Chair Profile

The Chair of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures is established to represent the diversity of Anglophone literary and cultural practices across the globe. Grounded in postcolonial literary and cultural theory, it investigates a wide array of cultural practices which have emerged in response to processes of colonisation and decolonisation; however, it is also devoted to a thorough analysis of the reverberations between globalisation and culture at large. It takes into account different forms of mediatisation among which literature features prominently, next to other old (e.g. painting and photography, film, theatre, or music) and new media (e.g. video and the internet). Focussing on the complex dynamics of moving ideas, goods, technologies and people in an ever increasingly interconnected world since the time of the Renaissance, it responds to the need for a global perspective on English Studies. This especially concerns the reflection of colonialism and globality in South and South-East Asia (esp. India), in the Pacific World (including Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand), in the Caribbean and Canada, as well as in the various Anglophone regions of Africa, without precluding perspectives on Britain and the US.