CALL FOR PAPERS

Crossroads VIII: Alterity And The Comparative Imagination

University of Massachusetts Amherst, Program in Comparative Literature | Amherst, MA

April 10-11, 2026 (In-person conference)

Comparative literature as both a discipline and an epistemological practice necessarily presupposes engagement with an ‘other.’ In the simplest possible terms: a comparative method cannot engage with only one text. To compare is to hold more than one ‘object’ in perspective, comparison thus only works between objects, thereby permanently rejecting the centrality of One, and emphasising the relations between two or more objects of study. Practitioners of comparative literature assume an essential underlying condition of being in this world: that one is not alone, and therefore, one exists in relation with an ‘other’ in this world, whether they do so consciously or not. This ‘other’ has been called many names: alterity, difference, ‘not-me’, untranslatability, otherness, heteroglossia, plurality. We posit that such a move – whether it is done by looking at two texts from two different languages, or from two different media – is encoded with the ethics of engaging with difference. This principal belief of comparison has given the discipline its thrust since its inception; a thrust that has thrived over and against the alleged deaths and crisis of the discipline.

The practice of othering, as seen in sedimented notions of “the” East as the other of “the” West, the Orient as the other of Europe, the fetishised other, the racialized other, the gendered other, or the other as a foil to a centre, seem to suggest that alterity, or otherness is a key problem of our times. Yet, as both a discipline and a practice, Comparative Literature presupposes more than one other as the very conditions of possibility for a specific kind of reading to take place. Moreover, the role of comparativists in the development of critiques of orientalism, colonialism, and nationalism, suggests that otherness does not necessarily lead to violent subjugation or ethnic cleansing. Alterity, in the context of comparative literary practice, then, provides us with an opportunity to think through how literature imagines, and stages, ethical encounters with others. That is to say, not only does comparative literature provide an epistemological practice for ethical engagement with texts, comparative reading practices in turn outline how literary texts can be the pedagogical means for practicing ethics.

Philosophically speaking, difference is the existential condition of existence insofar as this means that the world around me is inhabited by that which is not-me. Practically speaking, comparison and comparative frames allow me to have intersubjective relations with that which is not-me. While this philosophy allows for openness and acceptance of otherness, we seek papers that ground this thought in textual analysis of two or more texts.

This conference is a call to reconsider the ethics of reading alterity in texts. Our call is therefore firmly rooted in the methodology and the (mis)usability of theoretical, conceptual, and textual practices that are entailed in what is broadly understood to be comparative literature. We are interested in examining the ethics of our multifarious and plural relations with the others we encounter in texts and are therefore interested in the literary and aesthetic qualifications and creations of alterity in texts. The word ‘comparative’ qualifies the second word ‘literature’. If comparative stands in for an ethics of methodology, then literature – or literariness – would be the object of study. We encourage you to draw a clear line between method of study and object of study in your papers. 

Feel free to agree or disagree with these preliminary comments on textual practices of reading and writing. We only ask that you indicate your agreement/disagreement in your reading of the two or more texts you pick.

Thematically or topically, your papers can engage with the following:

1. Literature and other arts.
2. Plurilingualism/multilingualism/heteroglossia.
3. Translating ‘others’/translation studies.
4. Mother tongues and other tongues.
5. Reading and the (mis)appropriation of an ‘other’.
6. Genre studies and intertextuality.
7. Reading/erasing difference (gender, disability, caste, class, race, religion, sexuality, marginality)
8. New modalities of difference: virtuality, digital cultures, and the internet.
9. Geopolitical categories and disciplinary overlaps (Area studies).
10. Orality and performance.
11. Identity politics and the politics of difference.
12. Aesthetics, philosophy, and comparison as guiding principles of study.

 Graduate and undergraduate students (particularly those completing a capstone or thesis project) who wish to participate in the conference should submit an abstract of no more than 250 words along with a short bio to crossroads.complit@gmail.com by December 23, 2025.

Organizing committee: Kiley Karlak Malloy, Ilse Meiler, Carlotta Mele, Chinmay Pandharipande, Johannes Shephard, Nour Zerelli, and Abby Klug