From Comparative Literature Today Toward Comparative Cultural Studies

Authors

Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, University of Alberta

Abstract

In his article "From Comparative Literature Today Toward Comparative Cultural Studies" Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek proposes a theoretical approximation of already established and current aspects of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies. "Comparative cultural studies" is conceived as an approach with three areas of theoretical content: 1) To study literature (text and/or literary system) with and in the context of culture and the discipline of cultural studies; 2) In cultural studies itself to study literature with borrowed elements (theories and methods) from comparative literature; and 3) To study culture and its composite parts and aspects in the mode of the proposed "comparative cultural studies" approach instead of the currently reigning single-language approach dealing with a topic with regard to its nature and problematics in one culture only. At the same time, comparative cultural studies would implicitly and explicitly disrupt the established hierarchy of cultural products and production similarly to the disruption cultural studies itself has performed. The suggestion is to pluralize and paralellize the study of culture without hierarchization. The article contains brief descriptions of recent volumes in comparative literature across the globe and closes with a ten-point draft proposal of the how of scholarship in comparative cultural studies.

Recommended Citation

Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. "From Comparative Literature Today Toward Comparative Cultural Studies." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 1.3 (1999): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1041>

This text has been double-blind peer reviewed by 2+1 experts in the field.