The Cultural Life of the Nobel Prize in Literature

In this episode, we welcome Dr. Eric Sandberg, Associate Professor at City University of Hong Kong and Docent at the University of Oulu, Finland. Dr. Sandberg's research interests range from modernism to the contemporary novel, with a particular interest in the borderlands between literary and popular fiction. He co-edited Adaptation, Awards Culture, and the Value of Prestige with Colleen Kenn...

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Solomon Azumurana from the Department of English at the University of Lagos, whose research focuses on the comparative study of African and African American novels, gender studies with an emphasis on women’s creative writing, and the intersection of literary theories and fiction. We dive into the debates surrounding Wole Soyinka’s 1986 Nobel Prize in Literatur...

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Hanna Protasova, a Ukrainian literary scholar and journalist, who earned her Candidate of Sciences degree from Ukraine’s Taras Shevchenko Institute in 2021, specializing in Ukrainian literary modernism and émigré literature. Currently a PhD student in Comparative Literature at Western University, Canada, her dissertation examines Holocaust representation in Uk...

In this episode, we are joined by Dr Karin Nykvist, Associate Professor in Comparative Literature at Lund University and a freelance literary critic for the Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan , where she has contributed book reviews for over 20 years and occasionally covered Nobel Prize announcements. We explore the behind-the-scenes impact of Nobel announcement day on newsroom routines at Sydsvenskan...

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Mónika Dánél, Assistant Professor at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. Dr. Dánél, a lead investigator for the research project Space-ing Otherness: Cultural Images of Space, Contact Zones in Contemporary Hungarian and Romanian Film and Literature , specializes in comparative literature with a focus on multilingualism in East-Central European contexts. We e...

In this episode, we are joined by Dr Claire Gullander-Drolet, Assistant Professor in the Department of English at City University of Hong Kong. Dr Gullander-Drolet’s research focuses on literary translation and memory, and she is currently leading a Hong Kong Research Grants Committee-funded project on feminist translation studies approaches to world literatures in English. We discuss the Swedish...

In this episode, we are joined by Dr Karl Ågerup, Senior Lecturer at Södertörn University (previously Head of the Humanities Division and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Örebro). Dr Ågerup’s research focuses on the pedagogical and political dimensions of fictional discourse, and his latest book,  Critical Responses to the Nobel Prize in Literature  (2022), explor...

In this episode, we are joined by Professor Takashi Inoue, Professor of Japanese Literature at Shirayuri University. Prof. Inoue specializes in modern and contemporary literature and has published extensively on renowned authors Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo. His updated biography on Mishima was honored with the Yomiuri Prize for Literature in 2020, and his latest English-language work examines J...

In this episode, we are joined by Paul Tenngart, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Lund University and an expert in Swedish and French poetry, literary translation, and climate fiction. His latest book, The Nobel Prize and the Formation of Contemporary World Literature (2023), explores how the Nobel Prize has shaped global literary aesthetics since its inception. We discuss the aims...

In this episode, we are joined by Prof Wojciech Kruszewski, a philologist and editor at The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. Prof Kruszewski is the Head of the Chair of Textology and Edition and has been leading the Philomath's Archive - Digital Edition research group since 2019. His notable editorial work includes a four-volume selection of Polish poet Anna Kamieńska’s work...

In this episode, we talk with Prof Carlos Spoerhase and Dr Jørgen Sneis from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Together, they lead a research project on the Nobel Prize in Literature and its global influence. We discuss their "Literature in the Nobel Era" conference series and key findings from their research. They explain how the Nobel’s reputation as a prestigious award was shaped...

In this episode, we talk with Professor Bette London from the University of Rochester about her course on Nobel Prize Literature. We discuss how the course introduces students to the Nobel Prize, the works included in the syllabus, and the controversies surrounding the prize. Professor London also shares how students are encouraged to think critically about the Nobel, while still recognizing its c...

Dr Alice Hall is a lecturer in Contemporary and Global Literature at University of York. In 2013, she was one of ten academics chosen as ‘New Generation Thinkers’ by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the BBC. With Professor Sanjoy Bhattacharya, she set up a new MA in Medical History and Humanities, which launched in 2016. She currently holds a Springboard Fellowship funded by the Academ...

Yukiko Duke is a cultural critic, journalist and editor of the Swedish literary magazine. She is also the artistic director of the Stockholm annual literary festival. The Swedes are a reading people. But the readership rate has been declining. Sales of books are down as is the usage of public libraries, probably due to the many different ways of getting cultural information, such as through the in...

Duncan Bartlett is a rock musician journalist who has written about Bob Dylan in the Wall Street Journal, a current affairs journalist and editor of Asian Affairs magazine, as well as a research associate at SOAS. As an observer and great fan of Dylan, Bartlett has been listening to Dylan since the age of 13, has every single one of his albums and has attended numerous concerts. Dylan’s initial ap...

Xu Xi is the author of fourteen books, including five novels, seven collections of short fiction & essays and one memoir. Her novel Habit of a Foreign Sky (2010) was a finalist for the Asian Man Booker Award and her short story Famine (2004) was awarded the O’Henry prize. Her works feature on many college literature reading lists. Xu Xi defines success as being able to live life as a writer. T...

Professor Tambling is a writer and critic, who has been engaged with education and teaching at all levels and across the range, including holding the Chair of Comparative Literature in Hong Kong, and of Literature in Manchester. He has published 27 books and numerous articles. It is important to write good books for students. His research activities include new research as well as outcomes from te...

Dr Simpson is the Rosemary Pountney Junior Research Fellow in British and European Drama at the Faculty of English, St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford. One of her primary areas of study is Samuel Beckett, literature Nobel laureate in 1969. Beckett studies have often down played the importance and relevance of the Nobel prize. Yet it remains useful in understanding his works since they are so...

In this episode, Michael is joined by Dr Bret Johnson, a PhD graduate from Loughborough University, to discuss the influences of the literary prize culture on the stratification of early-twentieth-century modernist literature into cultural registers. By looking into Virginia Woolf and Y.B. Yeats’ reactions to being awarded the 1928 Femina Vie Heureuse and the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature respect...

In this episode, Michael and Prof Shelley Chan, Professor of Chinese Language and Cultural Studies at Wittenberg University, discuss Mo Yan, the 2012 Literature Nobel Laureate. Prof Chan published one of the best English language studies on Mo Yan: “ A subversive voice in China: The fictional world of Mo Yan ” (2011). In Chinese literature subversive implies expressing disapproval of the political...

In this episode, Michael and Dr Gloria Fisk, Associate Professor at Queen’s College Department of English, City University of New York discuss the tensions faced by trans-cultural and non-western writers. Central to this conversation is Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 literature Nobel laureate. And Dr Fisk’s 2018 book ‘Orhan Pamuk and the Good of World Literature’. The benefits of world literature lie in it...

In this episode, Michael and Howard Choy, Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Hong Kong Baptist University discuss the Nobel Prize in Literature within the Chinese speaking sphere, with focus on the political stances, reader expectations and stylistic differences surrounding Chinese Nobel laureates Gao Xingjian and Mo Yan. Keywords: Literary Criticism, Nobel Prize, Literature...