MCLC: ACCL 2015--cfp

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MCLC LIST
ACCL 2015–cfp
Call for Paper Proposals
Traveling Text/Image/Media: The Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature Conference 
June 18-20, 2015
Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Hosted by:
The International Center for Studies of Chinese Civilization at Fudan University
( http://icscc.fudan.edu.cn/index.php )
Co-sponsored by:
The International Center for Studies of Chinese Civilization at Fudan University
The Division of Humanities at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Co-organized by
Shengqing WU (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
Yingchi CHEN (Fudan University)
Email address for submission
icsccfd at 126.com   (open now until Dec. 10, 2014)
In conjunction with the International Center for Studies of Chinese Civilization at Fudan University, the biannual conference of the Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature (ACCL) will be held on June 18-20, 2015 in Shanghai. Integrating literary, visual, and historical studies, this conference will be centered around the theme of  “traveling text/image/media.” Echoing many critical concerns of traveling theory put forth in the past decades, we will treat “travel” in its literal and metaphorical senses as complex literary and cultural practices, striking across geopolitical, temporal, and media boundaries. We also understand “travel” as a form of inquiry or method to interrogate and articulate different geopolitical mapping and cultural imaginaries, moving beyond dualistic divisions between home and abroad, and center and margins in political, cultural and linguistic terms. Prospective presenters are invited to address broadly such topics as the interaction between literature and different visual or digital media, space, and time travel, the issues of appropriation, translation and cultural encounter, and ideas of multilingualism and multiculturalism. Questions that might be asked in framing papers and panels for the conference might include, but are not restricted to, the following: how the cultural and technological encounters between China and its various “Others” led to new forms of cultural representation; how pre-modern stories, genres and language have left their enduring legacy on modern and contemporary culture; how new space/time is represented through movement and imagination; how humankind’s relationship to our surroundings has been redefined and evolved with different environments and animals into our present day situation; how the dynamics of word/image/media contributed to configuring cultural and media landscapes amidst a mass consumer market and the global flow of cultural products; and so on. While itinerary, displacement, and instability will be emphasized, we are also questioning how concepts such as home, boundary, identity, and the relationship between the local and the global/planetary are reconfigured in this process. We will particularly welcome empirical-based studies of previously unexamined cases on crossroads, conflicts, or interfaces that were enacted in specific socio-historical contexts, where distinct Chinese-speaking worlds served as locales of departure and arrival.
Given the nature of this conference, we are hoping to make it inclusive and broad enough to address diverse critical concerns, making it a fruitful occasion to establish bridges and to network. Further, we are also planning to invite a few well-known Chinese writers to participate in the conference. Details will become available later this fall. In accordance with the association’s established practice, this conference will be composed of participants based on an open call for proposals and panel presentations either in Chinese or English. We will endeavor to strike on a balance between scholars of literature and visual/cinematic cultures, pre-modern and modern literary studies, and scholars from different geopolitical regions and language. With the support of the Division of Humanities at the HKUST, we are pleased to announce that we will be able to offer small travel grants for graduate students, in addition to four nights of free hotel accommodation. The reimbursement figure for a round-trip ticket will be decided on an individual basis. A maximum of $500USD will be offered for international travel. For graduate students who wish to receive travel subsidies, please include one short paragraph (either in Chinese or English) about your academic background when submitting your paper proposal.
The paper proposals can be submitted in THREE possible formats: 1) an individual paper proposal; 2) a joint panel of three to four papers with one overall panel abstract; 3) a paper proposal submitted to one of proposed seminars. For each paper, please submit an abstract of up to 500 English words or up to 800 Chinese characters. In addition to the range of independent papers and plenary sessions that are usually offered, this conference will partially adopt the structure used by the American Comparative Literature Association’s (ACLA) annual conferences. That is, eight people will be formed into groups to conduct seminars over the course of two to three days to engage in extended conversations. Our colleagues (Charles Laughlin, Zhange Ni, Wen Jin, Yurou Zhong and Richard Jean So) have graciously agreed to be in charge of three mini-series of panels. Brief descriptions of their proposed series are included at the end of this call for papers. We are very grateful for their willingness to take the initiative in this matter. For those who wish to be considered for inclusion in one of the mini-series, please submit a paper proposal to icsccfd at 126.com AND the organizers of that particular series. For those who are willing to participate in the seminars, the chance of acceptance will be significantly increased. The deadline for submission is Dec. 10, 2014. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by the end of January 2015. To ensure the quality of the dialogues, we request that each presenter submit a short paper (8 pages double-spaced in English or 5 pages double-spaced paper in Chinese is the minimum requirement) by the end of May 2015. Should you have any questions or concerns, please be in touch with Shengqing Wu ( hmswu at ust.hk ).
1. Modern Chinese Culture and the Uncanny: “Superstition” as a Critique of Enlightenment
Charles A. Laughlin, University of Virginia ( charleslaughlin at virginia.edu )
Zhange NI, Virginia Tech ( nizhange at vt.edu ).
There has been a bias toward Enlightenment in both the formation and study of modern Chinese culture: from the May Fourth Movement to the successive movements and revolutions of the twentieth century, all that has been considered “progressive” is scientific and opposed to superstition, which is defined as the most intolerable legacy of traditional Chinese culture. Those who study and learn about modern Chinese culture in varying degrees take on this bias, and yet spiritual, uncanny and supernatural phenomena continue to appear in even revolutionary and realist cultural forms, not to mention popular culture. The uncanny is not limited to overtly mystical genres like ghost stories, science fiction and fantasy, though these are increasingly receiving the serious critical attention they deserve. We also see shades of the unknown in the works of so-called realists like Lu Xun, Xu Dishan and Mao Dun, modernists from the New Perceptionists of the 1930s to the avant-garde and Root-Seekers of the 1980s, and even traditionalist aficionados of biji and xiaopin wen prose. At the same time, as can be documented in late Qing fiction, early 20th-century photography and elsewhere, there were trends of spiritualism and mesmerism in China as elsewhere in East Asia only now beginning to be explored, having been repressed by a century of Enlightenment discourse. The purpose of this stream is to move beyond the familiar tendency to dismiss such content and phenomena as a regressive residue of pre-modern ignorance and superstition, and instead study how they may be reinterpreted as a powerful (although often unconscious) critique of Enlightenment the binary opposition of East/West and science/superstition, and all the attendant concepts of nation, progress, development, and knowledge. In so doing we hope to create the conditions for new ways of reading modern Chinese culture that gives as much discursive agency to the uncanny as to the scientific.
2. What is a Chinese “Novel”?
Wen JIN, Fudan University ( wenjinenglish at gmail.com )
The “novel,” as a distinctively modern form in western contexts, signals a mixed genre underlined by conflicting impulses: it builds on but also breaks from the medieval romance, attentive to both the real and the narrative techniques through which it is represented. How does the history of Chinese xiaoshuo echo and complicate the Euro-centric narrative of the rise of the novel? This panel series seeks papers on Chinese novels or studies of Chinese novels that entail a global or comparative perspective. How did Chinese xiaoshuo emerge and how did it become “modern” in thematic and stylistic terms, over what historical periods? How does this process relate to the evolution of print culture and the reading public in China? How do we compare Chinese and foreign novels? What research models can we drawn upon or revise?
3. Chinese Mediascapes: Premodern to Contemporary
Yurou ZHONG, University of Toronto  ( yurou.zhong at utoronto.ca )
Richard Jean SO, University of Chicago   ( richardjeanso at gmail.com )
“The medium is the message.”  From the invention of the first moveable types to the advent of Internet literature, Chinese literary writing has assumed multiple forms of media and experienced countless technological innovations.  By way of Marshall McLuhan’s famous aphorism, this panel stream examines the dynamic relationship between Chinese “mediascapes” and the production of Chinese literature.  How do different forms of media convey different kinds of “messages?”  How do different forms of media condition the production, circulation, and consumption of Chinese literary texts?  How do ostensibly “modern” forms of media, such as film or the record player, intersect and transform older forms of print media?  We invite papers that explore the development and impact of media, old and new, as well as theories of communications and information, on Chinese literary practices.  Topics are not limited by period and may include (but are not constrained to): print capitalism, media history, writing as technology, theories of communication/information, cultural nationalism and transnationalism.
by denton.2 at osu.edu on October 2, 2014
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