This chapter examines the emergence of a treaty regime at the UN on business and human rights. It examines the key provisions of the Zero Draft as well as the amendments addressed by the draft presented in August 2020. This is a welcome development and it is clear that the focus of the emerging treaty is not so much on the corporations themselves but on the necessary positive measures required of states in this field

MNCs have a central role, responsibility, and opportunity to foment change globally in fulfilling the rights of persons with disabilities. In addition to improving theiremployment practices, MNCs can leverage their economic power to fulfil other aspects of the human rights of persons with disabilities within their purview by: making physical and virtual environments accessible; ensuring that vendors, distributors and supply chains require equal employment opportunity for workers with a disability, produce accessible products and services, and take affirmative actions to employ and advance in employment workers with a disability; acknowledging the existence and value of customers with disabilities and their households and friends; marketing to such individuals; developing data accumulation and accountability instruments, including human rights impact assessments (HRIAs); and creating a general culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion of differences that includes disability. Acting in this manner would bolster rarely helpful corporate social responsibility (CSR) and diversity schemes, and position the business sector to become human rights change agents.

World children’s literature can be understood as a modern, transnational discursive space that formed in the late nineteenth century. Specific aspects of how this historical moment evolved internationally are explored in more detail using in particular the German, Japanese, and Anglo-American cases as examples. That we can now regard children’s literature as a cross-cultural genre characterized by widely shared notions of appropriate content or intended readership is a result that emerged from a complex, entangled set of historical and political circumstances. The first section of the essay sets the stage by tracing the historical growth of childhood as a scientific and cultural concept; the importance of this newly defined childhood to modern nation building efforts, especially as manifested in the centralization of schooling; the rise of mass media, including that tailored to children; and finally, the gradual creation of a literate child and youth population that developed its own reading culture. The next section explores the connection between education and children’s literature in more detail: it was the transnational pedagogical debate about children’s literature in the school curriculum at the end of the nineteenth century that led the genre to assume a central role in creating future citizens and imagined communities. A third section details the international boom in more popular, entertainment-oriented children’s literature around the fin de siècle, which demonstrates from an alternate perspective how the ideological goals of adults shaped -- and were shaped by -- children’s imagination of the world. The essay concludes with a reflection on how world children’s literature has continued to grow as a complex, uneven system of international exchange powered by a distinctive and paradoxical mix of didacticism and idealism on the one hand – and generosity and adaptability on the other.

This chapter traces the development of American experimental theatre ensembles from the 1960s to the 2010s. It emphasizes how the values of the 1960s youth culture and Off-Off-Broadway, including egalitarianism and anticommercialism, informed the devising practices of groups such as the Open Theater, the Performance Group, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. It also addresses how efforts to critique and expand on the work of 1960s ensembles have informed the work of such later groups as Spiderwoman, Split Britches, the SITI Company, Tectonic Theatre Project, Pig Iron Theatre, and the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma. It argues that developments in form and process by American devising ensembles reflect an evolving understanding of theatre’s relationship to the social sphere and to the practice of freedom.

The 1999 publication of Pascale Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters (translation, 2004) accorded Ireland and Irish writers an unusually high profile among world literature studies. In chapter 10 of that volume, entitled “The Irish Paradigm,” Casanova foregrounded the achievement of the Irish Literary Revival as what she termed “a compact history of the revolt against the literary order.” This chapter examines the value and limitations of Casanova’s reading as part of a broader examination of the pertinence of terms such as “national,” “international” and “transnational” with respect to Irish writing. It focuses on three case studies: firstly, the historical relationship between Irish fiction and the subject of empire, as exemplified by the work of nineteenth-century novelist Maria Edgeworth. Secondly, it examines the work of W.B. Yeats, most famous writer of the Irish Revival, and his critical status as poet of decolonization and exemplar of transnational poetics. Finally, the transnational character of contemporary Irish fiction is discussed, including recent writings by writers Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright, Mike McCormack and Melatu Uche Okorie.

Since the turn of the millennium a number of novels that look back to the Korean War have appeared in English including Ha Jin’s War Trash, Hwang Sok-yong’s The Guest, Chang-rae Lee’s The Surrendered and Jayne Anne Phillips’s Lark and Termite. These works issue address a location, the Korean peninsula, that interrupts putatively global frameworks for understanding the contemporary. Korea’s postcoloniality remains suspended as it has manifested in two still divided nation-state and its ongoing civil war testifies to the fact that the Cold War’s putative end is not an entirely global phenomenon. Moreover, these works illuminate how the “contact nebulae” (to use Karen Thornber’s phrase) that define East Asia—the formations of transculturation indigenous to that region—are not only shot through by complex asymmetries of power but also intertwined with more global histories of war and empire. As such, the network of literary examined in this essay contribute to a theorizing of the contemporary and of world literature that is attuned tracking the dynamic interaction of the multiple temporal and spatial registers—global, regional and national—in which various modalities of worlding take place.

This essay argues for the distinctiveness of the call to the planetary in its twenty first century form, without discounting its historical antecedents. It considers nodes of a distinctive necropolitics related increasingly to climate change, which break with the world-now of 1989 and its aftermaths in contemporary theories of world literature. Issues of death and its contemporary modes are worked with, alongside figurations of water and plant life. The essay is cautious yet insistent that we enable a conversation about planetary form as literary form in thinking about world literature.

The postwar years through to 1960 can be viewed as a Golden Age for American drama as distinctly American new plays, staging, and acting styles emerged. Changing social and political forces in the nation inspired dramatists to rewrite what was possible on an American stage, expanding themes, styles, and character types previously depicted. Women and minorities were finding their voices and making progress in writing, directing, and producing drama in mainstream theatres. Many of the period’s theatrical successes and innovations were fueled by groups of artists, whose collective vision helped bring new scripts, scores, and aesthetics to the American stage. During this period, Broadway established its primacy in musical and nonmusical theatre, but economic changes and artistic aspiration also fueled the growth of Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and regional theatre helping create an even more vibrant American theatre.

This chapter discusses the gaps in the conceptual foundations of responsible supply chain management. It tends to be explained under various corporate social responsibility (CSR) theories that do not account for the territorial and ‘self-interested’ behaviours that exist inside large companies. We’ll then discuss how firms reconcile core business drivers like cost competitiveness versus normative goals like protecting human rights. Finally, the chapter addresses the ongoing tensions around managing supply chains in host countries where corruption is endemic and institutional capacity is weak and fragmented due to a confluence of political, economic and social factors.

The non-human has a long history of being represented in literature. Plants, animals, spirits, gods and, more recently, machines have been given agency and helped create enchanted visions of the world. The non-human has also been important in presenting universally recognizable characters, which have been central to the influence of certain genres and works in world literature, e.g. fairy tales and magical realism. This influence continues to be important but it has been supplemented with a new focus on the posthuman. Even though the idea of a succession to humanity would have been a logical consequence of Darwinism, it is has become a more pressing issue with the development of new technologies. Instead of apocalyptic visions of the end of the world, which have been central to not least foundational religious systems, the idea of the posthuman conjures up a new era for better or worse. Science fiction is rife with posthuman figures but also mainstream authors are taking up ideas of radically changed conditions for living. Literature’s responses have been manifold and have explored the once dated question of universalism under the influence of very concrete scenarios of change, and with a renewed sense of highlighting essential human traits in the Anthropocene.