美国新奥尔良大学特级教授、浙江大学永谦讲座教授、著名现代主义研究学者钱兆明于2009年6月20日应上海外国语大学文学研究院的邀请，来上海外国语大学做了“作为世界文学的美国文学”学术讲座。
从标题就可以看出，这是一个非常切合时代的命题。美国哈佛大学英文和美国文明史系教授劳伦斯·布尔2008年曾发表文章“（跨国界）美国文学研究的新走势”，指出美国文学研究的国际化，其中就包括对美国文学的重新定义。美国文学学者以更加恢弘的目光，超越人们对传统意义上的美国文化、语言和领土界限的理解，重新定义美国文学。自20世纪70年代起，美国文学研究内部出现了对传统经典的挑战，新历史主义、后殖民主义和种族批评研究的兴起，不仅深化了美国文学研究，而且使研究者们认识到，美国文学从来没有完全局限在美利坚合众国的疆界之内。研究美国文学的学者越来越倾向于从跨国界与比较的角度，甚至主要从全球化的角度，来思考自己的研究对象。
钱兆明教授的讲座也是从全球化的视野来审视美国文学。如果说“政治正确”原则指导下的全球化视野强调第三世界和弱势群体的文学地位，那么钱教授的全球化视野则强调文本的内部细节和深层结构。在他看来，美国文学从一开始就具有跨国界的特征，这种跨国界包括：transatlantic（跨大西洋）、transpacific（跨太平洋）、hemispheric（跨半球）。跨大西洋主要指美国与欧洲各国的文学关系。例如最初的美国文学都处于英国文学和法国文学的影响之下，很多美国文学作品都与欧洲有着千丝万缕的关系。例如海明威的《永别了武器》中的故事就发生在欧洲的不同的国家。当然Alex Hailey的名作《根》中体现出的美国和非洲之间的关系，也属跨大西洋关系。跨太平洋主要指美国与亚洲各国的文学关系。例如庞德非常著名的《地铁站》短诗，就是模仿日本的俳句，而他的很多首被美国人看作美国诗歌的作品则直接译自中国诗人李白的作品。跨半球则主要指美国和美洲，特别是拉丁美洲各国的文学关系。例如为海明威获得诺贝尔文学奖的作品《老人与海》，故事就发生在古巴。
钱教授强调，说美国文学的世界性，并不是机械地在其中寻找他国的具体存在，而是更应该关注其深层世界。例如菲茨杰拉德的《了不起的盖茨比》，故事发生在纽约长岛，其中根本找不到欧洲的具体存在。但通过分析小说的深层叙事结构，就会发现其中隐含着欧洲文学的Femme Fatale（蛇蝎美女）的母题。而威廉斯的名诗《红色手推车》，从其受到的影响和诗的结构韵律来看，其实是模仿中国五言绝句而写。为了证明此点，钱教授还举了苏童的《妻妾成群》为例。同《了不起的盖茨比》一样，这部小说中也没有他国存在的具体证据，但是深层分析它的叙事模式，我们发现，它其实是一部典型的西方哥特小说。
讲座在热烈的掌声中结束，然后钱教授认真地回答了一些问题，就“世界文学”的界定等问题，同学者们进行了热烈而深入的探讨。讲座非常成功，令听者大为受益。讲座由文学研究院院长虞建华教授主持，在座的还有张和龙教授和查明建教授。（上海外国语大学文学研究院 陈广兴）
钱兆明教授介绍：
DR. ZHAOMING QIAN
Chancellor's Research Professor
Ph.D., Tulane, 1991
Zhaoming Qian’s teaching and research interests focus on American modernism, interart relations, East-West comparative poetics, and Asian American literature. While he has taught and written about English and Irish writers (from Shakespeare to Joyce), his recent work has addressed the interconnection between American modernism and the Orient.
Dr. Qian joined the UNO English faculty in 1991. During his years at UNO, he has published five books, including Orientalism and Modernism: The Legacy of China in Pound and Williams (1995) and The Modernist Response to Chinese Art: Pound, Moore, Stevens (2003), which helped inspire the 1996 Yale conference on "Modernism and the Orient" and the 2004 Cambridge conference on "Orientalism and Modernism, " respectively. His most recent book titled Ezra Pound's Chinese Friends (2008) makes available for the first time the forgotten stories of Pound and his Chinese peers. His current project is on intercultural collaboration and globalization.
Dr. Qian is Y. C. Tang Chair Professor and founding Director of the Center for Modernist Studies at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, where he lectures and engages in collaborative projects for two months each summer. He was honored as a Yale Beinecke Fellow in 1992, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow in 1998, Convenor of the Ezra Pound International Conference in Beijing in 1999, Franklin Research Fellow of the American Philosophical Society in 2003, UNO Research Professor in 2004, Yale Comparative Literature Fellow in 2005, and UNO Chancellor's Research Professor in 2009. Other honors given him include a Tulane Richard Perrill Adams prize (1990), three UNO research awards (1993, 1995, 1996), and lecture invitations from Yale (1996), Salamanca (2000), Fudan (2003), Cambridge (2004), and Beijing Institute of Technology (2008).
Dr. Qian has offered graduate seminars on American modernism (Pound-Williams-H.D., Stevens-Moore, Pound-Eliot, Stevens-Eliot-Frost, Lowell-Bishop) and the use of European and Asian art in American poetry. He regularly teaches undergraduate courses in American literature 1865-present, American modernism, early 20th century poetry, contemporary poetry, Asian American literature, and Asian literature (masterpieces of India, China, and Japan). Among the new courses he has designed are Poetry across Cultures, American Writers at Home, and Transpacific Literature.
Selected Publications:
Ezra Pound's Chinese Friends (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Annotated Shakespeare: The Poems (Beijing: Commercial Press, 2007).
The Modernist Response to Chinese Art: Pound, Moore, Stevens
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003).
Ezra Pound and China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).
Orientalism and Modernism: The Legacy of China in Pound and Williams (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995). Annotated Shakespeare: The Sonnets (Beijing: Commercial Press, 1990; 2nd printing 1995; 3rd printing 1999).
