This conference explores the promise and challenges of South-South comparativism. By critically examining the histories, repertoires, and methods of South-South exchange, the conference aims to assess how this paradigm reconfigures the geographies of comparison, as well as its epistemological and political grounds. Our approach seeks to move beyond traditional binaries of center and periphery, to encompass cross-regional dialogues across Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East, as well as comparisons within regions and traditions.

What determines which regions, texts, or traditions are brought into dialogue, and how do these choices shape the narratives and frameworks we produce? Participants are encouraged to explore the modalities of producing and interrelating literatures/literary approaches that have emerged and are still emerging within the Global South as alternatives to the theories and practices of comparative literature in Euro-America, which have for a long time dominated literary notions and sensibilities as well as the practices of reading, contextualizing, and theorizing.

The two-day conference will be divided into a workshop and four panels. The workshop will discuss the legacies of Afro-Asianism, while the panels will turn attention to other South-South exchanges and solidarities as well as the archives, repertoires, and methodology of South-South comparison.

The complete program will follow.

supported by:

Alexander-von-Humboldt-Stiftung, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Dahlem Humanities Center, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Einstein-Stitung (alphabetical order)