Tobias Boes

Emily Spiers

Rebecca Braun

The original essays in Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature mean to provoke rather than reassure, to challenge rather than codify. Instead of summarizing existing knowledge, scholars working in the field aim at opening fresh discussion; instead of emphasizing settled consensus they direct their readers to areas of enlivened and unresolved debate. Booksellers, authors, and academics have been talking about world literature since Goethe made the term fashionable in the early nineteenth century. Yet amidst all the talk of books that 'circulate' and literature as a kind of universal property that can function as a 'window on the world', how do we account for the people who live in real places, and who write, translate, market, and read the texts that travel on these global journeys? World Authorship breaks new ground by showing how to bring together the real-world contexts of authorship with the literary worlds of fiction. Written by world-leading academics and creative professionals including authors, translators, publishers, editors, prize jurors, and literary festival organizers, World Authorship updates Michael Foucault's 'author function' by significantly expanding the network of people and practices involved in literature. It covers keyword aspects of world authorship, grounding them in the study of actual literary texts to illuminate how literature is shared and made in different parts of the world and at different times in history. At the heart of all contributions, however, is one key question: where is the human element in world literature? By covering everything from 'Beginnings' to 'Voice', World Authorship provides the answer.

World Authorship

In Pop-Feminist Narratives, Emily Spiers explores the recent phenomenon of 'pop-feminism' and pop-feminist writing across North America, Britain, and Germany. Pop-feminism is characterised by its engagement with popular culture and consumerism; its preoccupation with sexuality and transgression in relation to female agency; and its thematisation of intergenerational feminist discord, portrayed either as a damaging discursive construct or as a verifiable phenomenon requiring remediation. Central to this volume is the question of theorising the female subject in a postfeminist neoliberal climate and the role played by genre and narrative in the articulation of contemporary pop-feminist politics. The heightened visibility of mainstream feminist discourse and feminist activism in recent years—especially in North America, Britain, and Germany—means that the time is ripe for a coherent comparative scholarly study of pop-feminism as a transnational phenomenon. This volume provides such an account of pop-feminism in a manner which takes into account the varied and complex narrative strategies employed in the telling of pop-feminist stories across multiple genres and platforms, including pop-literary fiction, the popular 'guide' to feminism, film, music, and the digital.

The Female Subject under Neoliberalism in North America, Britain, and Germany

Pop-Feminist Narratives

In Pop-Feminist Narratives, Emily Spiers explores the recent phenomenon of 'pop-feminism' and pop-feminist writing across North America, Britain, and Germany. Pop-feminism is characterised by its engagement with popular culture and consumerism; its preoccupation with sexuality and transgression in relation to female agency; and its thematisation of intergenerational feminist discord, portrayed either as a damaging discursive construct or as a verifiable phenomenon requiring remediation. Central to this volume is the question of theorising the female subject in a postfeminist neoliberal climate and the role played by genre and narrative in the articulation of contemporary pop-feminist politics. The heightened visibility of mainstream feminist discourse and feminist activism in recent yearsespecially in North America, Britain, and Germanymeans that the time is ripe for a coherent comparative scholarly study of pop-feminism as a transnational phenomenon. This volume provides such an account of pop-feminism in a manner which takes into account the varied and complex narrative strategies employed in the telling of pop-feminist stories across multiple genres and platforms, including pop-literary fiction, the popular 'guide' to feminism, film, music, and the digital.

Emily Spiers

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