In the course of this seminar we will examine central controversies in Contemporary Comparative Literature, and we will discuss the place of Judeo-Arabic, Hebrew, Mizrahi and Palestinain literatures in them: we will open with the question of "World Literature" through reading Pascale Casanova ("The World Republic of Letters") and Aamir Mufti ("Forget English! – Orientalisms and World Literatures"), introducing also Lital Levy's and Allison Schachter's attempt to locate the question of Jewish literatures in the discussion on World Literature ("Jewish Literature / World Literature: Between the Local and the Transnational"); we will continue with the question of translation and translatability through Walter Benjamin ("The Task of the Translator") and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ("The Politics of Translation"), reading into it Michael Allan's attempt to locate the limits of translatability in World Literature ("Reading with One Eye, Speaking with One Tongue: The Problem of Address in World Literature"); we will move then to discuss the questions of secularization and the post-secular perspective in the work of Talal Asad ("Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity""), and we will locate those questions in the Arab Nahda (Renaissance), in the work of Marwa Elshakry ("Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860-1950"), and in the Jewish Mizrahi context, in the work of Yaacov Yadgar ("Secularism and Religion in Jewish-Israeli Politics: Traditionist and Modernity"); we will conclude the seminar examining the issues that were raised in the works of Rabbi David Buzaglo (in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic), Avoth Yeshurun (in Hebrew), Jacqueline Kahanoff (in English), Samir Naqqash (in Literary Arabic and Judeo-Arabic), Amira Hess (in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic), Haviva Pedaya (in Hebrew), Ronit Matalon (in Hebrew) and Mahmoud Darwish (in Literary Arabic).

Knowing Arabic is necessary for the seminar.