The “Teaching World Literature: Debates, Models, Pedagogies”conference was held on October 21-22, 2016 on the University of Washington campus. The conference explored the teaching of world literature and the possibility of a new undergraduate major in world literature at the UW. Professor David Damrosch (Ernest Bernbaum Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature and Director of the Institute for World Literature, Harvard University) delivered the keynote address on “Distant Close Reading: Problems of Language, Context, and Politics” to a full lecture hall. The entire Humanities division of the college was well represented among the conference participants. Special thanks to our co-sponsors: The Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities and the College of Arts & Sciences.