CFP: KOREAN LITERATURE ASSOCIATION ANNUAL MEETING

Korean Literature Association Annual Meeting,

November 11-12, 2022

The Korean Literature Association cordially invites proposals for its annual meeting on the theme of “Resonance” to be held at the University of Oregon, Eugene, OR. We invite individual papers and team projects that reflect on the way resonance can open up and connect Korean literary studies to the broader human world across disciplinary boundaries, historical periods, geographical borders, and linguistic systems.

Resonance—derived from its Latin roots resonare (resound) and resonantia (echo) and the French résonance—refers to a sound or a quality of a sound. Yet as The OED lists, resonance also means the power to evoke images, memories, and emotions; a sympathetic response; and allusions, connotations, and overtones. Although the specifications vary, the overarching concept of resonance involves movement through either vibration, oscillation, wave, or amplification that leads to a response—another movement, which together can produce meaning and value. Using these broad definitions as a starting metaphor and a springboard for creative extensions, we hope that the theme of “Resonance” allows us to explore Korean literature by embracing myriad forms, modes, and mechanisms that are both intimately and distantly connected to what constitutes Korean literature’s legacies and transformations. In this way, this conference aims to reconceptualize resonance as an important heuristic device for Korean literary and cultural studies.

Of particular interest to this endeavor will be discussions on how and where Korean literature resonates. How might we analyze, interpret, and ground resonance within Korean literature’s history and its contemporary making? How can we use resonance as a framework for transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary work on Korea? How is Korean literature embedded in the practices of the larger humanities and other fields, such as in the social sciences and STEM and vice versa? How might the resonances of Korean literature challenge the long-established theoretical practices and contribute to the ongoing making of global aesthetics? What are the places, moments, and instances of dissonance rather than resonance which nevertheless allow Korean literature to intervene in knowledge building and problem-solving and illuminating human conditions?

Topics could include but are not limited to the following:

• Sound and sonic culture in Korea

• Technologies and techniques of writing, reading, listening, seeing

• Adaptation, Transemdiality, Intermediality

• Premodern and Modern East Asian literary connections

• Korean diaspora and Global Korean aesthetics

• Digital humanities or Humanizing digitalization

• Public humanities and Korean literature

The KLA seeks submissions from graduate students and faculty at any stage of their careers who are interested in presenting papers at the Conference. Individual as well as organized panels are welcome. Humanities and the study of literature have often been construed as an individual endeavor rather than a team effort, in this call for proposals, we are especially interested in seeking projects that bring teams of researchers together in demonstrating collaborative building of Korean literary studies. We are currently planning an in-person conference at the University of Oregon.

The deadline for submissions is June 15, 2022. 

Please send your 300-word abstract and a short CV to Jina Kim at jinak@uoregon.edu

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CFP: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE HISTORY OF BOOKS AND READING IN KOREA

New Perspectives on the History of Books and Reading in Korea

December 8, 2022

Massachusetts, United States

We invite paper proposals for a conference to shed new light on the history of the book and reading in Korea from the Chosŏn period to the early twentieth century.

Ever since Maurice Courant, a French diplomat-turned-scholar, published his monumental Bibliographie Coréenne in 1894, much ink has been spilled on the study of books in Korea. But where is the field headed now? In current research on the history of the book, especially in English-language scholarship, the Korean experience is more often than not written out or treated as an aberration: How was it that a country that had developed and widely used the technology for movable metal type printing as early as the thirteenth century had to wait until the turn of the nineteenth century to witness the rise of commercial printing of vernacular-language materials? The Eurocentric, print-oriented view tends to overlook the historical validity of various non-print forms of the book, as well as the physical instantiation of literacies and practices of writing and reading that flourished in Korea from the fourteenth to the early twentieth centuries.

We propose that the Korean historical experience is uniquely positioned to generate exciting new conversations about the global history of the book and of reading because it allows us to de-universalize the teleological narrative of evolution from manuscript to movable-type printing shaped by the European experience. We are interested in exploring the following issues. How can we better perceive the material habitat of written words in Korea by considering the entanglements within, co-existence of, and competition among book-making technologies and diverse forms of “bibliographical documents” (Adams and Barker 1993) in the Korean context—including print (xylography and movable type made of metal, wood, and clay), manuscript, and a plethora of primarily non-codex materials now categorized under the term komunsŏ (lit. “old documents”)? How can we better chart the technologies of literacy that Koreans deployed within a socio-textual universe shored up by the privileged status of Literary Sinitic and sinography? How did written (alphabetical) and spoken vernacular Korean, alongside vernacular reading and compositional methods (kugyŏl/t’o and idumun, respectively), complement and co-opt the textual authority of Literary Sinitic and sinography? How can we better examine the ways in which the materiality of the book as a communicative space—book cover, front matter (title page, table of contents, dedications, and so on), mise-en-page, and binding—was shaped, reoriented, and recomposed not simply as physical containers of text but also as expressive media as object, idea, and interface? What reading and interpretive practices did the physical shape of the book dictate and develop? For heuristic purposes, we adopt Amaranth Borsuk’s (2018) proposal of the book as object, content, idea, and interface, and we are also interested in how the book as a communicative space underscores a variety of somatic and affective experiences—visual-ocular, auditory-oral/aural/vocal, haptic, and olfactory.

We invite papers committed to twin projects: critically revisiting existing characterizations of Korea’s book culture while also conducting in-depth bibliographical examinations of original texts that register genres, cultural habits, and institutions. For example, we look forward to receiving proposals that will shed light on questions like the following: What cultural perceptions and attitudes were reflected in books and the wide range of activities pertaining to their production (paper supply, carving, binding, design, illustration, etc.), circulation, collecting, commercialization, transcription, personalization, de- and re-construction, honoring and discrediting, vernacularization, translation, annotation (glossing, marginalia, commentary, illumination, etc.), documentation, note-taking, anthologizing, republication, reprinting, and digitization? What books were involved in the defining events that shaped the materiality of books and changed practices of reading? We accept paper proposals that will venture into terra incognita as well as proposals that aim to rechart well-trodden territory.

The conference will take place on December 8, 2022 at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The one-day conference will have three components: a workshop to discuss each paper hands-on examination of select materials held by the Harvard-Yenching Library, and a roundtable discussion. We envision a publication of papers in a journal special issue after the conference.

As we get closer to the conference date, we will coordinate presentation modes with all accepted participants, depending on the Covid-19 pandemic situation.

If you are interested in participating in the conference, please send a paper proposal (250–300 words) accompanied by a CV to Si Nae Park (sinaepark@fas.harvard.edu) and Suyoung Son (ss994@cornell.edu) by March 1, 2022. Selected participants are expected to send in a paper draft by the end of August 2022.

Timeline:

Paper proposals (250–300 words) due on March 1, 2022

Completion of draft papers (6,000–8,000 words) due on August 31, 2022

Conference: December 8, 2022

Thank you very much.

Conveners/Contact:

Si Nae Park, Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University (sinaepark@fas.harvard.edu)

Suyoung Son, Associate Professor, Asian Studies, Cornell University (ss994@cornell.edu)

Contact Info:

Si Nae Park

Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Harvard University

Contact Email:

sinaepark@fas.harvard.edu

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CFP: THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON POPULISM IN ASIA: THE SAME OR DIFFERENT STORY?

 

The International Conference on Populism in Asia:

The Same or Different Story?

Department of Social Science, The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

The studies of populism in North America and Europe have reached an agreement upon the basic nature of populism in the Western liberal democracies. As a “thin” ideology, populism is found to be authoritarian, antipluralistic, welfarism-oriented, and chauvinistic. Populism in the West is related to economic conditions and, because of which, the sense of being deprived among some social groups. Populism in the Asia-Pacific region has not, however, been thoroughly investigated. The extant literature does not agree upon the characteristics of populism in this region, compared with its western counterpart. Some believe that it is the same story as in those North American and West European democracies, others believe not.

The conference is thus to invite the Asia-Pacific experts in the world to get together and exchange their empirical observations and research findings on populism in the Asian-Pacific countries, such as the details of its making, consequences, and implications. We intend to draw a comprehensive picture of populism in Asia and construct a comparative framework to contrast the models of populism in different political systems in the Asia-Pacific with the conventional wisdom derived from the West. Quantitative research based upon innovative data approaches is highly preferred.

An edited book is planned to be published as a result of the conference. The themes for investigation in the conference include, but are not limited to:

• Populism and Nationalism

• Populism and Democracy

• Populism and Social Movement

• Populism and the Internet

• Populism and the Middle Class

Papers are now invited from interested scholars for this conference to be convened on 25-26 February 2021 in Hong Kong.

Abstract Deadline: January 31, 2022

Please submit an abstract of no more than 1000 words here.

Website

kyyau@hsu.edu.hk

Tony Yau

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