Digitized archival materials open up exciting possibilities for teaching and learning in the undergraduate world literature classroom. Generally, undergraduates are not introduced to archival analysis until their junior or senior years, if at all. However, current research suggests that students can benefit greatly from even preliminary exposure to archives early in their undergraduate careers, by means of short-term, small-scale archival research tasks. This essay draws on case studies from the author’s introductory world literature classes to demonstrate how digital archives enable students to tap into the rich history of English-language world literature as intimately tied to legacies and contexts of imperialism. It concludes with strategies and considerations to assist educators interested in incorporating digital archives into the undergraduate world literature classroom.
This article examines how P.E.N., an organisation born in imperial Britain, endeavoured in some cases and floundered in others to create conditions for collaboration between Indian and British writers. Drawing on the P.E.N. archives at the Harry Ransom Center (HRC), I examine communication among and between Indian and British writers in P.E.N.'s orbit during the World War II era and leading up to the Indian Independence Act of 1947. As a forum for collaboration among writers internationally not only to develop writing and editing projects together, but also to forge a unifying conception for the modern era of the relationship between literature and political freedom, P.E.N. aimed to create opportunities for exchange among Indian and British writers. Analysing Indian writers' articulation of the necessary conditions for cross-imperial collaboration, I consider how mutuality was compromised under political conditions of imperialism hinging on hierarchal notions of culture.
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