Asian Diasporic Literature: Past, Present and Future
29-23 July 2020
We would like to invite you to the 2020 International Conference on Literature: “Asian Diasporic Literature: Past, Present and Future”. The conference is organized by the Postgraduate Students’ Club of the School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia, and takes place on 29-23 July 2020, in Penang, Malaysia.
In the 2020 conference we want to pay special attention to emerging directions and practices on/in Asian diasporic literature and theory. Since the beginning of the new millennium, the world has witnessed important changes in social, political, cultural and economic landscapes. The shifts have in turn pushed diaspora studies to expand beyond their origins in literary studies and their primary focus on ‘representation’ to an engagement with epistemological, ethical and political questions. Through ICL, we want to respond and contribute to current critical and theoretical debates by moving toward the study of world literatures and global theoretical, aesthetic and cultural practices. The conference also aims to trigger a debate about the future of the discipline, and thus reinvigorate and pioneer certain dimensions of the areas.
ICL seeks to provide a platform for those interested in interdisciplinary and/or cross-cultural approaches to push diaspora studies into new domains to meet, discuss, and to explore contemporary debates, and to revisit the ‘classic’ issues to interrogate them. Topics to be addressed by the papers and sessions at the conference will cover a broad spectrum of research questions, but with a specific emphasis on contemporary and future challenges for Asian diasporic literature and theory. Proposals are encouraged in, but not limited to, the following topics:
- The Legacy of the Asian Diaspora
- Contexts, Forms, and Perspectives
- Shifting Perspectives on Race and Gender
- New Perspectives on Identity, Space, and Mobility
- Region, Religion, Politics, and Culture
- Migration, Diaspora, Hybridity, and Borders
- Rethinking the Family, Class, and Ethnicity
- Bioethics, Ecology, Ecocriticism, Health, and Wellness
- War, Violence and Terror
Or any other aspect of diasporic literary studies.
Submissions:
Participants are invited to submit abstracts on research and findings relevant to the theme of the conference. Abstracts for proposed oral presentation (200-250 words; excluding author names and affiliations) should be submitted via the online submission system. For guidelines on abstract writing, please click here. Selection of oral presentations will take place and speakers and presenters will be informed by December 15, 2019. Authors are expected to submit full papers by 30 April 2020.
Publication opportunity:
Selected high-quality, original submissions will be published as an edited volume in a prestigious publisher or in a well reputed literary journal indexed in Scopus and ESCI (WoS).
Please note that ICL only publishes manuscripts in English. For guidelines on full paper submission, please click here.
The publication outcome of previous ICL (2018) is available here.
Deadline for submissions: July 29, 2020
Contact email: icl@usm.my
