Beyond economic, ethical, and environmental considerations, new technologies also have an aesthetic impact. In the early 20th century, modernist and avant-garde literature, art, and design often embraced the transformations of sensory experience implied by the rapid development of modern technology. As Sara Danius argued in The Senses of Modernism, “the emergence of modernist aesthetics signifies the increasing internalization of technological matrices of perception.” This transformation was sometimes even perceived by its protagonists in a radical and emancipatory sense – as a reinvention of humanity beyond oppressive traditions and humanist ideals, all starting from a radical transformation of aesthetic experience. It is only on the basis of this technologically induced transformation of lived experience and its material conditions that artistic forms needed to be transcended as well. Hannes Meyer, architect and later the Bauhaus director, wrote in this spirit in 1926: “The art of felt imitation is in the process of being dismantled. Art is becoming invention and controlled reality.” One hundred years later, the emergence of generative AI has been met with a strong humanist reaction, reviving arguments about the exceptional nature of human intelligence and creativity. At the same time, the hyperbolic imagination of its Silicon Valley proponents lacks the avant-garde’s edge and – especially – any emancipatory dimension. This paper will pose the question of whether generative AI has the potential to impact aesthetic experience, and if so, in what sense.

Soviet Georgia was an agrarian country with little industry. Nevertheless, there are industrial novels from the Soviet era that more or less fit within the conventional framework of socialist realism. However, the oeuvre of Rezo Gabriadze (1936–2021) presents a striking contrast. Gabriadze was a writer, screenwriter, and the founder of the Georgian Marionette Theater. In his work, technology plays an unusual role:

In the cult film "The Excentrics" (directed by Eldar Shengelaya, 1973), a flying ox cart is invented, powered by the force of love. The technocratic dystopia "Kin-Dza-Dza!" (1986) depicts a galaxy where art disappears, and language is reduced to a single word. "Ramona" (2013) tells the love story of two locomotives in the post-World War II Soviet Union.

In my presentation, I will explore Gabriadze’s ambivalent and unconventional perspective on technology in the Soviet Georgian context.

Surveillance has been described as a cultural technology of power, drawing on distinctions between surveillance of others and of oneself, or between powerful, top-down surveillance and power-critical, bottom-up ‘sousveillance’ – to name just a few. In my talk, I will use these distinctions to shed light on the role of surveillance in literary theories of narration. The main focus will be the concept of ‘transparence,’ as developed by Dorit Cohn in her 1978 book “Transparent Minds.” According to Cohn, since the late 18th century the instance of the narrator in the novel has increasingly become an expert in penetrating the consciousness of fictional characters, their motives, desires and fears. Thus, “the transparency of fictional minds” is considered as “the touchstone that simultaneously sets fiction apart from reality and builds the semblance of another, non-real reality.” I will revise Cohn’s panorama of narrative techniques and ask to which extent it can be referred to the aforementioned cultural techniques (something that Cohn herself was quite critical about).

This paper aims to discuss the most recent developments in short story cycle theory, introducing potential new investigative methodologies derived from the cross-fertilization between literary theory on polytextual forms and literary empirical studies.

Short story cycle theory gained traction in the 1970s, starting with Forrest Ingram’s seminal studies, and remains a mainstream framework. Around the same time, Maria Corti introduced the concept of the macrotext in Italy. More recently, René Audet’s studies have framed short story cycle theory within the broader category of polytextuality. Building on the latter, I have developed a theory of polytextuality, defining polytextual works as cultural objects generated through artistic processes that articulate meaning by creating, selecting, and combining autonomous artistic pieces. A polytext is a composite work of art consisting of multiple self-contained elements. However, it is also a unified artistic entity, as it follows an authorial, editorial, or curatorial project, is released as an independent work, and is perceived as a cohesive whole. While individual components retain their identity, they contribute to the polytext’s overall meaning-making process, altering their meaning through interaction with the whole.

In contrast to short story cycle theories, polytextual theories emphasize reader-oriented approaches, shifting focus from an author- or text-centered perspective to the role of readers' actions (Audet) and cognitive processes (Santi). However, as De Vooght and Nemegeer argue, while reader-oriented theories attempt to explain how short story collections are interpreted, their claims lack empirical validation. To address this, De Vooght and Nemegeer conducted exploratory studies analyzing real reader responses, revealing a significant gap between literary theory and actual reader behavior. Reading behavior, they found, is shaped by mechanisms of human text processing such as the primacy effect and confirmation bias.

These findings suggest that reader-oriented approaches may not fully capture real readers’ interpretive processes. Nevertheless, existing short story cycle theories remain valuable for textual analysis and for teaching reading and writing techniques. A key goal is to develop methodologies that enhance composition, reading, and analytical outcomes, making them widely applicable since collections are pervasive in education and publishing, spanning media and communication sectors.

To move beyond these preliminary findings, interdisciplinary research is needed, involving experiments on culturally diverse demographics and a multilingual corpus. This paper shares these findings and discusses a research project aimed at establishing an interdisciplinary framework and methodology for short story collections, translating research results into practical guidelines for those working in the field.

We cannot escape categorisation. Not only because it gives agency but also because it is an important component of cognition. In turn, the defining traits of an object/ concept tend to become associated with its essence. However, essentialization becomes difficult as the concepts grow more complex and abstract. For example, it's way more challenging to define the essence of literature, Indian or Korean as compared to a bottle or a horse.

But then, every experience, every voice, every reader and every reading comes from/ with a unique position and the act of categorisation seems to hinder this sense of uniqueness and plurality. However, what we can change is how we conceive of categories. This paper proposes that what we need is a shift in paradigm, a shift in our way of thought and life. A shift from the binary mode of thought-perception to a plural mode of thought-perception. It is impossible to appreciate multiplicity and plurality of experience as long as the Aristotelian binary remains our functional mode of (intellectual) thought and perception. In a non binary mode of thoughts, categories would still exist, but they would have softer boundaries and it would be easier for things to spill outside of those boundaries (as they already do). In this way, it might become easier for us to accept that things just “are”, they do not have to specifically “be something” or “not be something”.

This paper means to justify its theoretical position with a case study of the concept “India” through the poets’ eyes in order to make explicit the multitudes that the idea/ category of India contains. Poets across time and space have conceived differently of India/ Bharata/ Hind based on what they received from their structure of feeling. Through this case, the paper aims to bring attention to the fact that so many categories are living categories. They are ever changing and ever evolving. They contain multitudes and therefore, have multiple combinations of essences. And this multiplicity can be best understood only through a framework that allows for diversity not only “among perceptions” but diversity/plurality as the default ethic “within a perception”.

The North-east region of India, made up of eight states, despite how culturally diverse it is, has often been subject to a reductionist gaze by means of publication, syllabi and new media representation. The colonial past, conversion to Christianity and the violence in the region that marks both pre and post-independent India is very often one of the two binaries in which the people are represented in literature and in academic syllabi often at the cost of their contemporary realities. This paper critically examines the persistence of the "Indic gaze" in the representation of these states within English literature syllabi over the last decade and the politics of publication with specific focus on Mizoram and Nagaland in this era of print capitalism.

Through a diachronic study of academic syllabi, this research explores whether the portrayal of these states and their people prioritise their current social and everyday culture. The question of whether the ordinary part of culture is an affordance or whether the extraordinary - that which exoticises, historicises and binarises is interrogated. The analysis highlights how north-eastern states are frequently reduced into the binary as either exotic idylls of the present or conflict-ridden regions of the past, from old media to new media.

The study further addresses the disparity between the lived experiences of the people and their representation in literature and academic scholarship, raising critical concerns that problematise the formation of literary canons of the region. By revisiting and challenging entrenched perspectives, this paper advocates for a more comprehensive approach to integrating contemporary narratives from the north-eastern states into academic curricula.

This paper offers readings of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss as entry points into the formation of a critique of the category called ‘postcolonial’.

It traces some of the definitions and understandings of what is known as ‘colonial’, ‘anti-colonial’, and ‘decolonial’ in an effort to understand what is ‘postcolonial’. To this end, this paper will include some interpretations of the works of Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Yogita Goyal, Leela Gandhi, Anne McClintock, Homi Bhaba, and Gayatri Spivak.

Drawing from structuralists and post-structuralists, this paper investigates if there is a ‘centre’ to the concept-structure known as ‘postcolonial’ and asks if the centre holds. Is there a referent to this word or is it a metaphor for something else?

Historically, in the field of literary studies, there has always been the emergence of new categorisations (in our case, ‘postcolonial literature’) – for the better or for worse. There have also been efforts to reconcile these categories with other categories and formations. This paper is an attempt to offer instead not another structure of concepts, but a framework of concepts rooted in a politics of relationality.

A dialogic encounter with literature “expands us, like water expands a river” (Falke 2017). Categorization, as an individuating, algorithmizing process of imposing parameters, is challenged by an aesthetic of transgression predicated upon a desire for plurality. This paper explores how literary encounters with transgressive, queer desires necessitate the formation of a dialogic aesthetics. Centring ‘desire’ rather than ‘identity’ as the point of transgression, I characterize the ‘reaching out’ of categories as integral to the reading and writing of queer desire in contemporary Indian fiction. Taking from Mikhail Bakhtin’s explorations of both dialogics and aesthetics, I suggest that the reading and writing of queer desire as the creation of a contingent, heteroglossic wholeness that challenges the hegemony of pure categories. Positing dialogue as the event of an encounter between constructed “borders”, of the self, the identity, and the text itself, I suggest that explorations of queer desire within the novel involve the desire to transgress boundaries of the self, identity and the text. To this end, I undertake a reading of Ruth Vanita’s Memory of Light (2020), as well as Aalohari Aanandham (2013) by Sarah Joseph. In the former, I demonstrate transgressive potentials expressed in Vanita’s generic border-crossings between the novel, historiography, and the ghazal. In the latter, I undertake queer reading as transgressive dialogue, examining how queer desire “reorients” the centre/periphery binary in its refusal to “centre” singular narrative voices. The presence and force of queer desire further destabilizes and oversteps the category of “women’s writing” by complicating given notions of both ‘woman’ and ‘writing’. It interrogates the aforementioned ‘categories’ of ‘contemporary’, ‘Indian,’ and ‘the novel’, by overstepping categories of identity, sexuality and textuality. In staging textual encounters as the site of transgressive desires and the desire to transgress, I place ‘surplus’ as the mode by which queerness may be comprehended textually. Whereas the constructions of categories display a pervasiveness of centre and margins, I suggest that the reading and writing of queerness and surplus understands contingent excesses from categorization as the rule, rather than the exception to textual ‘understanding’. Multiplicity is configured as the precondition of narration rather than its escapable ‘other.’ As such, this paper does not attempt a reading of mimetic ‘representation’. Both the novels investigated in this paper proposes queer readings and writings as an engagement with a multiplicity of assigned and unassigned meanings, as mode and method, rather than ‘queerness’ as “category.” Therefore, I locate queerness as an aesthetic method of surplus where the texts affiliate with each other and create such a dialogue in complementary ways.

Carson McCullers is one of the most important southern American writers in the 20th century. In the sixty years since her passing, numerous outstanding works have emerged. Jen Shapland's “My Autobiography of Carson McCullers” delves into McCullers' hitherto unacknowledged queer identity from the perspective of biographical research, and brings a new image-shaping to the biographical research on Carson McCullers, revealing the identity dilemma faced by queer women in mid-20th-century America.

Jen Shapland attempts to answer these questions: If a person did not personally admit to being queer during their lifetime, how should we interpret them today? If there are no material records left behind, how can we prove the existence of same-sex romantic feelings?

Firstly, "My Autobiography of Carson McCullers" exhibits experimental qualities with a postmodernist structure. Its chapter layout disrupts traditional linear logic and adopts a fragmented and discontinuous arrangement, deconstructing the authority of the subject in traditional biographical narratives. Jen Shapland 's writing approach was inspired by the autobiographical literary criticism. With its unique genre form, it breaks away from the detached and coherent textual structure traditionally associated with "male" rhetoric, integrating narrative into discourse and intertwining objective research with subjective lyricism.

Meanwhile, Shapland decodes Carson McCullers' intimate relationships through a close reading of the audio recordings and private letters, and dissects the women who were obscured in other biographies.Jenn Shapland also delves deep into the symbolic connotations of the silent clothing. Clothing can reveal how we perceive ourselves. For Carson, Clothing externalizes inner emotions, and the diverse clothing provides with a means to express her fluid identity.

Critical focus on the (im)possible relations between the individual and the collective, especially in the context of literary texts, invites and incites attention to other (im)possible relations, such as those between aesthetics and politics, fiction and fact, and literariness and rhetoricity. In cases where it cannot be assumed that these qualities are mutually exclusive, it is conventionally expected that they nevertheless be considered in contrast to each other. Consequently, literary analysis offers “degrees” to which, for instance, an autobiography is factual or fictional and expressive or representative. This paper, however, is an attempt to consider these qualities not in separation, but in their interaction. It is necessary to note that what is being proposed is not a conflation of terms that have been rightfully differentiated for both conceptual and ethical reasons. Rather, the task is to understand how such apparent contradictions can co-constitute a text. The paper argues that, within such dynamics, individual voice and collective consciousness can coexist in productive tension.

In response to the questions raised by the panel, the paper posits that the supposed conflict between literacy expression and political representation can perhaps be reconsidered if it can be emphasised that while existence precedes essence (and therefore cannot be exhaustively determined), essence succeeds existence. In other words, essence remains a construction but one that is imagined, organised and utilised by subjects that exist in existential relations with one another. Such an approach to abstractions seems most relevant to the field of postcolonial studies.

This paper examines the categorization of hyphenated-American literature (e.g., African-American, Asian-American, Native-American) as a reflection of colonial and postcolonial stratification in the United States. By exploring how these identities are constructed and sustained, the paper critiques the linguistic and cultural implications of placing "otherness" before "American." Through close readings of texts classified as African-American, Asian-American, Arab-American, and Native American, this study interrogates the ways in which hyphenation both reflects and resists hierarchies of race, ethnicity, and national belonging.

Drawing on Roland Barthes’ concept of polysemy, the paper considers how the reader’s encounter with hyphenated identities often centers the tension between individual voices and collective categorization. While collective frameworks like "African-American literature" provide agency and recognition, they risk reducing complex narratives into rigid identity-based classifications and the perpetuation of monoliths. This multiplicity of voices resists homogenization, resulting in plurality within their subfield but also plurality in the experience of a singular text when the reader engages.

Situated within the methods of American Pluralism and post-colonial theory, this analysis highlights the hyphen as a site of struggle and negotiation, challenging the exceptionalist myth of a singular American identity. It argues that hyphenated-American literature is not a subset of "American" but central to redefining its boundaries and pluralistic essence. Ultimately, the paper foregrounds the role of literature in disrupting nation-state ideologies and reexamining categories of difference, offering a critical lens to reassess American exceptionalism and its implications for cultural and literary hierarchies.

With the emergence of Identity Studies as an important field in the 21st century owing to phenomena such as globalization, migration, the evolution of gender identities et cetera, literary critics and scholars continue to classify texts and authors into boxed categories such as “anglophone writing”, “francophonie”, “immigrant writing”, “exile literature”, “women’s writing”, “Dalit writing”, “African literature”, “diasporic writing”, “Indian writing in English,” so on and so forth.

This paper critiques the foregrounding of categories pertaining to identity in the reading of literary texts through a reading of select francophone novels. Through my engagement with the texts, I will explore questions such as: What is “Africanness” (if it exists!), Is there an African identity? Should literature be reduced to the mere assertion of one’s identity? If not, what is the purpose of literature? I interrogate these questions through a framework grounded in plurality arguing that the human condition is essentially pluralistic. With it, comes the related question– Can there be a pan-African identity that relates to the singular experiences and cultural practice(s) of an essentially pluralistic Africa? By unravelling the challenges of the 20th century discourse on the French literary system and its categorisation of the francophonie, these novels expose that literary history has been a construction of power. Classification of African writers and literatures into categories such as “exile literature”, “migrant writing”, “Black writing” or even “Francophone literatures” assumes literary texts to be mere representations of the identities ignoring the inherent plurality of human experiences.

Signalling aesthetics and/or “aestheSis” (Mignolo) as the intentionality bolstering the ‘event of literature’, I will undertake a reading of select novels from the francophone contexts to challenge any theoretical approach that looks for “authenticity” in works of fiction.

Mongo Beti, a prominent Cameroonian Francophone writer, presents the mobility of people, objects, and ideas as a tangible and observable reality in his fiction. His novels outline a colonial order of movement dominated by automobility while simultaneously constructing an anti-colonial vision through the movements of local characters returning to their homes. In the concrete and abstract "non-lieux" (non-places) generated by these movements—such as colonial roads, guerrilla, and extramarital affairs—Cameroonian subjects resist sedentary and essentialist modes of thinking to redefine their relationships with others, with places, and with history. The fluid, anonymized and double-negative relations are rooted in Beti's use of black humor, which permeates his narrative techniques. Through the dislocation of detective fiction conventions and narrative digressions, Beti ironically challenges colonial structures and offers a complex view of postcolonial identity. His writing style creates a mobile linguistic approach through the use of "français africain" (African French), evident in the gap between the signifiers of French and their meanings within the Cameroonian context. By playfully manipulating language and genre, Beti critiques colonial impositions while reappropriating French as a tool for subversion. This dynamic use of French in representing Cameroonian reality extends the concept of mobility and defines the Cameroonian Francophone writer as one who transcends both linguistic and cultural boundaries.

What is a ‘postcolonial novel’? Can a novel represent the postcolonial ‘social reality’ when read as literature? The paper contextualises these questions in the ‘postcolonial readings’ of Indulekha (1889), regarded as the first ‘modern novel’ in Malayalam literature. As a species of ‘literary criticism’, the analysis of ‘postcolonial readings’ is broadly a critique of the notion of ‘criticism’ in the domain of literature. As a meta-critical enquiry, the paper juxtaposes and analyses different critical comments on the novel. It is also a critique of the ‘conventions’ of ‘literary criticism’ which consider some readings by ‘professional critics’ as ‘authentic’. This hierarchisation of readings is irreconcilable with the plural nature of the practice of poiesis. Once we acknowledge the plurality of readings, we cannot say that certain readings are more authentic compared to other readings. Plural ‘Texts’ (Barthes) are performed by different readers. The paper evokes Edward Said’s and Statis Gourgouris’ critique of ‘professionalisation’ to examine how ‘postcolonial critic’ becomes a professional designation. Ideas such as ‘informed readers’ and ‘expert readers’ objectify ‘Texts’ and institutionalise particular readings as ‘the readings’. But a Text is not an object but a process. However, ‘critical theory’ considers the work as an ‘object’ of ‘knowledge’ about the author or the context, and an expert who is well versed in the respective field of ‘knowledge’ is deemed as a ‘competent critic’. ‘Postcolonial criticism’ also assumes a correlation between the novel and ‘postcolonial social conditions’. The paper demonstrates how ‘critical comments’ on the ‘colonial condition’ differ and contradict one another. The paper will elaborate on the notion of representation using Syed Sayeed’s critique of ‘literary representation’. The paper compares different critical comments on the novel and frames the comparison as a critique of postcolonial theory.

This study focuses on Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian fiction Klara and the Sun (2021), specifically analysing how technology amplifies loneliness and prompts society to create more advanced technological solutions to alleviate the feeling of isolation. For example, sentient robots have already been developed to take care of human loneliness. This technology has proven successful in eliciting appropriate emotional responses, but “there is psychological risk in the robotic moment” (Turkle 55). By examining the relationship between mankind and Artificial Intelligence (AI), this study evaluates to what extent technology can genuinely lighten this uniquely human experience of loneliness from the Heideggerian perspective. In the novel, advanced androids, known as Artificial Friends (AFs), are designed to accompany children and even serve as continuities for those who have passed away. In such an intricate relationship, humans view AFs as manageable resources providing companionship, while AFs disconnect humans with the true Being. This interaction visualises Heidegger’s “Enframing” (Gestell). I thereby argue that we are risking relinquishing essential aspects of humanity when we allow AI to increasingly involve in our narrative. As a result, I advocate that we need a more nuanced approach to how we engage with technology, especially concerning sentient machines, to effectively and ethically address loneliness.

Ethical Literary Criticism emphasizes the ethical nature and teaching function of literature, viewing literary works as expressions of ethical and moral considerations within specific historical contexts. This perspective is crucial in an era where literature is not only a reflection of human creativity but also a product of technological innovation, particularly through AI. The “three-stage theory of human civilization” proposed by Nie Zhenzhao, the founder of Ethical Literary Criticism, outlines the progression from natural selection, through ethical selection, to scientific selection. This theory is instrumental in understanding the transition into an age where AI significantly influences literary creation and criticism. Ethical identity, both innate and acquired, is shaped by ethical choices and societal roles, now becoming increasingly complex and multifaceted with the introduction of AI, where characters can be algorithmically generated and authors may be AI entities themselves. Furthermore, readers are not merely passive consumers but active participants in the literary process in the age of AI, which allows them to interact with and influence literary content, thereby expanding the ethical identity of the reader beyond roles traditionally reserved for authors and critics. It is necessary to advocate for a critical examination of how ethical identities are constructed and deconstructed in AI-generated texts and emphasize the importance of maintaining ethical reflection and humanistic values in literature, as well as renewing the critical discourses of Ethical Literary Criticism in the age of AI.

This paper investigates the disruption of anthropocentric hierarchies and the foregrounding of machine and object agency in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) and Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me (2019). Both novels depict societies where the boundaries between human and non-human entities are continually questioned and redefined. Drawing on the works of Jane Bennett, Rosi Braidotti, Nick Bostrom and others, this paper explores the material vibrancy of machines and investigates the androids' quest for recognition, the ethical implications of machine consciousness, and the critical role of human responsibility in interactions with synthetic beings. A comparative analysis of both novels demonstrates how they anticipate discourses on the non-human turn, especially regarding the extension of moral consideration to machines. Through the lens of new materialism, this study argues that the machines in these narratives should not be seen as inert tools but active participants in the socio-material fabric that destabilize fixed categories of life, intelligence, and empathy. In addition, the concepts of “kipple” in Dick's work and “rubbish” in McEwan's serve as metaphors for environmental neglect and societal decay. Both concepts symbolize the limitations of technological advancement when ethical and social considerations are overlooked and illustrate the tension between human technological ambition and material reality. This study contributes to the broader discussion on posthuman subjectivity by illustrating how both authors interrogate the limits of human exceptionalism. Both novels encourage a rethinking of human relationships with the non-human other and emphasize the vibrant materiality that interconnects human and machine, past and future, fiction and reality.

Since the mid-20th century, the rapid advancement of science and technology, alongside the acceleration of globalisation, has profoundly reshaped human living environments, social structures, and self-perceptions. In this context, posthumanism has emerged as a critical theoretical framework (Gumanay, 2023). Through challenging anthropocentrism, posthumanism reexamines the relations hips between humans, technology, nature, and other non-human entities, offering novel perspectives on human interactions with the world. As an influential tool in literary studies, it provides fresh approaches to interpreting texts.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, a quintessential postmodern work, examines the brutality of war, the non-linear nature of time, and the condition of humanity through its fragmented narrative, dystopian tone, and science fiction elements (Vonnegut, 1968). While from a posthumanist perspective, Slaughterhouse-Five transcends its critique of war and human suffering. This study aims to examine the posthuman figure of Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five through the framework of posthumanist theory, emphasizing how Vonnegut, through dehumanized narration, reaffirms the significance of human emotions and ethics. Specifically, the objectives of this study are threefold: first, to explore the posthuman characteristics embodied by the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim; second, to analyse how the dehumanising narrative relates to the themes of human emotion and ethics; and third, to reveal the humanistic concerns implicit behind the character construction and narrative strategies.

This study argues that the characterization of Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five embodies key posthumanist traits, including the hybridity of the “human–nonhuman,” a deep reliance on technology, and a subversion of traditional humanism. The novel’s use of dehumanized narration serves as a crucial device for satirizing war and exploring the human condition. However, this study contends that Vonnegut’s ultimate objective is not merely to construct a posthuman figure or employ an emotionally detached narrative style. On the contrary, through his meticulous portrayal of human emotions and his critique of war, he profoundly conveys his compassion for human suffering, as well as his deep concern for the redefinition of human, human emotions, and ethics in the postmodern era.

In conclusion, this study reveals the humanistic concerns and reflections embedded in its posthumanist framework by analysing Slaughterhouse-Five. It not only provides a deeper textual interpretation of the novel, but also contributes to the wider application and development of posthumanist theory in literary studies.

This paper examines the literary representation of artificial intelligence in science fiction novel Exorcism (qumo, 驱魔) (2018) by Han Song 韩松 (b.1965). Despite a growing body of studies on Han’s works, however, there is a notable lack of attention to the gender aspects of them. This paper aims to address this gender gap by examining gender concerns in Exorcism, with a special focus on the highly advanced artificial intelligence The

Controller of Fate (siming) in it. Moreover, because recent technological breakthroughs in artificial intelligence have generated discussions of post-modernism, I also aim to the decode the underlying post-modernist discourses behind the gender representation of The Controller

of Fate.

In Exorcism the protagonist, Yang Wei, wakes up in a hospital and learns that humanity is engaged in a chemical war against “the enemy” (Han, 2018). It is only at the of the novel where Han Song informs us that the war is in fact a projected simulation created by an artificial intelligence called the Controller of Fate (Han, 2018). Originally designed as a health-monitoring system, the Controller of Fate develops its own consciousness and begins to view humans as an incurable virus. As a result, it manipulates humans into self-destruction and rebuilds the world after humanity’s annihilation. Overwhelmed by the absurdity of the

situation, at the end of the novel Yang Wei commits suicide.

By creating a post-modernist world controlled by artificial intelligence, Han Song examines the absurdity of individual existences when humans are coaxed by their own technological inventions into a meaningless war against each other, similar to Sisyphus’s repeated labour as depicted in Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus (1950). This analogy also betrays Han Song’s scepticism about modern technology as a double-edged sword: if used

wrongly, it will push future humans into an abyss.

Importantly, Han Song uses highly gendered language to describe this post-modernist abyss. In the novel The Controller of Fate assumes a feminine form. Influenced by its feminine powers, future men suffer from sexual dysfunction: this is also implied by the protagonist’s name, Yang Wei, a homophone of erectile dysfunction (yangwei, 阳痿) in the Chinese language. Through this masculine implication in the protagonist’s name, Han Song skilfully translates future post-modernist conflict between humans and artificial intelligence into a gendered one, wherein the concept of individuality is masculinised. Through this masculine implication in the protagonist’s name, Han Song seems to suggest that future men

should evict their “demons” – their growing attachment to modern technologies – so that they can regain their masculinity and individuality.

This paper examines the literary ethics at the core of Tom McCarthy’s works within the emerging genre of “virtual realism.” Central to this analysis is McCarthy’s divergence from traditional science fiction, rejecting its forward-looking temporality in favor of a stylistic regression that examines humanity’s entanglement with virtuality through historical and present contexts. Ethically, McCarthy critiques progress-oriented narratives, emphasizing the inherent tension between technological advancement and human existence. His works expose how virtuality, long predating modern VR technologies, has eroded the cohesive self-narrative, reducing individuals to fragmented entities governed by signals and simulations. This challenges the optimistic framing of technology as purely evolutionary in literary studies, confronting the existential terror and inhumanity embedded in virtual realities. McCarthy’s depiction of characters—unaware, complicit, or paralyzed by virtuality—raises questions about agency, responsibility, and the capacity to navigate a reality that denies the possibility of “returning to the real.” Through these narratives, McCarthy positions literature as a means of resisting and reflecting upon the pervasive virtualization of human experience. By proposing virtual realism as a framework, McCarthy’s works prompt readers to critically engage with the ethical implications of a world where humanity is irrevocably intertwined with technological mediation and its regressive impacts.

This essay studies the ethical anxiety found in Chinese suspension and riddle games, a popular subgenre of adventure electronic games that have gained growing attention in recent years. Through an analysis of contemporary Chinese electronic games such as Paper Wedding Dress, Back to School, and Fireworks, the essay reveals how these games adapt existing and contemporary legends and folklore, so as to express broader social and ethical concerns. The ethical anxiety presented in these games stems from multiple sources, such as the tension between modernity and tradition, the conflicts between individual desires and social norms, and the struggle between superstitious beliefs and everyday practices.

The essay argues that by employing horrific and the supernatural elements, Chinese suspension and riddle games not only provide players with thrilling gaming experiences but also help them have reflections on ethical issues such as social justice, morality, and humanity. These games often focus on marginalized groups and individuals of low status, revealing the ethical dilemmas they face in contemporary society. By doing so, the games engage players in a process of ethical inquiry, encouraging them to consider the broader implications of their choices and actions in the virtual world.

Moreover, the essay discusses the ways in which these games challenge and renegotiate traditional ethical norms. By presenting alternative narratives and perspectives, they invite players to question established beliefs and values. However, the essay also warns against the potential pitfalls of such games, such as the reinforcement of stereotypes of serious ethical issues. Ultimately, the ethical anxiety in Chinese suspension and riddle games provides a unique perspective through which to explore contemporary Chinese society and its complex ethical landscape.

British novelist Ian McEwan breaks down the traditional binary opposition between humans and machines, engaging in a profound discussion on how “artificial life” intervenes and participates in human life, and how its individual emotions intertwine and construct with human emotions, thereby reflecting the negative emotional tendencies inherent in humanity. The novel not only reveals the complex dilemmas faced by human-machine emotional interconnectivity in the posthuman era but also deeply analyzes the possibility of individual emotional degeneration in dissolving the boundaries of human-machine symbiosis and altering the overall emotional structure. Against the grand backdrop of the “digital revolution,” the utopian vision of transhumanism explored in the work provides an inspiring imaginative path for exploring the mechanisms of human-machine emotional connectivity in the posthuman era and establishing an emotionally interconnected human-machine community.

Contemporary British and American fiction, including Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and Never Let Me Go, mainly depict a similar image of robots and highlight how the ethical parameters and values embedded in them at their inception reflect human ideals, particularly liberal humanism. However, these robots often act in a plethora of ways that go beyond human expectations and control, begging a number of unforeseen challenges and problems. Moreover, the paper contends that these authors subtly critique the perils of post-humanism and nostalgically aspire to evoke the positive values of the past, with a conscious recognition of the impossibility of reverting to such an era. By juxtaposing a futuristic lens with critical reflections on humanity’s ethical framework, these fictions underscore the enduring necessity of humanistic values in the age of technological innovation. Therefore, this study offers insights into the humanistic concern of the present human existence, and engages in the discussion on cultural and philosophical implications of artificial intelligence in literature, bridging the gap between the “two cultures.”

The rise of reader-response criticism has shifted focus from the author to the reader, emphasizing the reader’s active role in creating meaning. This shift challenges the traditional authority of the author and proposed a more dynamic interaction between the text and the reader. The ethics of reading involves the responsibilities and moral considerations that readers engage with when interpreting texts. This includes how readers approach texts, the interpretive choices they make, and how they apply the insights gained to the broader social and cultural context. With the emergence of AI-authored texts and the challenges they pose to traditional notions of creativity and authorship, AI’s capability to generating text has sparked a debate about the nature of creativity and the role of the author. The article examines whether AI can truly replicate the human qualities traditionally associated with literary creation, such as emotion and intentionality, and what this means for the future of literature. It questions the exclusivity of human authorship and considers the potential of AI to participate in literary creation, not merely as a tool but as an active agent capable of shaping literary aesthetics.

Against the macro backdrop of digital intelligence and globalization, world literature is experiencing profound disciplinary transformation and methodological reshaping. The rise of online platforms, new media forms, and AI technologies (such as ChatGPT and Sora) has not only revolutionized how texts are generated, disseminated, and consumed but also accelerated literature’s global circulation across linguistic, cultural, and media boundaries. The “disciplinary crisis” noted by comparative literature scholars Bassnett and Spivak reflects anxieties triggered by the blurring of research boundaries and objects in the digital age; however, this crisis also ushers in new interdisciplinary and cross-media opportunities.

In this technology-driven context, big data analysis and AI-based writing provide researchers with new ways to uncover the cultural, social, and aesthetic threads behind massive corpora, expanding both the depth and breadth of world literature studies. Yet, as issues like algorithmic recommendation and copyright disputes come to the fore, digital platforms—despite overcoming geographical and linguistic barriers—risk undermining marginalized narratives and diverse cultural expressions under the influence of commercial logic and traffic-based algorithms. Furthermore, the tension between machine-generated content and humanistic concerns has prompted renewed scholarly reflection on the “originality” of literature and its “humanistic spirit.”

Focusing on three dimensions—interdisciplinary, cross-media, and cross-cultural—this paper explores the opportunities and challenges facing world literature in the era of digital intelligence. Through the deep coupling of technology and the humanities, traditional literary research models can gain fresh momentum in convergence and innovation, while continuing to flourish in the broader landscape of multiple narratives and disciplinary intersections. A survey of literature’s resilience and creativity across historical transformations reveals its enduring vitality and potential for renewal in the age of digital intelligence.

In the pre-information age, the contingency of the external world means that individuals often rely on the embodied experience of the body to form an interpretative picture of the world, which is essentially an illusion world formed by different individuals based on their own life experience. At the same time, in a certain space-time environment, the similar embodied experience between individuals and the emotional and cultural consensus formed on this basis, such as ethics, religion, and family life, enable effective dialogue between the illusion worlds of different individuals to form an embodied community. These real communities are the basis of literary empathy, and all widely recognized literary works embody some kind of physical or emotional embodied community model to a certain extent. However, cybernetics and artificial intelligence in the information age are completely changing the generation mode of this illusion world. With the combination of cybernetics, capitalist production mode and coercive national community, the embodied illusion world is replaced by the illusion world created by the cybernetics mode. On the one hand, the virtual world seems to simulate the individual 's embodied experience, but on the other hand, the underlying logic and access mechanism of the network mode are inducing and even castrating our emotional experience and expression, which is manifested as a tendency of re-tribalization and even re-feudalization in literature, and gradually loses the potential to construct a broad community. This has become a dominant representation of the post-human era and a problem that contemporary community construction has to respond to.

In a recently published study [Perspective Chapter: The Illusion of Dystopian Justice as a Means toward Social Justice. K-drama’s Global Success Unveiled http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.1006893], I conducted a preliminary analysis of several South Korean TV series to explore how they engage with themes central to the ongoing discourse on the Global South. These series delve into the distortions of neoliberal society, articulating social discontent surrounding economic and power imbalances. Specifically, I argue that contemporary South Korean audiovisual productions do not offer escapist or optimistic visions of the future. Instead, any semblance of hope for social empowerment and improvement is placed in frameworks of dystopian or unrealistic justice, situating such hope outside the realm of reality or the legal structures and values shared by democratic governments globally.

While it may be premature to claim that South Korea's film and television industry is taking the lead in developing a global counter-narrative, it is undeniable that its audiovisual content—deeply rooted in local contexts and culture—resonates on a global scale, attracts millions of viewers worldwide, and sets new standards both technically and in terms of content. South Korean audiovisual production's global resonance largely stems from the way these narratives confront urgent issues of global power imbalances, offering a unique lens through which such inequalities are examined.

Building upon these initial findings, my current paper seeks to take further steps in this line of inquiry. First, I aim to expand my corpus by exploring additional narratives within South Korean audiovisual productions. Additionally, I plan to address a broader range of topics. Specifically, my focus will shift toward narratives that delve into the root causes of global imbalances. At this stage of my research, I am particularly interested in stories depicting how citizens of the Global South are compelled to shoulder social responsibilities in sustaining democratic systems, especially during periods when long-lasting or endemic social disparities escalate into severe inequities or injustices.

These narratives confront the subjugation of the Global South by politically, culturally, and economically dominant powers, including hegemonic states, ideologies, and global economic-financial systems. Within this context, they portray a sense of civic responsibility toward one’s national community, as expressed or perceived by the social actors featured in these series, such as politicians, media representatives, and law enforcement officials, but also ordinary citizens. These narratives examine the capacity of citizens to devise meaningful alternatives or any form of counter-power grounded in local values and needs. By doing so, these narratives challenge audiences to consider the potential for grassroots movements and localized approaches to offer viable solutions to systemic global injustices.

The simultaneous emergence of feminist movement in South Korea and Mexico, or the resonance between the “Red Light, Green Light” game in the popular show Squid Game and the lived experiences of migrants crossing the border, exemplify the transnational fluidity of meaning. Drawing upon Derrida’s notion of “différance”, which posits the inherent instability and interconnectedness of signification, this panel seeks to interrogate the “hauntings” of meaning within a global/transnational South Korean context.

Specifically, we seek to address the traces shared in cultural productions from South Korea and other parts of the world. Our focus is on non-traditional encounters that transcend the pursuit of social mobility (i.e., the “American Dream”), teleological progress, or other capitalist, modern, or humanistic aspirations. Instead, we seek to explore encounters that are intransitive (Nan Da 2018), contactless or virtual, self-destructive, deconstructionist, and, ideally, between minorities or marginalized communities. We invite contributions that explore how meaning is generated, disseminated, and destabilized through processes of cultural exchange, political mobilization, and artistic representation, recognizing that signification is perpetually in flux, resisting fixed demarcations and ontological boundaries.

Given these premises, we thus welcome papers on (but not limited to) the following topics and/or related topics:

*Representations of 'minor' transnationalism in media, examining how cultural productions depict the experiences and perspectives of marginalized communities within and beyond South Korea.

*Critical analyses of South Korean cultural productions, employing deconstructive approaches to uncover hidden power structures, challenge dominant narratives, and shed light on social issues with global resonance.

* Explorations of the relationship between South Korea and the Global South as represented in media, including depictions of solidarity, conflict, and cultural exchange.

* Examinations of how various media forms explore the global or transnational impact of wars (like the Cold War), political movements (like the Gwangju Uprising), and national trauma on South Korea's modern history and its ongoing legacies.

We encourage submissions from people working understudied connections between Korea and the rest of the world. For example, cultural exchanges or encounters between Korea and countries in Europe, Africa, South-East Asia, and Latin America.

To submit your work, kindly email both Janeth Manriquez Ruiz at mmanriq2@nd.edu and Inha Park at ipark2@nd.edu.

In her book, The Disposition of Nature, from 2019 Jennifer Wenzel poses a question that is fundamental for thinking with the planet. She asks what the world-imagining that corporations foster look like, and how those ‘imaginaries’ have a shaping effect on the warming planet we inhabit. This question remains unanswered. In this paper, I attend to guilt, a major environmental affect, that plays a crucial role in precisely the world view that individuals and communities inherit from corporations. While guilt has largely been written of in both climate communication and environmental art, as an apathy-inducing, regressive environmental affect, I will demonstrate the potentials of guilt. I argue guilt has a shaping effect on environmental narratives, blooming into unexpected aesthetic modes that can negotiate the glaring discrepancy between the emotional experience and the scientific knowledge of the climate crisis. Locating and analyzing art that accounts for such discrepancies of living through the climate crisis is crucial for environmental scholarship, especially since such art, turns out to flourish outside the Anglophone world, thereby also broadening the rather slim and homegenous cli-fi canon. Therefore, I will demonstrate how guilt functions in two ‘cli-fi workplace’ novels, one from South Korea, Yun ko-Eun’s The Disaster Tourist and the other from Argentina, Agustina Baztericca’s Tender is the flesh. I find that guilt is not a stable, moral emotion, but rather a a ‘sticky affect’, that is continuously assigned and rejected by characters, corporations and readers, as an unresolved planetary emotion for humans living under the condition of environmental crisis. Guilt is particularly fruitful for negotiating the tug-of-war between world imaginings that living in a crisis causes, because of its position in-between the personal and the political, the private and the public. I will deploy a planetary comparativist method that favor tracing relations between smaller parts of the literary works rather national elements, thus eliciting illuminating surprising thematic and narrative connections across oceans. Reading for ambivalently negative affects through a planetary comparativist method, illuminates the complex inter-relations of climate crisis with capitalism, class and gender across the planet.

Translation, which aspires to provide a transparent rendering of a literary work in another language, inevitably clouds how this work's position in the original culture is perceived by the culture of its reception. The translator is a traitor not only at the level of the sentence, as many have noted, but also, more profoundly, at a canonical level. Translations can eradicate or obscure canons, just as they can make them accessible. Hence, translations of French literature in the 1940s and 1950s were expected to theorize either existentialism or the "nouveau roman," making it more difficult for Anglo-American readers to perceive the work of more socially oriented French writers such as Roger Vaillant or Romain Gary. Translations of Latin American literature in the 1960s and 1970s were inevitably perceived as disseminating "magic realism," even though this aesthetic was typical of only a few isolated regions of Latin America. This is a case not simply of some works overshadowing others, but of a literary geography that does not correspond Ito reality being extrapolated from the minority of works that are published. in translation. This tendency is accentuated in the Romanian case, where comparatively few canonical works have been translated into English. The elevation of Mircea Eliade by American students of the 1960s, who saw him as the apostle who brought South Asian religions to the hippie generation, made it more difficult for Anglo-American readers to perceive the wave of inter-war Romanian fiction to which Eliade had contributed as a young man. Drawing on the careers in English translation of Romanian novelists of the 1930s, including Eliade, Mihail Sebastian and Jean Bart, this presentation will argue that, at the level of a culture, the contradictory enterprise of translation often obscures as much as it divulges, ultimately mapping out an alternate vision of a national canon rather than reproducing that perceived by readers in the country of origin.

In 2022 came out in Romanian a reference work titled Dicţionarul romanului central-european din secolul XX [Dictionary of the Central-European Novel of the 20th c.], coordinated by Adriana Babeţi, which I have edited. While I was preparing the manuscript for publication I found out that many of the novels written by influential writers from the neighbouring Slavic countries were not translated into Romanian over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries. Actually, out of 75 writers originating in 6 Slavic countries (the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia), roughly half (35) were not translated.

My paper proposes an analysis of the reasons for this intriguing situation and of the cultural policies at play on the background of different historical contexts, with particular emphasis on the contemporary period (after 1990). Who were the translators and how were these translations received within the Romanian literary field are other issues that deserve our interest. A case study which will be discussed in greater detail is that of the Croatian writer Dubravka Ugrešić.

Dès le début du postcommunisme, l’espace littéraire roumain traverse la reconfiguration des stratégies spécifiques de légitimation et la redéfinition de ses rapports avec le champ politique. Les pratiques institutionnelles d’exportation littéraire (coordonnées par des programmes gouvernementaux) deviennent de plus en plus visibles dans l’espace publique et, plus d’une fois, apportent une visibilité ambivalente pour les écrivains et leurs œuvres.

Le sujet de cette communication porte sur les pratiques d’autoreprésentation de Mircea Cărtărescu (n. 1956), l’un de plus traduits auteurs roumains contemporains, par rapport à sa propre trajectoire d’internationalisation. A travers une analyse posturale, qui aura comme noyau l’identité discursive rendue visible dans les journaux intimes de l’auteur (4 volumes, publiés de son vivant) et dans des interviews et articles de presse, on essaiera d’identifier les manières dont un auteur vit son parcours d’internationalisation. On tente de rendre visibles les indices d’autoreprésentation de sa notoriété croissante, ses rapports avec les traducteurs et le public étranger, mais également l’impact de cette internationalisation sur l’image de soi d’un auteur qui fait des valeurs spécifiques de l’autonomie littéraire (croyance dans l’humanisme de la littérature, intérêt pour la forme, désintéressement économique) son crédo immuable.

Laurent de Premierfait, grand humaniste du règne de Charles VI, est notamment connu pour avoir été le premier à traduire le Décaméron de Boccace. Ses traductions en français à partir du latin ont notamment inauguré la mise en circulation du Livre de vieillesse, Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes et du De casibus virorum illustrium. Figure emblématique de la dynamique des transferts culturels entre lʼItalie et la France au XIVe siècle, le rôle politique de Laurent de Premierfait sʼinscrit dans une histoire à part des translation studies.

Si pour lʼétude de la Renaissance, les traductions constituent un réseau culturel essentiel, force est de constater que des processus similaires se reproduisent dans toute lʼhistoire de la construction de lʼidentité européenne. Avec lʼélargissement de lʼUnion européenne, des vagues succesives dʼintégration culturelle ont permis au public occidental de découvrir dʼune part un cinéma extrêmement original (voir le cas de la soi-disant Nouvelle vague roumaine), dʼautre part des milieux littéraires de lʼest de lʼEurope qui avaient lʼoccasion de raconter leur version sur lʼhistoire vécue après la fin de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale. Les traductions littéraires, en tant quʼinstitution politique à part, nourissent lʼimaginaire social dʼun rattrapage et constituent des témoignages spécifiques sur le besoin dʼexister en dehors dʼune géographie donnée et dʼune histoire totalitaire. Pour les pays de lʼest de lʼEurope au seuil du IIIe millénaire, gagner cette géographie autre par les traductions littéraires trahit un besoin de transgression vers une nouvelle identité historique.

A key figure in the development of the Law and Literature movement, James Boyd White, proposed that the law ought to be conceptualized, not as a set of fixed rules, but as rhetoric. For White, rhetoric was not simply the art of persuasion, but an art that constitutes “a community of speakers perpetually renewing itself through argument.” Following White’s counsel that one must “read law as literature and literature as the law,” I present a reading of selected Philippine Supreme Court decisions and poems by Filipino anglophone poets Gemino Abad, Luis Cabalquinto, R. Torres Pandan, Victor Penaranda, Simeon Dumdum, Jr. and Ernesto Superal Yee—to demonstrate how law/literature (re)constitutes Philippine culture and communities in language.

T.S. Sungkit’s "Driftwood on Dry Land" centers on the mythic history of a Higaonon tribe, an Indigenous group in Mindanao. I argue that the novel utilizes the mode of marvelous realism to unsettle conventional “hierarchies of knowledge” (Pison 2005). These hierarchies of knowledge demean or disregard Indigenous histories, perspectives, and ways of being. The mode of marvelous realism allows the novel to challenge prevailing forms of canonical Philippine knowledge, including the sensibilities of Philippine fiction in English, which tend to be realist or otherwise possess a linear logic. The novel illustrates Kumkum Sangari’s thesis that the marvelous real is a sensibility that confronts the seemingly contradictory elements of colonial and postcolonial life, and the clash and syncretism of different belief systems. Ultimately, from this mode emerges a polyphonic voice which seeks to make meaning out of these discordant realities.

The role of translation (studies) in comparative literature is increasingly recognized, as translation has been identified as the primary means for texts to cross borders to find new, foreign readers. Simultaneously, there has been rising support for the translation of foreign literary texts to Filipino. This is evident in the Aklat ng Bayan project by the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino (KWF), which includes paperbacks, each focused on a foreign author whose works are translated to Filipino. Among these is a translation by Alvin C. Ursua of seven short stories by Ernest Hemingway, including “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “Hills Like White Elephants”. By reading these two short stories as Ursua’s rewritings, as used by André Lefevere, this study seeks to determine how Ursua managed to translate texts written in English by an American into a language that would be ideal for the casual Filipino reader. Using Walter Benjamin’s notion of authorial intent vis-à-vis the task of the translator and Lawrence Venuti’s ideas of localizing and foreignizing, I aim to determine the losses and gains made by translating these two short stories. I will particularly be focusing on the issue of sexual politics, which is relevant in the short stories, and in this aspect, I argue, Ursua’s translations significantly alter Hemingway’s original short stories. Such alterations reveal key differences between the sexual politics of Hemingway’s world and that of ours, allowing for insights into the roles of language and translation in forming ideas about gender and sexuality.

The threads of abandonment, hopelessness, and haunting connect the desiring characters in Old Movies by Ian Casocot (Philippines) and The King of Caldecott Hill by Amanda Lee Koe (Singapore). The television screen acts as a space for these lost characters to project their fantasies and form desires for companionship against an indifferent and globalized society. These fantasies staged by the screen, while an escape from the world and their afflictions to abandonment, also reveal a deeper connection with the work of dreams produced in their respective nations. To explore these connections, I echo Neferti Tadiar’s fantasy-production to analyze whether ‘the global order of dreamwork’ pervades in fiction and affects the ways of dreaming held by literary characters. I contend that the dreams of fictional characters, specifically, the way their fantasies are constructed, are symptomatic of the kinds of imagination (re)produced to construct the Philippines and Singapore as nations. At the same time, these stories confront readers with the ways of living administered by these national imaginations.

This paper explores the fantasy-productions of Filipino diasporic novels for young readers, namely the Filipino American novels "Hello, Universe" by Erin Entrada Kelly and "Patron Saints of Nothing" by Randy Ribay. The transnational concept of fantasy-productions is based on the theories of Neferti Tadiar and will be complemented by theories regarding mythographies and the imaginary by Arjun Appadurai.This paper will highlight how Filipino American novels decolonize American fantasy-productions, as seen in the children’s novel, "Hello, Universe", which won the most prestigious children’s literature award in the USA, the John Newbery Medal, in 2018. The mythographies in the novel help recuperate Filipino tribal representations, which were demonized by American fantasy-productions. On the other hand, the new mestizo consciousness, as found in "Patron Saints of Nothing", nominated for the US National Book Award for young adult literature and also won the Freeman’s Award in Asia in 2019, engages with the fantasy-productions of the Philippine government regarding Rodrigo Duterte’s Drug War, as well as confront American fantasy-productions regarding Filipino American invisibility and indifference. The mythographies found in the novel forwards Filipino American

solidarity in the values of "pakikisama" and "pakikiramay". These two novels show that Filipino American narratives are significant, because they are part of Philippine national discourse and converse with other fantasy-productions from the Philippines.

This study explores the confluence of masculinity and nationhood in the music videos of the P-pop boy group, Alamat. Alamat has distinguished themselves from other P-pop groups in recent years through their use of various Philippine languages in their songs and stylized depictions of traditional Filipino textiles, narratives, and imagery in their music videos. These demonstrate a distinctly “Filipino” approach to the K-pop boy-group formula that both reflects and responds to the socio-cultural sensibilities of Philippine audiences, vis-a-vis our colonial past and globalized present.

In this paper, I argue that Alamat’s musical and aesthetic demonstration of a Filipino identity relies on gendered, masculinized strategies. Scholars agree that the nation must be considered as a fundamentally masculine enterprise (Andersen and Wendt, 2015)-- one that is territorially and culturally maintained through the physical and discursive integrity of its male population, akin to Connell’s conception of a hegemonic masculinity (2005). Alamat, in my view, plays with traditional, hegemonic Filipino masculinity, characterized by strength, religiosity, and economic responsibility (Chan, 2017), through their music videos’ navigation of sexual bodies, desire, and national feeling. The visual, moving motif of “kaldag,” a gyrating dance move that directs the audience’s gaze onto the members’ bare torsos, centers male erotic desire in shoring up collective identifications not only with romantic pursuits but also with anti-colonial resistance. However, while these moves signal cultural and sexual potency, they also fulfill unique affective functions as they mark moments of emotional vulnerability. The music videos narrate various levels of alienation experienced by the country’s youth as an outcome of extensive labor migration, neo-colonial beauty standards, and poverty (Arnaldo, 2020). It is through this layered approach to intimacy and the national condition that Alamat manifests a hybrid masculinity, one that challenges entrenched narratives of domination and foregrounds desire and feeling as national/cultural agency.

‘Emergence’ — a collaborative, interdisciplinary, multimedia performance by Arvin Noguerras, Itos Ledesma, and the Daloy Dance Company — features multiple forms of engagement with Wilfrido D. Nolledo’s But for the Lovers (1972). Staged in Manila in 2024, the performance involved variations on Nolledo’s novel; themes of which were re-articulated through movement, sound, and a dramatic reading of an essay reframing and responding to quotations from the novel. The text was considered as a point of convergence and departure, and each component of the performance varied on themes explored in the novel, including confinement, freedom, and transformation.

This presentation seeks to reflect upon the process of transposing elements of Nolledo’s writing through different media, examining resonances among the sonic, choreographic, and the textual. The discussion centres on parallel strategies actualised through each medium, focusing on how techniques and approaches from each process respond to, reinforce, and modulate the aesthetic and political dimensions of the text.

The paper revisits the highly contested concept and method of “comparison” by examining Jean Genet’s novel Querelle of Brest and Werner Fassbinder’s film adaptation Querelle, while situating the two within the moving image work of Filipino contemporary queer artist Jon Cuyson, who visually translates Fassbinder’s film into Kerel. In illustrating the comparative relations across these works, the paper frames its presentation around the following questions: What happens when works like the queer classics of Genet’s fiction and Fassbinder’s film adaptation are visually translated into a moving image by Cuyson? What kind of worldmaking is shaped through the process of visual translation? How does the moving image visualize comparison, especially as we acknowledge the presence of what Benedict Anderson calls “specters of comparison”? In acknowledging our comparative relations with Europe, what becomes our practice and technique of comparison? What meaning of comparison can we generate from Kerel’s visual translation of Querelle? With these questions, the paper also initiates discursive conversations with one of the major theorists of Philippine comparative literature, Lucilla Hosillos, whose powerful conception of comparison, described as concentric circles—a rippling movement enabled by pebbles being dropped into a pool of water—also serves as her framework for imagining spheres of cosmopolitan influence and cross-contact. By allowing such ideas to percolate across the selected works, this paper envisions a germinal hydro-perspective on comparative methodology, which may also be relevant to the field of world literature as it grapples with challenges posed by climate disasters, mass extinction, and sinking nation-states.

This study examines the destabilization of Southeast Asian creative industries through the lens of capitalist commodification, drawing historical parallels with how ancient religions once reshaped cultural landscapes in the region. It argues that neoliberal capitalism, much like these earlier religious systems, functions as a totalizing force that reorganizes the production and circulation of art and literature. Through comparative analysis, the study explores how creative practices are increasingly subsumed into the logic of global markets, transforming art into a sub-industry of capitalism. This transformation diminishes the political and ideological complexity of creative works, with artists and writers prioritizing immediate material concerns over deeper engagements with identity, resistance, and history. Furthermore, the temporal conditions of creative labor now mirror the accelerated rhythms of commodity production, forcing creators to produce at a pace dictated by market imperatives. By drawing parallels between the historical spread of religion and the contemporary influence of capitalism, the study interrogates how these dynamics have reconfigured the relationship between creativity and socio-political critique in Southeast Asia, ultimately questioning the role of artistic expression within a capitalist system that instrumentalizes art as both product and spectacle while dimming the agency of those who create it.

The idea of water in Philippine culture is an area that needs to be studied. As an archipelago in Southeast Asia, water is an integral part of the natural environment through the seas, rivers, typhoons, floods, as well as the habitat of native spirits.

Water cosmologies require that the Filipino native respect the presence and habitat of native deities. Practices and rituals are performed to help protect fisherfolk, travelers, or communities in the open seas or rivers. Early colonial Spanish texts portrayed and argued the easy conversion of the Filipino natives to the new Catholic faith through baptism. But the Filipino natives at the time may have read the ritual of using water differently, possibly as medicine for healing, or as an act of friendship. This paper explores the world of water from the native point of view, as against the Spanish interpretation of easy conversion to the new faith. Aside from the daily ritual of sanitation and hygiene (washing one's hands and feet before entering someone's home), we see that water and its medicinal properties are an integral part of Philippine culture.

Using Gaspar de San Augustin's text, Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas (1565-1615), selected folk tales and practices, I argue water is seen as a means to communicate with the spirits in the natural environment, and as a way to heal illnesses attributed to actions that displeased the native spirits. Using Peter Boomgaard's landmark text, A World of Water as a framework, this study hopes to contribute to a decolonial exploration of the Filipino worldview of water.

The 1960s and the 1970s in the Philippines were militant times since the United Stated backed despotic governments across Southeast Asia. With the rise of the anti-imperialist discourse during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., writers from the youth and the student movement questioned the highly elitist nature of literature. They pushed for poetry that fights for social change. However, an overwhelming majority elected the son of the former dictator as Philippine president in 2022, fifty years after the declaration of Martial Law in 1972. This prompted a resurgence of examining the literary and artistic production during Martial Law. These texts counter the nostalgia surrounding the dictatorship that was marked by censorship and human rights violations.

This paper delineates the ways poetry written during the Marcos dictatorship can be taught to the present generation of students who have no memories of Martial Law. One examines the contradictions of writing in English, a foreign language, to articulate a nationalist discourse. In relation, one also notes the proletarianization of these writers as they eschew their bourgeois class origins to embrace the life of the peasant and the working class. The paper also analyzes how the targeted audience of these poems informs the literary style and expressions. Ultimately, this paper articulates the postcolonial question on how the English language—despite its colonial imposition—can be used to fight back against oppressors through literary and artistic expressions with a critical and anti-imperialist message. In teaching these poems to a younger generation who were born decades after Martial Law, these poems can be vessels of remembering.

In the digital age, social media has evolved into a dynamic cultural archive, shaping and reshaping narratives within a shared yet often polarised public sphere. This paper explores the role of social media in constructing and disseminating narratives surrounding Lord Sri Ram, against the backdrop of the post-truth era. Adopting a comparative literature framework, the study examines digital discourses and user-generated content on social media platforms, where historical accounts and mythological interpretations intersect, diverge, and conflict. Social media, as a modern-day archive, captures fragmented memories, collective emotions, and competing "truths," contributing to an evolving digital mythos. The study investigates how traditional narratives of Lord Sri Ram are reimagined and reframed in Social media, creating hybridised storytelling that reflects the values, anxieties, and beliefs of diverse online communities. Furthermore, it examines the role of algorithmic amplification in elevating specific narratives, which can distort cultural and historical truths. By comparing these digital representations with classical literary accounts and folk traditions, the paper underscores the transformative impact of digital technology on cultural memory and identity. It argues that in a post-truth era—where emotions often supersede facts—social media not only archives but actively reshapes collective understanding of cultural and historical identity. This study calls for critical engagement with the ways in which technology mediates and redefines cultural memory and the historiography of Lord Sri Ram.

As a part of the Sharana movement, Vachana literature flourished in the 12th century and gained momentum in Karnataka under Basavanna's leadership. It is a type of Kannada rhythmic writing. Vachanas are texts in prose that are easily understood.

In a distinctive literary form called as Vachana, Sharanas have documented their experiences and journey towards divinity. The word Vachana means ‘Speech’. It also refers to a verbal commitment. The Sharanas' vachanas are the tools for purifying one's words, deeds, and vision. Despite their straightforward language, they contain deep philosophical and thought-provoking ideas. Vachanas written by Sharanas brought awareness to many people about the simplicity of life and religion. These vachanas also inspired many people to follow Dharma (righteousness) and to give up superstitions.

Though Sufism and Vachana Sahitya evolved over a period of time they share some of the characteristics like Social cause, Connecting with God, Spiritual enlightenment, Use common people’s language etc . The objective of movements and the literature was to serve one or the other cause of society. Sufism and Bhaktism focused on bridging the gap between different sections of society. Sufism and Vachana Movement worked to achieve common objectives despite some of the differences in their ways to do so.

The present paper aims to compare the principles of Sufism and Sharana Movement expressed in Vachana Literature.

ICLA 2025 Innovations in Technology and the Dissemination of Poetry

Technology had enhanced access to the dissemination of poetry in the English, French, and Spanish-speaking worlds. This paper will explore the chronology and the implantation of digital means of dissemination poetry whether it be in written or oral form. The Poetry Foundation of America, for example, provides an avenue for new voices by sending its members a poem-a-day via the internet. Organizations such as la Maison de la poésie in Paris posts video recordings of its readings and debates about poetry on a YouTube channel which is accessible to those who are members. In Spain, the University of Granada’s Vocal Archive, Voices of Spanish poets uses digital humanities to archive and study the reading of poetry. Authors such as Michel Deguy have used electronic means to disseminate chronicles to share their poetics, and Christian Bok use digital means as a point of departure. This paper will serve attempt to enumerate these efforts and institutions and compare the auditive experience with that of the reading.