the curriculum i teach outside the u.s. is usually genre based whereas in the u.s. it’s based on nations (usually british and american only…). but teaching genre-based classes means that i can and do teach literature from all over the world. so i’ve spent quite a bit of time combing through various world literature anthologies. when i was in grad school those anthologies were still “western” (in the same vein as western civ classes). now they cover the globe, although of course european literature still dominates. here are some examples (you can see the table of contents):

http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/newcatalog.aspx?isbn=0312441533&disc=English&course=Literature+%26+Linguistics&detail=toc

http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail-features.aspx?ID=4607

http://www.broadviewpress.com/product.php?productid=958&cat=57&page=1

http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/Longman-Anthology-of-World-Literature-The-Compact-Edition/9780321436900.page

i wonder if the professor meant that it’s “new” because a lot of what s/he is identifying as “world” literature is literature in translation, and a lot of this has not been in translation until quite recently, particularly from arabic and turkish. “world” literature from former british colonies has pretty much been around for some time in the sense that many writers have written in english and not their native tongue because the remnants of british colonialism (and of course in other places in french and spanish and portuguese) mean that many people can still express themselves better in english than they can in their native tongue.

just some thoughts…