Sushmita Sircar

Assistant Professor

English

ssircar@gettysburg.edu

(717) 337 -

Campus Box 0397

Breidenbaugh Hall
Room 314D
300 North Washington St.
Gettysburg, PA 17325-1400

Education

PhD New York University
BA University at Buffalo, State University of New York

Academic Focus

Postcolonial and global anglophone literature, global marxisms, the novel, theories of friendship

This course will grapple with the centrality of translation to the consolidation of literary canons in the global anglophone sphere. We will read novels, poetry, and other texts that have arguably entered the canons of world literature through their widespread circulation in translation. We will consider the institutional mechanisms—literary prizes, academic canons and syllabi, and popular circulation in the literary market—that contribute to the making of world literature. We will reflect on: what world literature is and how it has been defined; how works of world literature engage “otherness” in relation to objects that can be read and consumed; different models of literary cosmopolitanism; and the dominance of English as the implicit structuring condition for a global literature to emerge.
Overview of the concepts and material practices of empire through global anglophone literature and pop-culture texts from around the world. This course will function as an introduction to imperialism and postcolonial studies, moving from the British, French and German empires at the peak of their influence in the early twentieth century, to American imperialism during the Cold War to the post-9/11 period. Though the figure of the conscripted soldier, the course readings will trace some major wars that shape the world from the twentieth century onwards—the two world wars, the Cold war and its proxy wars in Asia fought across Vietnam and Korea, and the War on Terror.

Article “Subaltern Cosmopolitanism: Crafting Claims to Statehood in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss Journal of Commonwealth Literature 57(3), 612–626
Article “Traveler in One’s Own Land: Reverse Movements in Migritude Literature” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 56:6, 775-788
Article "Conflicting Communities: The Global Imaginary in the South Asian Anglophone Novel" C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings (forthcoming)