This cluster of essays stems from the spring reception workshop on autoexoticism, which was organized by the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation Research Programme (OCCT) and the British Comparative Literature Association (BCLA) and took place on 19 March 2015 at the University of Oxford. Speakers at the workshop, also the contributors to this special feature, had been discussing the question of exoticism for the past few months. The topic of autoexoticism emerged through our discussions, and we felt the need to explore it because we were dissatisfied with the status quo of criticism on exoticism and intercultural practices. These essays are therefore both the result of our attempt to rethink exoticism and its discourses by articulating the autoexotic and an invitation to further explore and problematize the topic.