‘Zero Meridian of Literature’? The Nobel Prize for Literature as a Global Benchmark (F02*)

• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2021 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 317664947

The Nobel Prize in Literature, first awarded in 1901, is the most widely known international literary award. Not only is this award an indication of the existence of a global literary field, but it has also, we assume, played a significant role in the very constitution, consolidation, and structuring of this field. This subproject is dedicated to reconstructing the Nobel Prize in Literature as a cultural institution that bundles a wide range of heterogeneous, usually normative practices of comparing into practice formations and organizes them in communities of practice, allowing the idea of a global comparability of the literary to become effective.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1288: Practices of comparisons: Ordering and changing the world
• Applicant Institution: Universität Bielefeld
• Project Heads: Dr. Jørgen Sneis; Professor Dr. Carlos Spoerhase