern writers such as Erasmus and Montaigne, whose reception paradoxically flourished in the totalitarian 1930s—influenced a group of intellectuals known as "the Current", led by philosophers Georg Lukács and Mikhail Lifshitz. For the thinkers discussed in this paper, Lifshitz and Leonid Pinsky, the Renaissance offered models of intellectual autonomy, serving as a means to interpret their own turbulent era.

Benjamin Musachio (Princeton) examines John Updike as a translator of Russian poetry. The paper focuses on Updike's translations of the Soviet poet Evgenii Evtushenko (1932–2017). Updike’s translations of Evtushenko were published in LIFE magazine in February 1967, coinciding with the Soviet poet's U.S. tour. As Updike did not know Russian, Albert C. Todd, a Russian literature specialist, prepared literals for Updike to poeticize. Musachio analyzes Todd's literals, Updike's drafts, and the published translations to reconstruct Updike's aesthetic motivations. Yevgeny Yevtushenko Papers at Stanford offer a privileged window into Updike's translation process. Updike's translation was part of a 1960s trend of Anglophone writers translating modern Russian poetry (Robert Lowell's translations of Osip Mandelstam; W.H. Auden's translations of Andrei Voznesenskii). What sets Updike apart is his negative evaluation of Evtushenko as a poet: Updike assumed the twofold task of both translating and improving Evtushenko's poems.

In this presentation I read Rumer Godden’s novel The River (1946) as a diasporic coming-of-age novel whose female adolescent protagonist carries out an implicit critique of (post-)imperial Englishness, and its racially supremacist and masculist underpinnings, while attempting to find a place in the world as member of the ruling Anglo-Indian, middle-class elite that rules India right before its independence. Drawing on the English author’s childhood memories from her life in the Narayanganj area, now in Bangladesh, around the second world war (often read as privileged and idyllic), the novel, as I claim, disturbs the spatial paradigm of enclosure that structures (post-) imperial Britain’s self-understanding at the time of decolonisation. This is a point in history when the nation begins to close itself off from the (colonial) world and its brutal (colonialist) past in an attempt to protect itself from cultural and racial contamination, and to maintain its image of greatness as a way of compensating for the loss of its world status in the postwar reformulation of Western hegemony and planetary colonial relations. As I argue, the novel carries out its critique by representationally casting Harriet’s, its young protagonist’s, close relationship with the vegetal and floral life of the family garden, with which she identifies, as an act of exposure that opens up the protected, fenced off, space of the Anglo-Indian household to the disruptive unpredictability associated with the (more-than-human or culturally different) outside. For the garden in Godden’s text is a porous and ambivalent space of learning and self-realisation for its adolescent narrator; it is also a space of entanglement (of human, plant and animal life) and intermixture (of English and indigenous world views on nature, life and death); and a space of (phyto-)writing that causes Harriet’s world “to tilt” and change its orientation; it offers an upside-down perspective on lived experience, social relations and cross-cultural, cross-species contact and, in embracing, what Luce Irigaray regards as the indeterminacy, plasticity and openness of plant life to other life forms, it holds the promise of “trans-human” (to use Michael Marder’s term), cross-cultural symbiosis. My reading of Godden’s critical take on (post)colonial Britain is indebted to the plant philosophies of Luce Irigaray and Michael Marder, to new insights coming out of the emerging field of postcolonial environmental studies, to thinking around planetary cohabitation (for example, Achilles Mbembe’s “earthly community” and Gayiatri Spivak concept of “planetarity”), phenomenological theories of space and embodied existence, and debates related to new materialism.

The aim of this paper is comparing the textual construction of intergenerational dynamics in two postcolonial coming-of-age novels, Reef by Romesh Gunesekera (1994) and O Último Olhar de Manú Miranda [The Last Look of Manú Miranda] by Orlando da Costa (2000). Set in Sri Lanka on the brink of civil war, Reef is a work halfway between a coming-of-age novel and a memoir. The novel is the first-person account by Triton, a Sri Lankan cook who emigrated to the UK, recalling memories of his adolescence spent working in the manor house of a marine biologist, who becomes his friend and a spiritual master. On the other hand, O Último Olhar de Manú Miranda is a novel, narrated from a third-person perspective, that reconstructs the childhood and late adolescence of a Goan Catholic during the last decades of the Portuguese colonial rule. As an orphan, Manú Miranda grows up surrounded by uncles and friends, although it is an older man from outside the family circle, the owner of a fraternity house for young students, that becomes his mentor and a father-like figure. One of the goals of this work is analyzing the friendship between these characters in the light of the impact that colonial education had on the paternal figures in question. In these works, youth is not represented as a time of lightness and joy, but rather as a time of restlessness due to the atmosphere of civil war in the country and the uncertainty about the future of younger generations. The values behind the informal education received by the two young men from their mentors will be explored, which can be interpreted as a reflection of the two authors on the permeation of the colonial mentality in post-imperial societies. In addition to the formal aspects that characterize the two works and frame them within the genre of the coming-of-age novel, we will finally discuss the narrative strategies that the writers implement to represent the idea of a world in decay, be it the Portuguese colonial world or the vulnerable society of post-colonial Sri Lanka.

Incorporating Rosemary Radford Ruether's ecofeminist theology and related theories, this paper attempts to conduct an interpretation of Jack London's short story "The Seed of McCoy" from the "South Sea Tales" series by integrating gender, ecology, and religion through a close reading of the text. It is argued that feminine qualities are doubly dominated by traditional maritime narratives and the language of naval conventions, being forced into an object position. The plot of novel conquest is presented through the confrontation and clash of binary gender energies. Ultimately, it is through the Mystical-Savior-McCoy, who embodies androgyny with female power in a subject position, that the characters emerge from the Dilemma and achieve Salvation. However, the underlying Blue Gender Dilemma in the novel is not alleviated; on the contrary, such metaphors in the novel lay bare Jack London's contradictory feminist perspective.

结合萝斯玛丽·R·鲁塞尔生态女性主义神学思想及相关理论，本文试图在文本细读基础上，综合性别、生态、宗教三个维度，对杰克·伦敦“南海小说”系列中的短篇故事《麦考伊的种子》进行解读：女性特质在传统海洋叙事和航海惯习语言中受到双重辖制，被迫居于客体位置；航海征服的故事情节却以两性能量的对峙与交锋呈现；最终，依靠“雌雄同体”且女性力量居于主体的“神秘救主”麦考伊，众人方走出“困境”，获得拯救；但小说中潜在的“蓝色性别困境”并未得到缓解，相反，此类小说隐喻使得杰克·伦敦矛盾的女性观念暴露无遗。

Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Buru Quartet, a landmark work by the Indonesian author, can be read as a postcolonial coming-of-age novel set in Asia. Inspired by the life of Tirto Adhi Soerjo, a pioneer of Malay-language journalism in Indonesia, the series centers on the character of Minke, who evolves from a student enamored with European culture at a prestigious Dutch high school in Surabaya into a charismatic nationalist leader. Offering a panoramic depiction of late 19th to early 20th-century Dutch East Indies society, the novels, while distinctly anti-colonial, acknowledge the undeniable role of the colonial system in shaping native elites. Two significant aspects are highlighted: the European-style education provided to indigenous people and the assistance and support from Dutch Ethical Policy advocates in promoting native self-governance.

As a postcolonial coming-of-age narrative, The Buru Quartet frames personal growth as synonymous with the emergence of nationalist consciousness. However, rather than presenting a simplistic critique of colonialism, it underscores the complex, ambivalent relationship between individuals and the colonial system. This nuanced exploration challenges monolithic anti-colonial perspectives, offering a deeper reflection on historical transformations.

The quartet’s historical and political context further enriches its significance. Written during Pramoedya’s imprisonment following the 1965 coup in Indonesia, the novels express his anxiety about Indonesia’s descent into a neo-colonial trap under Suharto’s regime. They also engage with Cold War geopolitics and the external interventions undermining Southeast Asian nations’ paths to self-determination. In this sense, The Buru Quartet redefines the coming-of-age novel not simply as anti-colonial propaganda but as a search for national direction through historical retrospection. It thus subverts the Eurocentric framework traditionally associated with the genre, offering new possibilities for postcolonial literary discourse.

This paper explores Crónica de uma Travessia by Luís Cardoso (b. 1958, Cailaco, East Timor) as a multifaceted life-narrative of colonial and postcolonial identity formation in Timor-Leste, positioning it within the frameworks of the colonial Entwicklungsroman, the (boarding) school novel or even, bearing in mind the Catholic/colonial millieu, a hypothetical missionary school novel. The novel offers a complex portrayal of the emergence of literary and historical consciousness through the protagonist’s perspective, developing within the slowness of colonial time yet marked by the rapid accumulation of historical and anthropological information. Cardoso's narrative style, characterized by both historical detail and ironic commentary, reflects a local Timorese perspective seeking recognition within a broader Lusophone literary tradition. By tracing the protagonist’s experiences within Catholic/colonial educational institutions, the novel does not explicitly critique the role of schooling as a tool of cultural assimilation and imperial epistemology—often found in postcolonial narratives—but rather seems to propose the Catholic and Portuguese colonial dimensions of Timorese identity as elements to be integrated into a new, composite sense of Timorese self. Two key examples of this dynamic include how Cardoso reconfigures historical memory through the character of the protagonist’s father, a symbolic figure who conflates Portuguese colonial authority with sacred Mambai tradition, and also the novel’s fixation on names and naming practices in Portuguese, which underscores a deeper reflection on identity and memory in Portuguese-speaking Asia.

Childcare in India reflects practices drawn from various religious traditions and social customs, ranging from Ayurvedic to Islamic practices associated with childcare, colonial education policy to post-independence national policies. The contemporary disciplining systems therefore reflect everything from the child-centeredness of Ayurvedic texts discouraging harsh speech and threats towards the child to practices drawn from colonial pedagogy, which considered the colonized subject— child to be inherently sinful needing socialization to overcome their savage nature. In a webinar, Spyros Soyrou invites Childhood Studies scholars to reflect upon the implications of Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence (originally an ecocritical theory) as inflicted on children and childhood. This paper contextualizes slow violence within certain disciplining practices and explores how the pre and post-independence novels such as The Crooked Line by Ismat Chugtai, Mohanaswami by Vasudhendra and Daughter's Daughter by Mrinal Pande reflect colonial, postcolonial and decolonial parenting practices. It also analyses the texts for possible arguments for overcoming them in favor of decolonial, "gentle" parenting.

My presentation has three sections. 1 and 2 are an analysis of “Philologie der Weltliteratur” (“PdW”). 3 is a critical discussion of the ethical-political implications of Auerbach’s “World Philology” in a Postmodern setting.

Section 1 debates A.’s expectations about Literaturwissenschaft in a context of growing European intellectual influence across the globe and fast-paced uniformization under Cold War geopolitics. A.’s views were shaped by his intellectual background and personal experiences. He gave an Italian twist to the Neo-Kantian undercurrent of the early XX Century German Academia. His Idealism has a Crocean imprint (use of intuition, individual, Nation, etc.). His Historicism came from Vico (refusal of any ready-made “system”, absence of teleological orientation, etc.). His personal life pushed him to treat literature as a civilizational construct. The young A. subscribed to Prussian values. Later he was denied the career he deserved, enduring exile for the rest of his life in cultures different from his own. As a “stateless” person, he had to come to terms with his identity as a homme de lettres, hence the call to restore a “pre-national medieval Bildung”.

Section 2 is concerned with A.’s programmatic “synthetic-scholarly” philology. German techniques of philological work should be applied to world literature. Research should focus on stylistic topoi, specific issues that should “irradiate” fundamental features of the literary tradition (as genres, ages, national literatures, etc.). A. remained a Romanist during his entire life, never receiving training, or doing research, on non-Western languages/literatures. The “Realism” of his longer texts on Dante and Mimesis depends on the interplay between the (Western) Classical canon and Christianity, e.g., his argumentation on Figura and essays about sermo humilis. Such “Realism” is at odds with the “Islamic, Chinese, Indian” literatures mentioned briefly in PdW. The cosmopolitan orientation of his project is avowedly indebted to the unique five centuries of Western rise to modernity. At key junctures of PdW, A. dwells on a crucial topic in pre-War Germany intellectual debate, the demise of European “late-bourgeois humanistic Kultur” and its replacement by specialization.

Section 3 explores a Postmodern interpretation of A.’s cosmopolitanism. An ideal “inner history of Humankind” could be worked out by a Global République des Lettres. Philological methods would have to be domesticated by every tradition. World literature could be more easily oriented towards the future, under a secularized purview and authorized by values of coexistence. Retrospectively, it would aim at a non-hegemonical account of how traditions have flourished in their own terms, including their claims to influence. However, there are trade-offs. No “outer” (overarching) narratives would be admissible. Such ethos would demand “real love for the World” from scholars, but also Victorine detachment from one’s culture.

This paper brings Erich Auerbach and Abdolkarim Soroush into dialogue, aiming to comparatively study their methodological approaches toward ‘the literary’—philology in Auerbach’s case and translation in Soroush’s. Despite their vastly different historical and intellectual backgrounds, both thinkers share a similar worldview. They both perceive the present condition as one increasingly moving toward standardization and losing its diversity, a perspective shaped by their experiences of exile and unhomeliness. In response to this condition, Auerbach turns to ‘philology,’ exemplified in his seminal work Mimesis, while Soroush develops ‘translation’ as a method, articulated in his masterwork Expansion and Contraction. In both of these works, the notion of ‘the literary’ plays a central role, providing a strong ground for comparison. This paper argues that rereading Soroush's ‘translation’ as a method grounded on his theory of interpretive pluralism through Auerbach’s philological lens not only sheds new light on Soroush’s theological-literary project, but also opens up opportunities to rethink and expand Auerbach’s philology in and for in the globalizing context of the 21st century. Ultimately, this dialogue, framed as ‘after philology,’ demonstrates how Soroush’s translational approach revitalizes Auerbach’s philology's ethical and political dimensions by highlighting its aesthetic aspects.

This paper examines how Auerbach and Ranciere transform the concept of "representation" and thus of "art" and "aesthetics" in the modern era. Auerbach's _Mimesis_ is the story of "realist" representation in language, defined not in ontological terms as a verbal approximation of reality, but in ethico-aesthetic terms as the serious (tragic and problematic) presentation of human reality in its everydayness. Auerbach uncovers the same underlying pattern in every instance of realistic representation: "Stilmischung," the mixture of styles, reveals the breakdown of "Stiltrennung," the hierarchical division/separation of style/subject matter (elevated style for heroes, kings, and nobles; comic style for low-born characters). In effect, realism, for Auerbach, is equality of representation: common individuals are represented with the same seriousness as high-ranking ones, and everyday reality is accorded the same aesthetic importance as exceptional or historically important events. This is also essentially how Ranciere defines his "aesthetic regime of art," the regime that defines modernity: "The aesthetic regime of the arts is the regime that strictly identifies art in the singular and frees it from any specific rule, from any hierarchy of the arts, subject matter, and genres" (Ranciere, _The Politics of Aesthetics_). (In effect, Stilmischung is Ranciere's "aesthetic regime," and Stiltrennung is Ranciere's "representative regime.") Art is secularized and democratized in both thinkers--hence its political import and impact. This essay explores how Ranciere uses Auerbach's framing to talk about the disruptions of art more generally, and in more explicitly political terms that can be applied globally, that is, in terms of "world art."

In the final chapter of his recent study on literary realism (The Real Thing, 2024), Terry Eagleton gives a brief overview of Erich Auerbach's Mimesis before commenting on Auerbach's "impatience with abstract and general forms of cognition". Indeed, Auerbach seems to have a penchant for the concrete and humble, but probably such "post-Romantic" aspect of his work should always be considered against his clear and grand vision of historical progress. After all, as Eagleton points out, the entire volume of Mimesis as the story of an ever more richer, more intricate realism was effectively written as a response to fascism.

It would be more helpful, then, to point to the tension between the concrete and the abstract in Auerbach's philology, and examine the nature of "synthesis" in his readings (or his "syntactic conquest", as Fredric Jameson describes Auerbach's attempt). Can philological approach properly interpret the concrete detail without imposing abstract truth? If Auerbach was the champion of the multiple, fluid and divers as Eagleton suggests, why was he not favorable on the overtly fluid experimental writing of modernists like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce? (A useful comparison may be made with Adorno's dialectical approach which is equally alert to the clash between particularity and abstract reasoning, but allowing far more favorable evaluation on high modernism.)

This paper shows that Auerbach's engagement with the mingling between the sublime and the vulgar is especially relevant in the current culturalist context in which Theories tend to underestimate diachronic change in the universal history of human emancipation. In the context of comparative literature, Auerbach's idea of Weltliteratur opens up a possibility to rediscover non-European literature, not simply as "the other" of the West, but as a part of common human progress on the same "earth". His insight particularly invites us to re-evaluate those humanistic literary traditions outside Europe which encourage universal values in ways specific to their local contexts.

A case in point is Japanese novelist Kenzaburō Ōe's literary achievement. Ōe is a master of realism that portrays the suffering of main characters as a product of society still incapable of justice yet illuminated by the hope of salvation. Ōe's imagination thus resonates with Auerbach's responsiveness to comprehensive historical vision realized in individual rendering. Given that Ōe is profoundly influenced by prominent European literary figures such as Dante, Rabelais, Wiliam Blake, and W. B. Yeats, one could even argue that the complex themes and style of Ōe's novels is a "synthesis" of European and non-European realist tradition. From such perspective I explore the ways in which Ōe's literary endeavor is meaningfully related to Auerbach's legacy.

As Edward Said points out in his preface for Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis, Goethe’s utopian notion “Weltliteratur” (“world literature”), as a transnational and humanistic synthesis of all national literatures in the world, serves as a conceptual foundation for the later discipline of comparative literature. While later in “Philology and Weltliteratur” (1951), Auerbach delineates the challenges “Weltliteratur” faces in the postwar globalized world: the standardization of culture and way of life under the hegemony of Euro-American influence, along with the specialization and professionalization of the education institution, lead to the increasing difficulty in the synthesis of a transnational worldly philology — that is, a historiography of human religion, poetics, literature, politics, and culture.

My paper investigates how Auerbach’s notions on philology and “Weltliteratur” as a humanistic synthesis get reconfigured in storytelling narratives in contemporary global media. Engaging with David Damrosch’s analysis of Auerbach and “Weltliteratur”, Frederic Jameson’s theories on postmodernism and visual media, as well as Jacques Ranciere’s discussion of aesthetics and politics, I present a “global Auerbach” and his ideas on philology and “Weltliteratur” in the postmodern regimes of art.

The materiality of aesthetic historicism can mediate the "aesthetic" and "historical" elements of literary theory, taking into account aesthetic ethics while maintaining historical truth. Yang Yibo distinguishes between Classical Historicism, aesthetic historicism and Aesthetic Historicism. Classical Historicism is dedicated to making the discipline of history a "new science"; "aesthetic historicism" is a literary theory from the perspective of the relationship between literature and history; while Aesthetic Historicism is a kind of thought infused with historical consciousness in the development of classical German philosophy. Compared with the former two, Aesthetic Historicism is not satisfied with the refinement of its own theoretical system, but intends to construct the historical consciousness and national spirit of the German nation. (See Yang Yibo, German Classical Aesthetic Historicism, China Social Science Press, 2017, pp. 37-58.)The meanings of "aesthetic historicism" and "Aesthetic Historicism" both refer to aesthetics and history, but the few recorded uses of the term also lowercase the initial letter instead of capitalizing it. The former is the result of several scholars' explicit definitions, while the latter is the result of a single scholar's theoretical construction. Therefore, although the actual discussion inevitably involves the trend of "capitalized" German aesthetic historicism and its practical influence, the "aesthetic historicism" in this paper is mainly the lowercase "aesthetic historicism" centered on Vico, Auerbach, and Hayden White. Aesthetic historism can be traced back to the Vico's discourse on "poetic wisdom" and the concept of history, which is summarized in the article "Vico and Aesthetic Historism" published by the literary critic Erich Auerbach in 1949. In 1959, the American historian Hayden White published Italian historian Carlo Antoni's From History to Sociology: The Transition in German Historical Thinking, and in the translator's introduction, he systematically elaborated the concept of aesthetic historicism. The materiality of aesthetic historicism is embodied in three aspects: firstly, the productive activities of poetic wisdom and its image are material; the poetic production of literary creation, theory and criticism activities depends on the material basis, and the poetic image (or linguistic symbols) is also characterized by its productive nature. Secondly, each element of literary activity participates in the historical process of overdetermination as social energy in a specific socio-historical context. Finally, writing events and textual events are processual and embodied, and embodied metaphors are able to evoke bodily sensations and respond to the existential and ethical problems of today's world through the "distribution of sensibility". The "deenchantment" of the materiality of aesthetic historicism can inject new vitality into contemporary realism and lead to an "aesthetic-historical materialism".

In his text The Philology of World Literature Erich Auerbach attempts to implement an idea of world literature that is resolutely anti-global, and, in this sense, it seems entirely at odds with an approach to world literature that has gained currency as world’s most valuable literatures, even if primarily in (English) translation. On the other hand, Auerbach’s approach to the study of world literature is utterly global in the sense that it encompasses all possible literatures and all possible languages, and not only that, but also all the historical and philosophical, or we might say, theoretical developments and reflections that may have led to the literary forms and contents. Moreover, Auerbach apparently does not regard world literature in this manner for its own sake, or out of mere aesthetic or scholarly curiosity. Rather, there is a twofold movement in his considerations. On the one hand, Auerbach speaks of the richness (Reichtum) of ‘earth cultures’ (Erdkulturen) that he wants to preserve in this way. On the other hand, world literature for him seems to represent a general human code and mode of thinking that can be utilized for deciphering the contemporary as well as the arrivant, the possibilities of the future. But it is not meta-theorizations that he seeks, rather Auerbach emphasizes the singular and ‘intuitive’ for an appreciation of literature. Methodologically, he endorses and advises a form of critical engagement with the literary text that aims at identifying what might be called epistemological and theoretical ‘radiation’ (Strahlung). In doing so, he approaches historicity as a condition for coming to terms with a more or less valid understanding of the literatures of the world.

In this sense, world literature becomes a mapping for apprehension, a theoretical field of textuality that is important for the intelligibility of the world. For Auerbach, then, the concept of world literature is almost a counter-conception to the logocentrism of the ‘sciences’; It is a deep reading of how the world has been constituted historically and how it may possibly continue to evolve from a humanistic and ethical point of view. Taking these lines as a starting point, in this paper, I wish to dwell on the historical, epistemological, and affective economy of Auerbach’s text that drives his theoretical pursuit of an engagement with world literature in order to navigate his approach of an ethical quest in his understanding of world literature for what he calls ‘earth cultures’ (Erdkulturen) as a critical, anti-globalization endeavor that seeks a democratic, anti-dominant humanism built on the richness and singularity of the earth’s literary imagination.

We are a group of PhD candidates who meet the invitation of Comparative Literature by working across unexpected and underexplored axes of Japan Studies. In light of the transnational turn in literary scholarship, we seek to foreground comparisons that complicate the traditions of East-West and North-South analysis. Thus we have found productive common ground in our challenge to the assumptions of literary influence. In place of a hierarchy of texts (as implied in popular theories such as Moretti’s law of literary evolution), we seek to read in juxtaposition and consider the multilateral influence and resistance of literary cultures and voices. To this end, we have found genre studies to be a fertile ground for such reconsiderations.

Julia’s presentation examines A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki, as symptomatic of a transpacific dialogue in autofiction. Approaching this genre from the perspective of shishōsetsu, or the “I-novel”, a Japanese genre to which Ozeki calls attention in her text, the work is read as an intervention into the deeply gendered generic histories on both sides of the Pacific. Through the doubled voices of Ruth and Nao, two Japanese women who write to each other across an ocean, Ozeki underlines the effacement of women’s writing across time and space, broadening the contours of genre whilst presenting reading as a form of care.

Oliver’s work in crime fiction juxtaposes the earliest detective fiction in Japan and Argentina, a hitherto unexplored axis that sheds light on the impact of genre on an emerging global market. As the successful model of the literary detective spread from Europe and America, its impact had remarkable parallels in both Tokyo and Buenos Aires. Lawyers and policemen found new routes into a literary marketplace, where imported structures of law enforcement and justice were challenged on a narrative level. Read in comparison, the assumptions of imitation embedded in detective fiction must be reevaluated in light of narratives of resistance and rebellion from the Global South.

Harry's paper offers a comparative reading of the Russian exilic poet Eduard Limonov’s It’s Me—Eddie with Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask. Drawing upon the socio-political context of each author, the presentation identifies unexpected traces of far-right extremism in their earliest literary work. Through their glorification of tight muscles, killing machines, purity, and the absolute binary of Self/Other, both writers hint at a fascist aesthetic driven by a fetish for the perfect and able-bodied male physique. In dialogue, these texts suggest that while the personal is political, the political is also transnational.

The title of this inquiry comes from the question found in a number of Zen koans: “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West?” Its starting point is the fact that the American poet Jane Hirshfield (born 1953) began her practice of Zen in the San Francisco Zen Center, which was founded by the Japanese roshi Shunryu Suzuki in 1959. True to the spirit of the panel, what follows is a number of complications. What distinguishes this inquiry, though, is its attempt to break the very intellectual approach of literary scholarship: an aspiration for transcendence true to Zen.

Although the teaching of beginner’s mind originates from Dōgen Zenji, the first Japanese Zen Master, Suzuki’s own pithy articulation of it is that, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” What meaning does this teaching hold, then, for the titular “mind of poetry” in Hirshfield’s Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry? What follows, then, is an examination of the influence of Zen Buddhism and Japanese aesthetics in Hirshfield’s first book of criticism.

From this, a complication arises: how does one make sense of the fact that Hirshfield finds the mind of poetry even among poets and traditions that had no direct contact with Zen and Japanese poetry? The first koan from the Mumonkan or Gateless Gate asks, “Does a dog have Buddha-nature?” Similarly, do poets have beginner’s mind even when they had no contact with teachings like beginner’s mind?

The next complication pulls back towards the panel’s theme of Japan studies. Does it make sense to ascribe Zen to Japan and to thus claim that Japanese poetry and spirituality influenced Hirshfield? What about Hirshfield’s poems that bear no explicit trace of anything Japanese? What about Suzuki urging American practitioners to develop their own kind of Zen distinct from their Japanese forebears?

Joshu’s answer to the koan from the Gateless Gate cited above is “Mu!” Although the word literally means emptiness, Zen practitioners take the answer as a call to practice and experience their Buddha-nature for themselves, rather than sinking into intellectualization. Would a focus on Japanese or American husks lead one away from the pith of beginner’s mind/the mind of poetry: from experiencing this mind for oneself? Although the answer might be yes, the Zen definition of nondualism as “not one, not two” then comes to mind. What meaning does Zen hold for Japan studies? How can critics not assume perfect identity between Japanese and American poetry and thereby pay attention to their differences (not one) while not assuming a dualistic separation when comparing literatures (not two)? What does it mean to transcend the intellect while knowing there is no separation between the poet, the critic, and the intellect of both?

This study examines the intricate connection between imagination and music in British Romantic literature, exploring how music functions both as a metaphor for and a literal impact on the literary imagination. A key component of Romanticism emphasized the ability of imagination to rise above the banal, an idea embodied in the era's engagement with music. In analyzing a variety of texts, both poetry and prose, the essay seeks to demonstrate how music was used by Romantic writers to enhance emotional resonance and surpass the limits of perception. It will examine the way music influenced narrative structures and themes, the significance of music for Romantic writers, and the limitations of Romantic imagination. The thesis asserts that in British Romantic literature, music not only represents the spirit of imagination but also actively shapes it, elevating commonplace experience into realms of transcendent experience.

Comparison is a natural tendency of human mind. Comparative literary theory focuses on two or more languages, writers, nations and cultural aspects of creative writing with an interdisciplinary comparative perspective. The scale of study of the story of human evolution, lifestyle, food, customs, culture, music, folk songs and historical development over the globe could be comparative in nature to analyse the significant trends and findings on the same.

In this paper, literary contribution of two prominent poets Dhani Ram Chatrik and Nand Lal Noorpuri representatives of modern Punjabi poetry in the first half of twentieth century will be discussed in detail. In their creative works, both provide a real picture of Punjabi life, language and culture and establish a link between the traditional and modern Punjabi poetry. Apart from this, contemporary political and economic developments are also depicted beautifully in their works. Early life and childhood of both the poets was spent in poor economic conditions. Though, both of them were born and raised in the same socio-cultural scenario, but their style, thought process and ideology was different in many ways. Chatrik's view about life is always positive throughout his poetry but Noorpuri being very depressive at times, feels life as a burden due to the financial scarcity, his personal bad habits, failures and alcoholism. But the use of Urdu, Persian metaphors, vocabulary of Majhi dialect and experimentation on the poetic form of Ghazal in their works make them unique and close to each other. Both of the poets had influence of Indian mythology and Sikh religion and both have raised a voice against contemporary political and economic movements. Many of their poems speak boldly about contemporary socio-political concerns as well. Some poems engage the readers with the lessons of true morality. Both of them talk about the economically unprivileged life of farmers and labour class depicting their hardships of earning the livelihood. Both poets have borrowed some concepts related to form and style from Sufi and Quissa literature as well. Hence, this paper will ponder the light on various aspects of the literary contribution of the selected poets in comparative perspective.

In her serminal monograph Narrative in the Anthropocene, Erin James develops the Anthropocene narrative theory on the basis of cognitive narratology and rhetorical narratology, fleshing out the reciprocal connection between the Anthropocene and narratives as records of humans writing and inhabiting worlds by reconceptualizing narrative as worldbuilding for some purpose. Under such theoretical frame, James discusses some original narrative techniques regarding time, material, and so forth. When turning to the issue of narration, she explores inconsistent “we-narration” and the “fictional you” as forms of narrative resource that aid the project of world building for environmental purposes. These narrative modes are compared by James to the world-building arrogance of the traditional omniscient narrator who implicitly forecloses a collective perspective or action. Though significantly captures the issues of environmental justice and reader immersion, James' discussion on person narrative dispises the narrative focalization hence ignoring the scale issue brought by different person narrative.

The issue of scale in the Anthropocene is primarily an epistemological problem. Because of the existence of scale effects and scale discrepancies, ecological issues may have varying causes depending on the scale of perception, and actions that seem environmentally protective at a micro level can trigger crises at regional or planetary scales. Mitchell Thomashow advocates for “scale shift,”urging individuals to transcend their scale boundaries by shifting focus from local ecosystems to broader temporal and spatial domains, enabling a deeper understanding of global environmental changes. Drawing on cognitive linguistic research on person deixis, this paper links scale shifting to DST, arguing that shifts in person and the accordingly changing narrative perspective also alter readers’psychological deictic centers. With the changing person dexis, readers are immersed in the story world, experiencing shifts in the protagonist's observational scale and adopting corresponding stances. I term this interplay between narrative person and scale changes as “deictic scale shifting.” For example, N.K. Jemisin’s “Emergency Skin” employs this strategy, blending formal aesthetics with environmental critique and a challenge to Anthropocene capitalism. Similarly, in The Fifth Season, such technique merges “you,” “I,” and “she” into a unified narrative, revealing interconnected relationships among races and objects in an environmental apocalypse. Through these case studies, this paper expands Anthropocene narrative theory, demonstrating how deictic scale shifting bridges human-scale and more-than-human phenomena.