The Geopolitics of Language and Literature Migration

The Anglophone diaspora arose during the period we identify as the Anthropocene. From 1780 to 1930 English speakers rocketed from 12m to 200m through language migration and Anglophone settlements in Australasia, Canada, South Africa, and the USA. During global processes of colonization the universal gold standard and the International Phonetic Alphabet attempted to universalize metrics in currencies and languages, and languages came to be seen as at the base of states, rights, and entitlements.
I intend to develop a broad methodological approach to the geopolitics of language and literature migration. I will focus on contemporary debates in language protection versus laissez-faire; the Economics of Language and linguistic justice; neofascist deployment of English and Anglophonism. In terms of world literatures, I will focus specifically on cases of trans-national, rather than national, literatures, that is, on the frictions of encounter, whether coerced (colonial, postcolonial, neocolonial) or voluntary (modernization, liberalization) in Literatures of Civil War; Literatures of Diaspora; and Literatures of Partition.