Includes bibliographical references (pages 403-416) and index.

All the world in the time / David Damrosch -- Issues and definitions. Introduction ; The West and the rest: frames for world literature / Sarah Lawall ; The ethics of world literature: reading others, reading otherwise / Vilashini Cooppan ; Literary world systems / Emily Apter ; What is literature? Reading across cultures / Zhang Longxi ; The place of difference in cross-cultural literacy / Anuradha Dingwaney Needham ; Teaching in translation / Lawrence Venuti -- Program strategies. Introduction ; Teaching world literature in a microcosm of the world / Kathleen L. Komar ; Habits of mind: Comparative Literature meets the world / Oscar Kenshur ; The afterlives of the Greeks; or, What is the canon of world literature / Jane O. Newman ; Western voices: western world literature in a learning community / Carol J. Luther ; Pioneering cross-cultural studies and world literature at Illinois / Michael Palencia-Roth ; Cultural encounters in global contexts: world literature as a one-semester general education course / John Burt Forster, Jr. ; World literature and the graduate curriculum / Caroline D. Eckhardt ; "The world's story": teaching literature in the twenty-first century / Collin Meissner and Margaret Doody -- Teaching strategies. Introduction ; Major cultures and minor literatures / David Damrosch ; Conversation in context: a dialogic approach to teaching world literature / Gary Harrison ; Writing in the oral tradition: reflections on the indigenous literatures of Australia, New Zealand, and North America / Elvira Pulitano ; Weaving women into world literature / Margaret R. Higonnet ; Sexuality, literature, and human rights in translation / Joseph A. Massad ; Finding the global in the local: explorations in interdisciplinary team teaching / Marjorie E. Rhine and Jeanne Gillespie ; Beyond lecture and discussion: the world's oldest approaches to literature / Thomas Beebee ; Collaborative assignments for world literature survey courses / Monika Brown.

Courses. Introduction ; The adventures of the artist in world literature: a one-semester thematic approach / Carolyn Ayers ; American literature and Islamic time / Wai Chee Dimock ; Worlds of difference? Gay and Lesbian texts across cultures / Nikolai Endres ; Middle Eastern literature: an introduction / Carol Fadda-Conrey ; Cosmos versus empire: teaching the Ramayana in a comparative context / Raymond-Jean Frontain ; Off to join the online circus: the comic heroic journey of world literature / Elizabeth Horan ; Imagining the constructed body: from statues to cyborgs / Ellen Peel ; "Literature that changed the world": designing a world literature course / C.A. Prettiman ; Teaching world masterpieces through religious themes in literature / Eric Sterling ; Ancient and contemporary texts: teaching an introductory course in non-western literatures / Kathryn A. Walterschied.

This is an exciting, and unsettling, time to be teaching world literature, writes David Damrosch. Because the range of works taught in world literature courses has expanded enormously, both historically and geographically, the task of selection--and of teacher preparation--has grown more challenging. Teachers of this field must grapple with such issues as coverage, cultural difference, and the role of translation in the classroom. Should one emphasize masterpieces or traditions, concepts or themes? How does one avoid making a work bear the burden of representing an entire tradition? To what extent should anthologies be used? Can a course be global in scope and yet focus on a few works, authors, moments? This collection of thirty-two essays in the MLA series Options for Teaching offers an array of solutions to these challenges, reflecting the wide variety of institutions, courses, and students described by the contributors. An annotated bibliography is provided, with a listing of useful Web sites.