Below are three calls for papers for the MLA 2018 Convention LLC East Asian Forum.–Geraldine Fiss <gfiss@usc.edu>
Cannibal Modernity in East Asian Literature and Film
The trope of cannibalism has served to represent human abjection and cruelty. This panel aims to address cultural representations of cannibalism in East Asian literature and film by exploring questions such as: where do we draw the boundary between the self and the other? How are anxieties about capitalism projected onto the individual consumer’s body? How do these representations affect the ways in which we understand class, gender, sexuality, and racial difference? This panel explores the implications of cannibalism in relation to literature and film, literary obsessions with the topic of man-eating, and the cultural and historical significance of this fascination in China, Taiwan, Japan, and/or Korea. It welcomes specialists from all areas of East Asian literature, culture and film studies to investigate cannibalism as a response to modernity, a metaphor for literary practices, a culinary imagination, a trope to reframe contemporary global issues, or from any other critical perspective.
Please send proposals of 250 words and a short CV by March 15 to Tiffany Tsai yunchut@uci.edu and Géraldine Fiss gfiss@usc.edu
Disability and Human (In)Dignity in East Asian Literature and Film
This call seeks papers that provide comparative analyses of depictions of disability and human dignity, or the lack thereof, in East Asian literature and film. Those that compare two or more East Asian texts and contexts are especially welcome. The period is open. The following are some examples of the kinds of questions a paper might address. What are the central conflicts, questions, and political or cultural issues at stake when works of art represent disability and the disabled in East Asian context? How do such representations comment on the nature of the individual’s relationship to society? What are the ways in which such works from the past illustrate certain cultural issues of the contemporary East Asian life?
Please send proposals of 250 words and a short CV by March 15 to Kelly Jeong <kelly.jeong@ucr.edu>
Transcultural Flows in East Asian Literature and Film
This panel seeks to explore instances of East-West and intra-Asian transcultural encounters in modern and contemporary East Asian literature and film. We welcome papers that examine case studies of literary and/or cultural translation; the role translation played in the modernization processes of East Asian countries; texts that traveled to East Asia from the West via the mediation of translation or adaptation; transculturations of East Asian literary and/or visual texts; dynamic intertextuality in East Asia; cultural collaborations that transcend national boundaries; and analyses of the power dynamics between East Asian texts and global cultural discourses. We hope to open up discussions that address broad but fundamental questions concerning the creation, “travel” and transculturation of texts across the Asia Pacific region and beyond. We encourage contributions from the fields of Chinese Studies, East Asian Studies, Taiwan Studies, Sinophone Studies, Comparative Literature, Cinema & Media Studies, as well as other fields. Please send a 250-word abstract and a short CV by March 15; Géraldine Fiss (gfiss@usc.edu)