A new key publication of the EXC 2020 is out now: Literatures, Communities, Worlds explores the consciousness of global connections in various literary milieus across the world. While world literature is a well-established theoretical perspective, previous research has often concentrated on literary works available in English translation, predominantly published and marketed by US publishing houses. This reflects a US-American vision of the world. The present volume, by contrast, looks at different, or competing, intellectual and cultural communities in Asia, Europe, and the Americas from the thirteenth century to the present. Literatures, Communities, Worlds reveals a diversity of world-making efforts and cosmological conceptions in literary media throughout centuries of entangled practice. The chapters provide fresh insights into worlds of literature in multiple linguistic traditions, enriching the current debate on global literary and intellectual connections beyond English.

The book is based on the first annual conference of the EXC 2020, Worlds of Literature – Competing Notions of the Global. Edited by Dustin Breitenwischer, Frank Kelleter, Miltos Pechlivanos, Samira Spatzek and Chunjie Zhang (Research Area 1: "Competing Communities"), the volume has been published in the series Rezeptionskulturen in Literatur- und Mediengeschichte (Könighausen & Neumann, 2025) and is available in open access.