Work in Progress
- I am in the early stages of a larger book project on what I call 'world literary value.' This book aims to develop a new account of the way literary value is produced, articulated, and circulated in relation to non-literary value domains. The book focus on the dominant role of the USA, and especially of New York-based institutions, in the contemporary creation of world literary value.
- As a kind of spin-off of this monograph project, I acquired funding for a doctoral research project entitled 'Harlem, Capital of World Literature? James Baldwin's 21st-Century Career and the Dynamics of World Literature.' This project develops an in-depth study of the twenty-first century consecration of James Baldwin as a transnational literary and political figure. Looking at the role of tourism, film, anthologies, intertextuality, politics, and other valuedomains, the project has a double aim: to arrive at an exhaustive account of Baldwin's posthumous career, and to develop a better understanding of the way literature and other value-domains interact to produce 'world literary value.'
- For other occasions, I am also working on the issue of population in post-catastrophe fiction; the relation between literature and dementia stigma; the relation between independent publishers and the Nobel Prize; and Hernan Diaz's In the Distance as a work of climate fiction.