Anna Muenchrath

By reading paratexts and archival documents surrounding the global circulation of literature, this project traces the networks that constitute the world literary space, allowing us to see its contours as shaped by both the long-term accrual of past choices and material infrastructures, and by authors, translators, editors, and readers who do not simply replicate the values of the literary marketplace, but divert, question, and undermine them. The objects of the study include institutions like US world literature anthologies, the Council of Books in Wartime, the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Oprah’s Book Club, and Amazon’s translation imprint.