Beyond Words: A Global Program in Literature
Episodes
Black Cherokee (2025)
23 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Downing's novel traces the layered inheritance of Black and Cherokee identity through the fictional life of a young girl, Ophelia Blue Rivers. Th...
DOG—A Fiction (2025)
11 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dog—the U.S. debut of Israeli writer Yishay Ishi Ron—delivers an honest and unflinching portrait of a veteran battling trauma and addiction.The st...
Before Freud: Anna Karenina (1878)
16 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What truly makes Anna Karenina so significant—as an epitome of world literature—is that it is far more than a tale of love and tragedy. Tolstoy of...
The Whispers of Art
07 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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Crime and Punishment (1866)
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Can murder ever be justified for the greater good? Today, we will walk through the twisted streets of St. Petersburg, depicted by the brilliant yet to...
In Search of Lost Time (1913)
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Search of Lost Time (1913) by Marcel Proust remains one of the most profound and monumental novels of the 20th century, presenting us an intricate ...
The Island: War and Belonging in Auden's England
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
W.H. Auden is the modernist poet who coined the term “the age of anxiety” and is noted for his stylistic and technical achievement. His work intel...
Great Expectations (1861)
15 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Charles Dickens' Great Expectations (1861) stands as a cornerstone of English literature, encapsulating Dickens' unparalleled talent to weav...
Le Rouge et Le Noir (1830)
30 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Known for his masterful blend of realism and romanticism, Stendhal is one of the greatest novelists of the 19th century, and his works offer profound ...
The Human Comedy (1829-48)
15 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Despite being rooted in 19th-century France, Honoré de Balzac's exploration of universal themes such as love, greed, and ambition makes his work...
The Plum in the Golden Vase (1610)
15 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we're unfurling the scrolls of one of the most provocative, scandalous, and riveting novels to ever emerge from China’s Ming dynasty: &q...
Madame Bovary (1857)
15 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Madame Bovary scandalized and fascinated nineteenth-century France upon its release, and is a groundbreaking exploration of desire, romantic disillusi...
Gulliver's Travels (1726)
15 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Gulliver’s Travels remains one of the finest satires in the English language, delighting in the mockery of everything from government to religion an...
My Struggle (2009)
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A Norwegian author and well-known worldwide for six autobiographical novels, titled My Struggle and multiple prize winner, Karl Ove Knausgaard has b...
Zuleika Dobson (1911)
15 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Zuleika Dobson, or an Oxford love story, is the only novel by English essayist Max Beerbohm, a satire of undergraduate life at Oxford published in 191...
New Grub Street (1891)
30 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
New Grub Street is a novel by George Gissing published in 1891, which is set in the literary and journalistic circles of 1880s' London.The story ...
The Aesthetic Cold War
16 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How did superpower competition and the cold war affect writers in the decolonizing world? In the book The Aesthetic Cold War, Peter Kalliney explores ...
Psychoanalysis and Literature
30 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Taking Sigmund Freud's theories as a point of departure, Jean-Michel Rabaté's 2014 book The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Psycho...
Shakespeare's Enigmatic Late Plays
15 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The famous English poet, playwright, and actor William Shakespeare had during his lifetime produced 39 plays which are widely regarded as being among ...
Frankenstein (1818)
15 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. It recounts the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young...
The Mahābhārata
31 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In a most unsettling dice gambling game that is to determine the fate of its two players, a man loses his brothers, himself, his wife, and his kingdom...
Robinson Crusoe After 300 Years
15 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is presented as an autobiograp...
Apter's Politics of Untranslatability
16 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Emily Apter’s Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability is a pivotal monograph in the study of comparative literature, publishe...
Water Margin (16th century)
30 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Water Margin (水浒传) is one of the earliest Chinese novels written in vernacular Mandarin, and is attributed to Shi Nai'an(施耐庵).It is a...
Marxism and Literature
15 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s episode of the Global Novel, Dr. Daniel Tutt will review Marxism’s key concept of "alienation." He will also discuss the rela...
About Marxism
30 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as ...
Don Quixote (1605)
16 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Don Quixote is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. It was originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. It is the most generative work...
Ancient Greek Novel: Aethiopika (350-375 AD)
30 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Aethiopica is a fascinating and complex work that tells the story of a young Ethiopian princess named Chariclea and her lover Theagenes, a Thessalian ...
About The Novel
16 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Consider, even English literature was a late comer to the academy, therefore the novel, being a late comer to the late comer, did not made it to the...
The Orphan of Zhao
16 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Orphan of Zhao(趙氏孤兒) is a famous play from the Chinese Yuan dynasty, in the 13th century generally attributed to the dramatist Ji Junxiang...
The Princesse de Clèves (1678)
28 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
La Princesse de Clèves is a French novel which was published anonymously in 1678. Many regarded the novel as the precursor to the modern psychologica...
Little Nemo In Slumberland (1905-1911)
15 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Little Nemo in Slumberland is a comic strip created by American cartoonist Winsor McCay. It depicts Nemo having fantastic dreams that were interrupted...
The Arabian Nights and Its 2021 Translation
15 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
King Shahriyar and his brother King Shahzaman of India and China suspect their suffering to be unique in this world. Their wives have slept with other...
The Emergence of A Literary Genius: Anton Chekhov
30 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1886, a twenty-six-year-old Anton Chekhov was publishing short stories, humor pieces, and articles at an astonishing rate, and was still a practici...
Rebirth of the English Comic Strip
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“Once upon a time: the comic strip was a poor, un- baptized, and unrecognized stepsister of caricature, which was the poor sister of the graphic art...
Anna Karenina (1878)
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Anna Karenina is one of the most nuanced characters in world literature and we return to her, and the novel she propels, again and again. Joining us t...
Translating System of Comics
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Translation studies is an academic interdiscipline dealing with the systematic study of the theory, description and application of translation, interp...
System of Comics
30 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to Thierry Groensteen, one of the leading French-speaking comics researchers and theorists join and speak on the Global Novel podcast. Tierry&a...
Mulan: Different Versions of a Classic Chinese Legend
15 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mulan is a legendary folk heroine from the Northern and Southern dynasties era of Chinese history, roughly from 4th to 6th century CE. The story of Mu...
About Tricksters
30 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In mythology and the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a character in a story who exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledg...
Tao Yuanming's Utopianism
15 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Peach Blossom Spring (桃花源记) is a short prose fable written by China's best known poet during the six dynasties period, Tao Yuanming (陶渊...
Marlowe: Doctor Faustus (1592)
30 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A mysterious spy who wrote about the most captivatingly infamous intellectual of the time, Christopher Marlowe is among the most accomplished and enig...
Milton: Paradise Lost (1667)
15 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Paradise Lost is an epic poem by the 17th-century English poet John Milton, published in 1667. In its most creative fashion, it supplemented the bib...
Dante Translated
30 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The word “Inferno” is the Italian for Hell, an imaginary creation by the 14th-century poet Dante. The Inferno is the first part of the Divine Co...
The Allegory of The Cave: Plato's Republic
15 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Allegory of the Cave, or Plato's Cave, is an allegory presented by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work Republic to compare "the ef...
Chinese Strange Writings of "The Six Dynasties" (222-589AD)
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Are ghost stories real? And why do people write and read ghost stories in early medieval China? Prof. Robert Ford Campany, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt...
Rodolphe Töpffer, Visionary Graphomaniac and Father of Comics
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of The Global Novel podcast, Dr. David Kunzle (UCLA) will uncover the unknown history of how a once frowned-upon visual story-telling ...
The Tale of Genji and Its Translation
30 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Tale of Genji (or Genji Monogatari) is a classic work of Japanese literature written in the early 11th century by the noblewoman and lady-in-waiti...
World Literature: Theories, Methods and Debates
15 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What is world literature? How do we define its scope and nature? This episode will share a critical lens on the current theories, methods and debates ...
Jing Ke Assassinates First Emperor of China (90 BCE)
15 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Many may still remember the 2002 martial art film directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Jet Li. The name is Hero and it is based on the historical ev...
I Love The Beauty That Isn’t Mine: Ovid’s Metamorphoses
30 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Narcissus was a hunter from Thespiae in Boeotia who was known for his beauty. According to Tzetzes, he rejected all romantic advances, eventually fall...
The Realm of Freedom: Zhuangzi's Metaphysical Taoism
15 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the episode we will explore one of the earliest narratives that attempts at capturing the essence of wisdom, freedom and happiness. It was 375 BC w...
The Beginning of Story-telling of the Western Tradition: Homer's Narrative Structure
28 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What's the difference between oral and written form of story-telling? How do Homer's poetic narratives set the canon for Western literature?...