Oceans in World Literature: from the Middle Ages to Modern Times (ACLA 2025)

Organizer: Yuanfei Wang

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In The Novel and the Sea, Margaret Cohen argues that the dominant narrative about the rise of the western novel occurring on land could be revised with a consideration of sea adventure fiction.


One of the most exciting scholarly developments in recent years is the global surge of criticism, thinking, and writing on the “blue humanities,”—a belated recognition of the importance of oceans to human lives and cultures.


This seminar aims to foster conversations on “oceanic literature” across and beyond the disciplines of national literatures. The time span of this seminar is broad, ranging from the Middle Ages to present times.


This seminar welcomes submissions from scholars working in traditional genres of literary studies such as poetry, drama, and the novel, but we also welcome submissions from scholars who conceive of the literary in more capacious terms, including those working on arts, the histories of travel and trade and legal history.

• The relationship between the sea and the land in literature;


• Pirates, boats, sea ports in literature and film;


• Specific regions on the seas as described in arts and literature;


• Sea creatures in literature and art;


• The sea, climate change, pollution, and ecocriticism;


• Legal history, trade, diplomacy, and wars on the seas;


• Languages spoken by sea people;


• Underwater media; 


• A comparative and/or transnational perspective to “oceanic literature.”