Dr. Michael Collins
(University of Kent)

“Transnationalism and the Short Story”

This lecture challenges a critical consensus about the relationship of the short story to national literary traditions through a reading of works by Benjamin Franklin and James Hogg. Dr. Collins suggests that the reliance upon bardic nationalism in readings of Scottish short fiction, the German folk psychology tradition, and American Studies methodologies have historically misrepresented the centrality of the Atlantic World System and interconnected imperial cultures to the shaping of the form of the short story. In its place he proposes a version of short story criticism informed both by transnationalism and performance studies.

Reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Speech_of_Polly_Baker

Philosophicum, Faktultätssaal Wednesday, 3rd May 2017
6 c.t. p.m.

(Dr. Collins is visiting Mainz as part of the Erasmus+ Programme and Inter-institutional Agreement)