Film as World Literature

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Professor Robin Truth Goodman (Professor, Florida State University, USA) Professor Thomas Oliver Beebee (Penn State University, USA)

Film as World Literature

Professor Robin Truth Goodman (Professor, Florida State University, USA), Professor Thomas Oliver Beebee (Penn State University, USA)

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English

Bloomsbury Academic USA
13 November 2025

Film theory & criticism; Literary theory; Popular culture; Globalization

Series: Literatures as World Literature

Redefines the theoretical and thematic contents of world literature by considering it in connection with film.

What gets lost when we understand film as essentially different from literature? What gets lost when we think them essentially the same? Does the constructed difference between literature and film also create social and political exclusions, exclusions that may exacerbate class struggle or exclusions of certain ways of thinking the future as different? Film as World Literature seeks to undo disciplines and disciplinarity: the division between film and literature, indeed, conceals the possibilities of “world” by bracketing out “undisciplined” parts.

Contributors apply ideas of “translatability” and “untranslatability” not just as a linguistic exercise of transfers between language groups, cultures, and national origins but also as an approach to media and transfers between media. Is film a visual acknowledgement that literary language is, by definition, multilingual – that is, is film a place where political conflicts, as Bakhtin observed, can be rendered visible? Chapters discuss film’s relation to world literature not only by considering literary adaptations across nations, regions, languages, ideologies, and contexts but also by exploring film’s intersections with literary theory, narrative, history, genre, and experimentation.

Film as World Literature calls for recognition that while the category of “world” demands a radical defense in the face of risks to democracy, the world that literature and film combined bring forth must interrogate the conditions for a future politics of interaction, engagement, belonging, and difference.

Edited by: Professor Robin Truth Goodman (Professor Florida State University USA)
Series edited by: Professor Thomas Oliver Beebee (Penn State University USA)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic USA
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9798765113400
Series: Literatures as World Literature
Pages: 312
Publication Date: 13 November 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Robin Truth Goodman is a Distinguished Research Professor of English at Florida State University, USA. Her many previous publications include Cinema and the Political Imagination: Third Cinema and Its After-Image (2025), Gender Commodity: Marketing Feminist Identities and the Promise of Security (Bloomsbury, 2022), The Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st Century Feminist Theory (2019); Promissory Notes: On the Literary Conditions of Debt (2018); Gender for the Warfare State: Literature of Women in Combat (2017); and Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory (2016).

Reviews for Film as World Literature

In the face of the predominantly Anglocentric studies of film adaptations of literature, Film as World Literature lives up to its title by delivering an exciting collection of eminently ‘worldly’ essays. The volume is especially valuable as it charts a conversation on the margins of major industries, countries, and topics. Not only does it show what became world-wide currents such as neo-realism, but it also explores cinema and media on the margins, ranging from mainstream commercial cinema (James Bond) to questions of evolving media technologies (the internationalization of screen culture through streaming apps). * Robert Stam, University Professor, New York University, USA * Film as World Literature breaks new ground in literary, film, and cultural studies. Blending rich theoretical insights with diverse case studies, this volume examines adaptation, genre, and transmedia storytelling, and would be an essential resource for scholars and students. * Rini Bhattacharya Mehta, Associate Professor of Comparative and World Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA *