2017 International Conference

Call for Papers

Re-locating the Local in an Age of Global Capital

November 18, 2017

Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea

International Conference hosted by Ewha, National Taiwan University, University of South Carolina

The homogenization of place, culture, subjectivity in an ever growing web of commensurability has resulted in a universalization of global experience that seeks to turn all local points into homogeneous spaces, compressed, de-contextualized, de-realized. Globalization as a great mobilization through capital seeks to liquidate the inefficiencies of local practices and vernaculars in the name of often empty universalisms. The practice of locational fidelity and the concomitant responsibilities to place and other without reverting to a reactionary protectionism or an illiberal exclusionary globalization calls for new strategies for a more global survival and mutual flourishing. Through this conference we hope to examine ways in which language, literature and culture participate to relocate the local and address the growing problem of the globally displaced. We will seek to question rather than celebrate the neoliberal dissolutions of boundaries in an age of surplus energy and unlimited mobility limited to those with means. We invite papers that read language, literature, philosophy, cultural practice in the spirit of local situatedness, participation, indwelling, and asymmetrical extension.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

World literature, provincialism, cosmopolitanism, ethnic literature, minority literature, literature in translation, vernacular literature, capitalism, liberalism, neo-liberalism, the corporate university and English Studies, politics of English (Studies) in East Asia, English Studies and digital humanities, provincializing English, cross-language investigations of linguistic structures, experimental investigations of linguistic phenomena, general topics in linguistics.

Abstracts should be sent to Soyeon Kim (sykim933@gmail.com) by the 15th of September, 2017.