call related to literature 5

Call for Papers: East Asian Literature after 1900 at MLA 2011

Posted by: Beadle on Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Proposals are being sought for three panels on East Asian literature planned for presentation at the January 6-9, 2011, meeting of the Modern Language Association in Los Angeles. Note the short deadlines.

Panels seeking participants and their organizers are:

• Narrating Tortured Lives in East Asia. In recent centuries, narrating lives in East Asian contexts have often been manifested, on the one hand, as “private” forms of literature such as essays, diaries and letters, and, on the other, as biographies of exceptional individuals whose tumultuous life stories lead us to question, problematize, and complicate East Asian cultures’ agenda for progress and enlightenment. And as such, these texts are motivated by and connected to issues of power and possible changes in the existing status quo, whether social, cultural, sexual, or political. This panel hopes to shed a new light on these issues by exploring the theme of “torture,” widely defined, and challenges to oppression through historical changes found in the narration of extraordinary lives in East Asian literature. Comparative East Asian perspectives are welcomed.
• Contact: E-mail 250-word abstract by March 4, 2010, to Kelly Jeong (kelly.jeong@ucr.edu).

• Constituting War Trauma in East Asian Literature and Film. How has war trauma been represented in East Asian literary and cinematic works? How does the identity (survivor-narrator, contemporary “outside’ observer, combatant, civilian, male, female, second generation artist, etc.) of the author/director affect the imaginative representation, constitution and cognition of extreme war-related events? Comparative perspectives welcome.
• Contact: E-mail 250-word abstract by March 1, 2010, to David C. Stahl (dstahl@binghamton.edu).

• Cultural Flows through Popular Media. This panel will explore the rich interactions across regions in East Asia in the twentieth century. This panel is particularly interested in the way theses movements and flows have been represented artistically. Papers will explore the interactions of artists and ideas, focus on the place where languages meet, examine how texts overlap, analyze how and where images cross. We invite papers that track the movement of people, images, and language.
• Contact: E-mail 250-word abstract by March 4, 2010 to Douglas N. Slaymaker (dslaym.mla@spamex.com).

Questions about MLA panels on East Asian languages and literatures after 1900 can be directed to Ming-Bao Yue (mingbao@hawaii.edu).

http://ks111.moore.hawaii.edu/wp/?p=819