Nicoletta Pireddu is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Georgetown University, USA. Her research focuses on literary and cultural theories, history of ideas, European and Mediterranean studies, borders, migration, and identity. She has recently authored The Works of Claudio Magris: Temporary Homes, Mobile Identities, European Borders (Palgrave 2015), and edited Scipio Sighele's The Criminal Crowd and Other Writings on Mass Society (2018). She was granted fellowships from the NEH and Howard Foundation, and received the American Association for Italian Studies Book Award, the Distinguished Service Award, and the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Introduction: Recoding the Past, Reinventing the Post; Nicoletta Pireddu

Part I. Meta-theoretical Premises

1. Critiquing the Critique, Ming Xie

2. The Scope of Literary Theory; Patrick Colm Hogan

3. In Defense of an Unstable Literature, Sébastien Doubinsky

Part II. Theoretical Approaches to Literature

4. Illegitimacy as Norm: On the Temporal Structure of Science and Theory; Kirk Wetters

5. On Aristocratic Reading: The Ordeal of Conversion; Peter Paik

6. Reconstructing Religion and Literature; Vincent Pecora

7. Transcreationl Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère

Part III. Critical and Cultural Theories

8. Space, Mobility, and Materiality: Rethinking Notions of Geographic Coherence; Diana Sorensen

9. Outsourcing Post-Colonialism; Rukmini Bhaya Nair

10. Provincializing Posthumanism; Neda Atanasoki

11. Experimental Cosmopolitanism; Didier Coste

Coda

12. Critical Pedagogy: Practical Occidentalism in the Classroom; Robert Cowan