Histories of Representation: Questioning Trends in Literature and Art explores - and problematises - what are perceived as key modern trends in representational practice: Romanticism; Realism; Modernism; and Postmodernism. We compare the similarities and differences in the ways that artists, writers and critics in the Global North and beyond have sought to represent and make sense of their cultural contexts and their experiences; of the ways in which these are impacted by historical developments in politics, economics technology and thought; as well as their relationships with the works which have preceded them. Reading short stories alongside art in context from America, Brazil, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Russia, we compare works by Chekhov, Hoffmann, Joyce, Lispector, Mansfield, Maupassant, Morrison and Poe, examine critically the ways in which texts are categorised and discuss how what are identified as trends may interact with, build on and diverge from one another.