ABSTRACT
As translation studies scholars, we belong to a critical tradition that has, in its modern iteration, challenged the narrative of national literatures as a master framework through which to study literature. Teaching literature in translation as translation offers a way to read literature against the grain of persistent nation-based paradigms insofar as the act of translation, and the choices made therein, destabilizes notions of origins, originality, and linguistic and cultural isolation. The changing landscape of literary studies, with English departments increasingly including translated literature in their syllabi and with language and area studies departments being downsized or shut, might seem to signal what Gayatri Spivak dubbed the death of a discipline but these straitened circumstances also provide some possibilities to reassess how literature functions across borders and to acknowledge the borders running through literary texts.
