Call for Papers (Open) by the

Standing Research Committee for the Study of Literatures and Cultures of South Asia, ICLA

‘Decolonising ‘World Literature’: Perspectives of Oratures and Literatures from South Asia’

If we look back on the evolution of the idea of ‘World Literature’ we will discover that the idealistic pronouncements by Goethe in 1823 and Rabindranath Tagore in 1908 on ‘WL’ have not been realized. The idea of ‘WL’ originated in Europe, when large parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America were being colonised by the imperial forces of European powers. The twentieth century has witnessed the emergence of these colonies into independent nations with greater awareness of their political and cultural identities. The works of those authors from Latin American, African and Asian countries who have won the Nobel prize or such prestigious awards in literature, figure in the list of canonical authors of the West. This only confirms that the idea of ‘World literature’ continues to be dominated by the ideology of Euro-centrism and its exclusivist approach to literary studies.

We find the world being increasingly standardised through the spread of technology, trade and migrations of people. Transnational net-works which ensure the dissemination of Western works of literatures have inbuilt filters that prevent the reception of texts and cultural goods from the global south. A noted comparatist from America, Gerald Gillespie wrote in 2017: “Now, after the year 2000, we are witnessing … the attempt to erect a new style WL movement in the present century via the hegemony of English as a world lingua franca.”

This seminar would like to address this complex situation. We need to shift our attention from ‘World Literature’ to ‘the Literatures of the World’. Papers which analyse the oral traditions of South Asia, colonial encounter and its aftermath, the contradictions and conflicts that accompany the process of decolonisation are particularly welcome. We need to study the Indian diaspora’s perceptions of the globalised world through their authors. Our larger objective is to examine how a new idea of ‘WL’ can emerge from the specific contexts of South Asian literatures and cultures.

Sub-themes: ‘World Literature’ and the South Asian Traditions of Translations,

Orality and Literacy in South Asia,Globalisation and South Asian Cultures,

Literatures of the Diaspora, Gender and Literatures in South Asia, Representation of Caste and Race in Literature

Please note that abstracts for the seminar are to be received by the date: January 10, 2025.

Abstracts should be sent to both:

E.V. Ramakrishnan: evrama51@gmail.com

Sayantan Dasgupta: sayantan.dasgupta@jadavpuruniversity.in

A9-3 Research Committee on Comics Studies and Graphic Narrative

Chairs:

- Stefan Buchenberger, Kanagawa University, Yokohama/Japan

- Abhishek Chatterjee, RV University Bangalore/India

Even as superheroes continue to dominate mainstream comics, graphic narratives worldwide have increasingly shifted toward themes that transcend Übermenschian ideals and the classic good-versus-evil binary. This panel invites scholarship on “Heroism,” “Villainy,” and the spaces in between in graphic traditions, examining how these themes intersect with national, folk, and world literatures. Traditionally, iconic figures such as Batman, Spider-Man, the Joker, and Green Goblin embody what Scott McCloud describes as archetypes that “amplify through simplification,” helping readers navigate the hero-villain binary. Yet, these characters are also sites of sociocultural anxieties—a point underscored in Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent (1954). Figures like John Constantine and the Punisher further introduce morally ambivalent narratives that exemplify Thierry Groensteen’s theorization of the medium’s “postmodern turn.” Beyond superheroes, contemporary graphic narratives frequently address human-scale conflicts rooted in pluralities, harnessing the medium’s distinct ability to bear witness to trauma. Works such as Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (2000) and Brian K. Vaughan’s Pride of Baghdad (2006) present alternative visions of heroism within personal and collective struggles. In the Indian context, Bhimayana (2011) by Srividya Natarajan and S. Anand, rendered in Gond art, narrates Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s life and his struggle against caste oppression, foregrounding narrative forms that subvert universalist conventions and advocate for a comparative, interdisciplinary approach to comics studies. We welcome submissions that explore these themes through comparative, cross-cultural, and illustrators' perspectives, examining how heroes, anti-heroes, and villains function across diverse global and historical contexts.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

• Comparative studies of superhero ideologies and moral complexities across cultures

• Antiheroes and the ethics of justice in diverse narrative traditions

• Human-scale conflicts in graphic narratives and trauma literature

• Non-Western graphic narratives that challenge Western aesthetic and narrative norms

Kleist’s queer marionettes (1810), Haraway’s anti-identitarian cyborgs (1985), and Murakami’s wind-up bird (1994) offer us instances of post-human glitches that resist normalizations despite their embodied precarities. Hardt and Negri’s “new post-human bodies (Empire 2013) and Latour’s confrontation of “the time of the Anthropocene” (2014) demand a remapping of the human as conventionally traced, in order to recognize it as an assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari 1980). The Comparative Gender Studies Research Committee invites presentations on both earlier and contemporary materials related to the congress theme “Technology and Comparative Literature.” We particularly encourage submissions from scholars, writers, and activists that investigate how expressive artists represent, challenge, and reflect the lived experiences of those with disabilities, chronic illnesses, and/or mental health conditions when considered in relation to gender and sexuality. We seek papers reflecting the diverse experiences and narratives of marginalized groups, especially those from 2SLGBTQI+ and BIPOC communities We will attend to technology in both our potentially posthuman virtuality as well as earlier moments of simulacra through interrogating all 6 terms: precarious, mediation, queer, body, virtual, and space. Mindful that a session on precarity offered in the privileged context of an international congress needs to adopt a position of allyship and avow its positionality, this session will recognize those who for various reasons are unable to be present. Papers might consider precarious labor, contrareproductivity, queer temporality, homonationalism, queer counterpublics, queering technological affordances, cooptation and fragility, queering conventional technologies, transmediation, queer play and gaming, fanfiction and queer networks, affect and ambivalence, technologies of identity, queer(ing) AI.

East/West comparison focused on genres, canons, and concepts of poetics has served to give comparative literature a place in Asian academia. But that model of comparison has its limits. Looking to the long history of writing on the Asian continent, do we not see definitions of "literature" that vary from the European standard, as well as modes of circulation not anticipated elsewhere? The models and logics of comparison offered by the literatures of East Asia, Northeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia not only expands the reach of the discipline but modifies accounts of national literary history that are current on the continent by emphasizing exchange and adaptation rather than offering nativist genealogies. For this panel, case studies of intra-Asian literary relationships, from the beginnings of writing to the present, are invited, with the particular aim of clarifying general dynamics of cultural growth.

This is a holding request for a multi-person panel, the ICLA Theory Research Committee

A9-7. Scriptural Reasoning and Comparative studies

In the context of the theme “Comparative Literature and Technology” of the twenty-fourth annual conference of the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA) from July 28 to August 1, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea, we propose a special panel entitled “Scriptural Reasoning and Comparative Literature”.

Scriptural reasoning (SR), an academic tool for people to engage in inter-faith dialogues by reading and reflecting on scriptures from all around the world, is gaining increasing significance in the contemporary era of digitalization and globalization. The importance of international communication cannot be overstated. Thus, more attention should be attached to SR since it plays a key role in cultural exchanges between different nations and regions. It also accords with the leading academic concept, “Global Humanities” which highlights interactions of humanities and arts and integration of knowledges among various disciplines through interdisciplinary methods and diverse cultural perspectives. The questions our session aims to explore include but are not limited to:

1.By analyzing the language, grammar, syntax, and meaning of scriptures from different religions, what interpretations can we arrive at that help shed new light on the classical texts?

2.How can we find the methodologies that are applicable to the inter-faith dialogues involved in scriptural reasoning? How should such methodologies be carried out in practice?

3.Inherent in the Abrahamic tradition, scriptural reasoning is usually thought to involve the studies of Jewish, Christian and Islamic scriptures. With the growing need to introduce diverse voices, how can we establish scriptural reasoning between China and the West?

In summary, centering around the above questions and beyond, this session will delve deeply into scriptures across faith boundaries and foster cultural dialogues across different religions and cultures.

Translators and interpreters in the digital age face manifold opportunities and challenges that are only compounded as Artificial Intelligence in the form of Large Language Models moves into the public sphere. This seminar explores how new forms of technology and media shape the work of translation and prompt new forms of reading and engaging with archives or bringing the past into the present and future. We consider ethical and philosophical implications of emerging translation technologies. How do new translation technologies and literary ecosystems disrupt notions of authorship, textuality, and agency? What translation interventions are warranted to safeguard and lend visibility to minority languages and marginalized subjects? What are the particular perils and opportunities for translators in an era of globalization and our shared susceptibility to crises such as pandemics, the manipulation of information, and a changing climate? We ask what translators and translation theorists might offer a world coming to terms with new problems of language, communication, truth, and representation.

This seminar, organized by the ICLA Translation Studies Research Committee, invites abstracts interrogating digital translation encounters from a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives—literary, historical, sociolinguistic, ethical—and considers themes including but not limited to the following:

Translation and AI

Translation and the Digital Archive

Translation and the Nonhuman

Translation and Globalization

Translation and Crisis

Translation Equity and Agency

Translation Justice in the Digital Era

Collaborative Translation

Translation and Affect

Translation and Intermediality

The term "influence" in English comes from Old French "influence," which means "emanation from the stars that acts upon one's character and destiny" (13th C). Mediaeval Latin ‘influentia’ means ‘a flow of water, a flowing in.’ France is where the ‘idea of littérature comparée’ became a necessary and full-fledged discipline, and the institutional establishment there is based on the concept of ‘influence’ which lies at the intersection of ‘relations’ and ‘inspirations.’ Initially the French School of Comparative Literature focussed on the contributions of French literary texts and authors to other European literatures and vice versa, so it's easy to see the implicit colonialist project in its formation. The present paper will question how, through the rise of ‘la littérature comparée,’ the French language, literature, authors, texts and culture played the role of ‘emitter,’ which was acting upon the European character and destiny, which would further ‘flow into’ the veins of colonial territory and like water, a regenerative force, attempting invigoration of the ‘stagnated’ literary culture through generic influence, literary morphology and cultural imitation.

René Wellek's 1958 address “The Crisis in Comparative Literature” and René Étiemble's 1963 monograph "Comparaison n'est pas raison" opened the floodgates to using ‘crisis’ and ‘anxiety’ as starting points for Comparative Literature discussions. This research will examine Wellek and Étiemble's political historical contexts—the totalitarian regime in Germany during World War II and the political crisis in France during the Algerian War of Independence—to determine how their comments on the discipline's vulnerability were influenced. Ulrich Weisstein's patronage of "Comparative Arts," Susan Bassnett's switch to "Translation Studies," and Gayatri Spivak's intellectual investment in "Planetarity" will be examined in the paper, along with institutional/disciplinal politics and Comparative Literature's crisis.

The present paper will also look at the beginning of the disciplinal journey of Comparative Literature in India by investigating the literary history of the establishment of the first Department of Comparative Literature in India as well as in Asia at Jadavpur University in 1956 and trace how the American School of Comparative Literature impacted Buddhadeva Bose during his teaching tenure at Pennsylvania College for Women. Taking inferences from the above-mentioned critical investigations across French, American and Indian schools of Comparative Literature, I will argue that it is time to question the over-generalizations of terms like ‘inter-disciplinary’ and ‘in-disciplinary’ especially in the present decade. This research acknowledges the inevitable presence of ‘binary pitfalls’ in ‘comparison’ and argues to explore fluidity as a conceptual metaphor to understand the ‘in-comparative’ framework.

The seminar explores what it means for literature to act as its own agent in modernity, to essentially have its own agency in modernity. Consequently, it freights techne as a drive that exceeds technology, and suggests literature to be more than a cultural instrument, more than a reflection of "lived experience." The question becomes then whether modernity has transformed literature into a peculiar phenomenon, one whose fulfillment is no longer found in an object. Can we speak of literature as a techne that no longer reveals itself in objects? Perhaps the question should be, has technology in a modern world produced a writing, a literary drive, that extends the aesthetic to encompass another kind of materiality, or perhaps no materiality at all. Sponsored by the ICLA Research Committee on Religion, Ethics, and Literature, the seminar invites presentations on • literature as an extra-material drive, • the literary as a phenomenological experience • technology as an expansion of literary codes • the written as cryptological object • the ethics of the literary in modernity • religion as a literary code • the transformation of religion, ethics, and literature in modernity • translation as a literary language

John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath vividly portrays the Dust Bowl refugees’ plight during the Great Depression, sparking controversy and scholarly debate. Initially celebrated as proletarian resistance, later analyses reveal deeper mythic and symbolic layers, drawing parallels to the Exodus narrative. Beyond historical hardship, the novel delves into profound questions about human existence, survival, and ethics, remaining relevant today amidst global crises like COVID-19. Steinbeck’s writing career evolved from objective observation in his ‘Trilogy of Migrant Peasant Workers’ to impassioned advocacy, culminating in a neutral lens influenced by Edward Ricketts’s non-teleological approach. This allowed for a deeper understanding of the migrants’ struggles and the social injustices they faced, impacting the novel’s lasting influence.

The survival crisis was fundamentally a product of human actions, including early excessive land cultivation, westward expansion, agricultural capitalization, and the concentration of land ownership that displaced tenant farmers. Natural disasters played only a minor role, exacerbating this pre-existing vulnerability. Government inefficiency and people’s decline in religious faith fostered a society where hardship and moral decay flourished. The novel explores survival ethics through moral dilemmas faced by the migrants. While self-preservation often takes precedence in situations of scarcity of food and job competition that tests people’s ethical limits, even within families; selflessness and sacrifice, even among strangers, highlight the presence of compassion, mutual aid, and a deep commitment to dignity, demonstrating the multifaceted nature of human responses to adversity. The Joads’ journey reveals the complexities of balancing personal survival with ethical principles like kinship, community, and reciprocal kindness. Ultimately, Steinbeck proposes the enduring relevance of compassion, unity and self-transcendence as the keys to navigate challenging times, inspiring future generations to reflect on ethical living in a globalized world.

In their 2019 speculative novel, Pet, author Akwaeke Emezi had portrayed a new world, seemingly perfect. A teenage Black trans girl, Jam, is at the centre of this adventure story. Jam accidentally releases a creature who was painted by her mother, Bitter.In the prequel of the series, Bitter, the mother is shown as a teenager herself. She is a child born from rape; thus, she is shunned for having monster blood, brought up in foster homes, bisexual, living in a home for gifted artists in a city that is troubled by oppression and reactionary violence.Bitter has the power to create blood art alive. After a friend of hers is wounded, enraged Bitter creates a massive blood art. The blood art, however, asserts itself to be an angel and gives the revolution the much-awaited inhuman violent push.What becomes important for scholars of arts, literatures and cultures while studying this young adult popular series is the idea of angels and monsters. Humans can become monsters; they can harm other people, nature, or even abuse children. But the angels are beings who can be summoned or created by art, yet biblically accurate.

The role of the creator has been preserved for God. God is an all-encompassing being with immense power, thus post-human. But what happens when a human makes an angel? Are those angels post-human in the same way human-made technology is? Can words that originated in the cultural strata from theology ever be secular enough to be grouped in the same bracket as a Roomba?

Speaking of Roomba, one of the most talked-about art installations from the same year features a cleaning machine, similar to what these angels want to do; this machine also wants to clean but creates a more bloody scenery. The industrial robot, who is programmed to make sure that a thick, deep crimson liquid is cleaned, is fixed within a specific area and is flexing and turning restlessly in Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's Can't Help Myself. The robot is housed in a translucent "cage," resembling a captured creature on display, as part of the international art exhibition "May You Live in Interesting Times," which Ralph Rugoff curated for the 2019 Venice Art Biennale. This art installation portrays the helplessness faced by the robot to do the one job it is programmed to do; rather, it smears everything, and the viewer almost feels bad in an eerie way, which supposes an anthropomorphic identity of the robot. The robot's gestures have a captivating human grace to enhance these feelings since the artists have "taught" it 32 human-like moves. Comparing these two art pieces, created by three artists from across the globe, one can maybe observe the translations of ideas regarding posthumanism. With the exceptional amount of ‘blood’ in both of these works, a sacrificial element related to birth can be read. With Emezi's own blood art and their ideas regarding religion and god-beings found in their other works, it becomes extremely intriguing to study such narratives with posthuman theories.

Cultural exchange between Korea and the Arab Muslim world can be traced to the middle of the ninth century. It is true that an ancient history of commercial and political relations between Korea and the Middle East had long existed before the Arab Muslims, yet it was the direct contact between Koreans and Muslims that accelerated cultural contacts. Their contributions and influence appear in a rich legacy of archives, official records, travelers' writings, translations of scientific works, transfer of manufacturing techniques, and mutual influences in the field of art, and so on.

Despite the fact that Korea and the Arab world share a past of common memories and rich cultural encounters derived and strengthened by trade, economic ties, and similar historical and political experience, they have quite unique and distinct cultures. It is that very commonality and uniqueness that have contributed to the modern fascination with Korean culture, literature, and diverse artistic productions. Modern Arab-Korean relations in Comparative Studies have flowered in the third millennium with the Internet and technological innovations playing a pivotal role in introducing Korean culture, literature, and art to the Arab public.

On the literary front, the translation movement from Korean to Arabic began with the translation of novels that have transcended Korean borders by winning international awards, to other literary genres by prominent Korean writers who have earned their recognition in and out of Korea. Translators contributed introductory articles and studies on Korean literature and culture which gained ground as an intriguing subject in Arabic literature and diaries.

In parallel with the interest of Arab universities in teaching Korean language and literature, Korean audiovisual art is very popular in the Arab cultural context: Korean dramas dubbed into Arabic have been able to compete with other non-Arabic dramas (e.g., Turkish and American) among viewers in Arab countries, as evidenced by the series broadcast by Arab satellite channels and Korean online streaming platforms. .

The session seeks to uncover the contribution of technology to cultural and literary material and its impact on the interaction and intersection of Arab and South Korean cultures. It also seeks to reflect on how technology helps foster new forms of cultural and literary exchange between both worlds and how writers address the the challenges and opportunities of technology in reshaping human societies.

Speakers will give 15-minute presentations, to be followed by 10 minutes Q & A among the participants in the session.

Abstracts : in English or French with 5 keywords.

Maximum 3000 characters; Font: Times New Roman; Size: 11; Line spacing: single.

Send a 100-word biography indicating your academic post, affiliation, area of study, and latest publications.

English abstracts to Lobna Ismail <lillyismail@yahoo.co.uk>, French to Fatiha Taib <fatihaamehzoun@hotmail.com>

Submission Deadline : 31 December 2024

Abstract selection notifications : 31 January 2025

In his 2015 article published in Comparative Literature, Matthew Wilkens notes that comparative literature is quite reticent about the growing field of digital humanities. He suggests overcoming this reluctance by testing computer tools for the needs of comparative literature: text mining, network analysis, sociology of literature, clustering, and mapping. Recently, various applications of computational analysis of text corpora and big data (on publication, translation, media resonance, etc.) have been gaining ground in comparative literature.

Following the relatively sparse responses to the challenges posed to the humanities by the advent of the Internet and digital media voiced by early birds of our discipline (e.g. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek’s work since 1995), comparative literature needs to rethink its methods and ask itself whether computer-assisted methods can be a viable alternative or a welcome complement to the methods that characterize the disciplinary tradition. Finally, the recent explosion of computer-generated texts, translations and other achievements of artificial intelligence once again raises the question of the role of the author and other actors in the literary field.

Artificial intelligence is not only a problem or a literary topic that should be studied in a comparative perspective, but can also serve as a tool for comparative literary studies with its language models, word embedding, or algorithmic modeling. One may count among the challenges for such endeavors that multilingual materials still represent a considerable hurdle for computational methods, and that modeling multiple cultural contexts and their influence on meaning and the meaning of form is equally difficult, but both are paramount in the context of comparative literature.

To face such challenges, the ICLA Research Committee on Digital Comparative Literature (DCL) organizes a group session at the ICLA 2025 Congress, welcoming contributions on (but not limited to) the following topics:

● Distant reading techniques and computational literary studies when applied in a comparative perspective;

● Multilingual literary archives and the digitization of texts in different languages and writing systems;

● The transformation of the book, reading in the post-digital age, and born-digital literature;

● Geographic information systems, data visualization, and comparative literary studies;

● Machine translation, artificial intelligence,

● Language models and comparative literature.

A9-13

The newly established ICLA Research Committee on Language Contact in Literature: Europe (LCLE) intends to revisit translation, literary multilingualism and related fields as sites of linguistic contact and change within the literary realm. We thus reconsider literature with a focus on the multiple ways in which languages interact and influence each other when they come into contact, both at the level of individual speakers and that of linguistic communities. A number of scholars have proposed to apply a contact linguistics paradigm to translation (Kotze 2020; Malamatidou 2016); this Committee’s goal is to reinvent this approach for the global literary context (e.g. Hassan 2022). As many contemporary scholars of comparative literature (e.g. Yildiz 2012, Gramling 2016) recognize, the traditional focus on national literatures is insufficient to capture the global dimensions of the literary process. We therefore propose language contact in literature as a unified framework that can encompass and facilitate dialogue across several fields: the study of literary translation, multilingual and translingual literature, minor and borderland literature, influence across language boundaries, postcolonial literature, international literary movements and potentially others. Our aim is to identify and distinguish the diverse elements that contribute to literary language contact in its various guises, including linguistic and sociological factors, techniques and processes, as well as aesthetic and stylistic considerations. At the same time, we aspire to understand how different settings of language contact relate to one another, how they interact and what distinguishes them. To achieve these purposes, linguistics offers valuable theoretical support.

We invite original research papers that address the following areas and topics:

- The notion of language contact and how it can be productively applied to literature

- The array of elements/factors involved in a language contact in literature framework and their modulations

- The stylistics of language contact

- Manifest and latent multilingualism as an expression of language contact

- Translation as language contact

- What linguistic theories and approaches can contribute additional perspectives and nuance to the study of literary language contact

- The role of the author’s linguistic background and of the reader

- Potential challenges and limitations, notably in terms of particular language pairs, integrating and reconciling existing terminologies and extending the approach beyond the European context

- Specific case studies on literary translation, multilingual and translingual literature, minor and borderland literature, influence across language boundaries, postcolonial literature or international literary movements

- Additional areas in literary study where a language contact framework may apply

Any questions should be addressed to Eugenia Kelbert (eugenia.kelbert@savba.sk) and Marianna Deganutti (marianna.deganutti@savba.sk).

Most theoretical models of intermediality are inherently epistemological: media studies, including intermedial studies, basically investigates, criticizes and historicizes all the different ways of perceiving the world by way of different apparatus or communicative entities which may be more or less technical, advanced and complex.

However, in recent decades a new set of questions has occurred, approaching the world not only epistemologically but also ontologically: such questions are often subsumed under the heading of New Materialism(s): ontological ideas relating to process philosophy and studies of emergent qualities have become more and more prominent in Media- as well as Literary – and Gender Studies. Such an ontological frame is of special relevance to Comparative Literature, where it raises important questions on the nature, practice, and relevance of comparison, and indeed of the notion of literature itself.

As the integration of such non-substantialist approaches within intermedial studies and comparative literature is still in its early stages, these theoretical-methodological relations deserve closer academic attention. The general aim of this panel is therefore to investigate in depth the possible relations between intermedial studies and new materialist methodologies.

The burgeoning development of intellectual trends led by Jacques Derrida, Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, Graham Harman and the others call into question the long-standing anthropocentric ideology and the intrinsic superior essence of humanity. The in-depth reflection in various fields on traditional humanistic values based on an anthropocentric myth productively brings the “nonhuman turn” both in literary writing and literary criticism. Responding to the nonhuman turn, more light has been cast on the nonhuman narratives in literature. At issue are the questions of how the nonhuman entities are involved in events, and in what aspects do nonhuman narratives offer the experientiality in more-than-human world? The group session on Nonhuman Narratives in World Literature aims to extend our understanding of the nonhuman issue as well as invite thought-provoking debates and original ideas. Participates are invited from the perspective of ethical literary criticism and might include, but are not limited to, the following topics: 1. Nonhuman narratives and national literature 2.Nonhuman narratives and contemporary literature 3.Nonhuman narratives and classical literature 4.Nonhuman agency Confirmed speakers are: Professor Yafei Li (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China) Prof. Li Zou (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) Prof. You Wu (East China Normal University) Prof. Xiaomeng Wan (Tongji University) Prof. Mingrui Li (Huazhong Agricultural University) Prof. Jie Zheng ( Guangdong University of Foreign Studies) Prof. Ling Bai (Huazhong Agricultural University) Prof. Juyeon Son (Hanyang University) Prof. Maria Luisa T. Reyes (University of Santo Tomas,) Prof. Wang Liao (Beihang University) Dr. Siqi Zhao (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) Dr. Xinyue Yuan (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) The group is also open for call for papers. If interested, please send proposals to Prof. Biwu Shang (biwushang@sjtu.edu.cn)

The Department of English and Comparative Literature (DECL) of the University of the Philippines (UP) was established in 1910 as the Department of English under the College of Liberal Arts: it changed its name to include Comparative Literature in 1957, shortly before the University’s Board of Regents split the academic unit further to establish the Department of Art Studies and that of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts. These historical divisions along perceived disciplinal boundaries have raised and continues to generate questions about the study of literature in inter- and transmedial contexts, and of the transmedial in the context of literary studies.

The disciplinal conundrum also emphasizes that, in the context of the UP where CL is taught, the engagement is limited to or “through” literature, even as the program stresses the use of Philippine and Southeast Asian cultures as matrix for studies not only of literary theory, but also of gender studies and various cultural practices. Likewise, cross-cultural and intertextual approaches to various national or regional literatures encourage the study of works in the original language, although the program simultaneously promotes translation as access to other cultures and literatures. This is because, in the Philippine context in general and in the undergraduate CL program in particular, texts are generally accessible and thus taught primarily in English or in English translation, as English is recognized as one of the nation's official languages.

In their professional practice and research, however, Philippine scholars who are members of the DECL faculty are often able to cross the boundaries that beset their teaching with considerably more freedom, and the group session proposed here highlights some of the cultural peculiarities and specific pedagogical practices produced by, and at times against, disciplinal and pragmatic limitations. Composed of members of the DECL, and representing the department specifically, this group aims to provide both a broad view and samples of comparative practice from a Philippine perspective. Members of the panels range from Professor Emerita to PhD and MA graduates recently returned to service from their international studies, and to younger graduates of the DECL who have recently joined the teaching faculty as instructors. The session is a concerted effort to formally connect with the international association for comparative literature as a younger generation takes the helm locally, and thus also to reconnect as comparatists with the cross-cultural impetus of the discipline as new technologies and developments redefine the field globally. Contributors were encouraged to present papers within their specializations, already quite diverse, but informed by teaching Comparative Literature in the Philippines.

This panel will be dedicated to the study of the phenomenon of Digital Social Reading (DSR) from the perspective of comparative literary studies. DSR, involving the reviewing and commenting activity of millions of users on platforms like Goodreads and Wattpad, has been described as “reading carried out on virtual environments where the book and the reading favour the formation of a ‘community’ and a means of exchange” (Cordón-García et al., 2013).

In the recent categorization by Rebora et al. (2021), ten different types of studies dealing with DSR are discussed, involving disciplines such as sociology, marketing, new media studies, and literacy studies, together with literary studies. This panel will invite contributions which can be ascribed to a subset of such categories, such as:

- “Source”, where DSR offers new and alternative perspectives for the study of literary texts, such as the “digital afterlives” of Jane Austen explored by Mirmohamadi (2014);

- “Literature as an institution”, where DSR confronts and puts into question the arbiter status of traditional literary criticism, inviting a reinvention of the discipline in order to account for the current changes in reading habits (Murray 2018);

- “Reading-oriented”, which focuses on the change brought by DSR platforms to reading habits, but also on the new opportunities offered to study the experience of reading in a “big data” perspective (Pianzola et al. 2020);

- “Textual-oriented”, where the distinctive characteristics of DSR writing are explored from a textual and stylistic perspective, considering also emotional and cognitive aspects (Mehling et al., 2018);

- “Theory and method”, where DSR stimulates theoretical reflections on the development of concepts like Benjamin’s aura, when applied to the digitization of texts (Bridle, 2010) and to the socialization of reading practices.

Overall, the phenomenon of DSR can offer new opportunities of research in comparative literary studies, which can and should be explored beyond the current state of the art.

The interconnections between Comparative Literature and Translation Studies have been described by various scholars, among which Susan Bassnett (1993), Emily Apter (2006) and José Lambert (2011), who reflect on the “zones” of translation that have the function of perpetuating cultural memory. Also fundamental for our proposal is the concept of Eco-travel as defined by Michael Cronin (2022) whose work explores travelers' encounters with the environment over the centuries and asks: what is the future of travel writing in the age of the Anthropocene? In this sense, our proposal is to present texts published by foreign travelers in and about the Amazon, but never translated into Brazilian Portuguese. The analyzed texts comprise travel narratives, diaries, correspondence etc. written in Dutch, Spanish, French and Italian between the 17th and early 20th centuries.

The project of researching, translating and theoretically commenting on travel narratives (ecotheories and nomadic theories of translation) makes it possible to contribute to the enhancement of written cultural and heritage memory, i.e. the translation of rare documents such as travel narratives in and about the Amazon favors historical, cultural and environmental documentation as well as the study of indigenous languages, traditional knowledge, rituals and cultural festivities.

Therefore, in order to broaden studies written in and about the Amazon, this session features papers on the role of travel narratives in translation and anthropic relations with the environment, on the formation of the national literary canon and the formation of national identity, on translation as criticism and as a mechanism for the development of modern national literatures, as an exchange of cultural values and as mediation with the Other and, finally, on innovative theoretical discussions dealing with ecotranslation.

Chairs：

Biwu Shang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

Maosheng Liu (Guangdong University of Foreign Studies)

Yili Tang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

From the creation of myths to Asimov’s contributions, along with The Three-Body Problem, the exploration of science fiction remains a representation of the trends of thought on the past, present and future, as an expression of social consciousness intertwined with the advancement of science and technology. This is particularly so in the consideration of the numerous questions and the substantial debates which arise as a result of the emergence of Artificial Intelligence.

What is the relationship between literary ethics and technology in the age of AI? How should we reconstruct ethics in a broader sense with the advent of robots, cyborgs, and possible trans-humans? How is the high technology represented when AI is about to bring utopia, dystopia or heterotopia into the future of mankind? While transforming the material lives of humans, AI has challenged those human ideals and beliefs, life values, and moral responsibilities, and highlighted problems therein. These challenges and problems constitute the general subject area of Ethical Literary Criticism in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Topics include but are not limited to the following categories:

1. Ethical literary criticism and artificial intelligence

2. Ethical literary criticism and reconstruction of contemporary sci-tech ethics

3. Ethical literary criticism and research on the history of science and technology

4. Mythology, artificial intelligence and ethical literary criticism

5. Ethical literary criticism and the Anthropocene

Confirmed speakers are:

Mengchen Lang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

Songlin Wang (Ningbo University)

Xiaomeng Wan (Tongji University)

Yaife Li (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China)

Hongri Wang (Tongji University)

Hui Su (Central China Normal University)

Lianggong Luo (Central China Normal University)

Xin Zhang (Guangdong University of Foreign Studies)

Jie Zheng (Guangdong University of Foreign Studies)

Gexin Yang (Zhejiang University)

Jie Ren (Zhejiang University)

Juyeon Son (Hanyang University)

Maria Luisa T. Reyes (University of Santo Tomas)

The group is also open for call for papers. As for those interested in this session, please send proposals of 500 words maximum, accompanied by a biographical note of 150 words to Prof. Yili Tang (milkytang2008@sjtu.edu.cn). Any inquiries should be sent to the same email address. All communication should use the subject heading “ Ethical Literary Criticism”

The imagination of the future is a constant topic that transcends geographical frontiers and cultural boundaries in human society, giving rise to future(s) studies, futurology, or simply, futurism. Futurism is taken here not in the sense of the art movement that originated in Italy in 1909, but simply all forms of cultural expressions that embrace the “future”. As a medium for cultural exchange and innovation, literary and artistic narratives reflect and shape societal values and visions of the future, exerting considerable influence on technological and social developments through imaginative foresight. This panel invites contributions on futuristic themes in literature and art that encompass diverse cultures and perspectives, envisioning to depict a “global” picture of contemplating futuristic narratives and contribute to constructing a diversified landscape of the future.

From a global perspective, texts from various eras and locations may address similar global issues alongside transcultural activities. On the one hand, the globalizing force has paved the way for literary and theoretical texts, or artistic expressions to circulate beyond their cultures of origin, address similar issues, and explore alternatives about the future across the globe; On the other, digital globalization has further made possible the circulation of literary texts across different media platforms, giving rise to transmedia futurities, as an inventive combination of theoretical, literary or artistic reflections vis-à-vis technological innovations. Contextualized in constant techno-innovation, how might literary and artistic practice capitalize on technological advancement to generate new creativity today? What are the ethical dimensions to be addressed in this process?

Potential contributions will be grouped under the following broad categories:

Futuristic narrative and imagination in literature

Criticism of future-oriented cultural phenomena/practices and their ethical implications

The impact of technology on future literary, artistic, and cultural creations

Transmedia futurities: reflections on literature, art, and media for the next generation(s)

Literary creation and translation in the age of digital globalization

Fandom and new media

Confirmed speakers:

Prof. Yifeng Sun (University of Macau)

Prof. Youngmin Kim (Dongguk University)

Prof. Biwu Shang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

Prof. Lanlan Du (Nanjing University)

Prof. Fuguang Miao (Shanghai University)

Prof. Simon Estok (Sungkyunkwan University)

Prof. Damien Rinaldo TOMASELLI (UIC)

Prof. Qilin Cao (Tongji University)

The group is open for CFP, and we invite original contributions in response to this theme. For those interested in this session, please send an abstract of around 200 words and a short bio note of the contributor by email to Prof. You Wu at ywu@zhwx.ecnu.edu.cn. Please use the subject heading “Global Futurism” in communication or submission.

This session will focus on literary works including poetry, novels, and essays written by Han Kang, the latest Nobel laureate. Han Kang has been acclaimed as a Korean writer who explores the deepest structures of systematic and historic violence and the trauma it produces. For example, in _Human Acts_, a ghostly voice on behalf of the victims of violence perpetrated by the totalitarian regime in Korea during the Gwangju Democratic uprising seeks the meaning of historical violence. _The Vegetarian_ also examines the historical meaning of patriarchal violence that pervades Korean society and links it to systematic violence upon animalized human beings. In Han Kang’s other works we find testimony to the resistance of the oppressed in Korea. This session welcomes all presentations regarding Han Kang’s literary works.

Les recherches sur les arts et la culture, en raison notamment de leur structure disciplinaire, ont relativement peu exploré les productions plurimédiales ou, plus exactement, la part la plus « technique » d'entre elles. Nul ne nierait pourtant l'importance des techniciennes et techniciens du son au cinéma, des coloristes de la bande dessinée, des préparateurs et préparatrices de copies des éditeurs littéraires – et si le théâtre se passe désormais de souffleurs et souffleuses, ceux-ci continuent d'appartenir à l'imaginaire collectif. Cette session aimerait proposer de s'intéresser à ces activités et métiers, ainsi qu'à leurs contributions concrètes à certaines œuvres plurimédiales. Dans une perspective comparatiste et générale, il s'agira de croiser un intérêt historien pour leurs conditions d'exercice et de visibilité avec un intérêt théoricien pour ce que ces techniques permettent de dire de l'intermédialité et des relations entre les arts « majeurs ».

PROGRAMME

Marie Kondrat et Romain Bionda : « Introduction »

Irène Le Roy Ladurie : « Une main seconde : sur la technologie de la couleur en bande dessinée. Contrainte, interprétation et création, trois niveaux d'auctorialité chez les coloristes de bande dessinée (France, seconde moitié du XXe siècle) »

Marie Kondrat : « La trace et la matrice : narrer Lascaux 2 (autour du travail de Monique Peytral) »

Melina Marchetti : « Le poème adapté en clips : une expérience augmentée ? »

Romain Bionda : « Des animaux et leurs humains au générique ? Enquêter sur les arts du spectacle des XXe et XXIe siècles »

The concept of “world literature” has been a judgment with a strict set of Western-centered criteria behind it. This has triggered a global debate on “what is world literature” especially when embracing the revaluation of definition in the 21st century. According to Franco Moretti, world literature is a problem that needs to be solved by a new critical approach. In fact, world literature is also a way of thinking about the dialogue and interaction of multiple civilizations. From the perspective of mutual learning of civilizations, world literature is formed in the horizontal exchange and interaction of multiple civilizations. This means that we have to give up the static and centrist view of world literature, so as to reconstruct world literature and world civilizations through mutual learning of civilizations. In view of this, this forum takes “Mutual Learning of Civilizations and Reconstruction of World Literature” as its theme, and discusses the following topics: variation and the formation of world literature, translation and world literature, Chinese discourse on the reconstruction of world literature, and rewriting the history of world literature, etc. This forum aims to explore the logical premise behind the contemporary proposition of reconstructing world literature, its solution, and its unique significance for the study of comparative literature. The Forum is chaired by Professor Cao Shunqing, Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and the academic Dean of the College of Literature and Journalism of Sichuan University, and co-chaired by Dr. Yang Qing, Associate Researcher of the College of Literature and Journalism of Sichuan University. The Forum is open to everyone, and scholars from all over the world are welcome to contribute to the discussion on the history of civilisations and the reconstruction of world literature.

In this panel, we propose to consider two groups of issues:

- On the one hand, the phenomenon of polyphony in a literary work, from examples of classical literature to contemporary authors. We rely on Mikhail Bakhtin's provisions on the polyphonic novel, as well as his interpretation of dialogue as a concept based on the contradiction between two main instances - the Self and the Other (Bakhtin 1963; Petrilli 2017).

- On the other hand, the significance of literary symbols in the general concept of a work of art. According to Yuri Lotman, the word “symbol” is one of the most ambiguous in the system of semiotics. The expression “symbolic meaning” is widely used as a simple synonym for significance. The symbolic space is an organic part of the semiosphere (Lotman 1996). The symbol is an intermediary between the synchronization of the text and the memory of culture. The structure of symbols of a particular culture forms a system isomorphic and isofunctional to the genetic memory of an individual.

One of the main questions will be the following: how do elements of a literary text become symbols or cease to be them?

The system of symbols within a literary work operates in the mode of polyphony, or superposition of voices: it appeals to our memory, our linguistic competence, our emotional states. The role of a symbol within a polyphonic text is to be the “gene” of creativity and the mechanism of meaning generation.

This Group Session is open to further paper proposals.

This paper explores the effect of digital media on traditional performance traditions, examining how novel technologies reform embodiment, presence, and intimacy in the context of transmedial storytelling. With the advent of telepresence and augmented reality, the distinction between the real and virtual worlds is blurred in a digital space and no longer hinges solely on physical proximity or unmediated human presence. When the audiences are exposed to interactive, hybrid frameworks that alter the ordinary sensory experiences, the questions posed by this study are: How does digital mediation alter the perception of the audience in traditional performance forms? What are the implications of adaptations of classic narratives into immersive or augmented places that call into question our conceptions of cultural integrity and authenticity?

This study examines how technology and human experience connect to produce new forms of "digital embodiment" by centring on performance traditions. Also, drawing from postmodern perspectives, I explore how the digital age goes beyond the previous debates on simulacrum and hyperreality to propose that humans live in a constant flux that is marked by agency and engagement. These changes in embodiment are demonstrated by artists such as Stelarc, who exemplify McLuhan's idea of media as prosthetic extensions. For Stelarc, the body becomes a vessel for technological fusion, challenging conventional understandings of the physical self and demonstrating how the digital is no longer an external layer but an intrinsic part of modern identity. The study also investigates how the formerly static audience now engages as a co-creator in a technologically hybrid world, drawing on notions of posthumanism, cyborgic embodiment, and immersive settings. While ideas like haptic perception, hybridity, and digital intimacy gain prominence, it calls for a revisit of conventional definitions of presence and interaction as digital media also expands traditional narrative frameworks to provide new forms of connection.

This paper makes the argument that digital media produce a multifaceted experience that reinterprets the fundamentals of performance traditions, increasing relevance and accessibility while adding new levels of complexity. This study attempts to identify the potential and conflicts that characterize storytelling in our connected, digital age by looking at how digital technologies transform conventional forms. This methodology places the work at the nexus of digital humanities, opening up new avenues for cultural expression and offering a novel perspective on text, sound, and picture in modern media.

Il y a cinquante ans paraissaient les Essais de littérature (vraiment) générale d’Étiemble (première édition en 1974, revue et complétée dès la deuxième édition en 1975). Que ce soit pour ses propositions théoriques et polémiques ou pour la portée programmatique de ses études de cas, cet ouvrage a connu un retentissement durable et, depuis, il est fréquemment cité dans les études comparatistes françaises et francophones ; on se propose donc d’interroger ce qui en fait aujourd’hui un texte de référence, y compris pour s’en démarquer.

En proposant de « réviser la notion de Weltliteratur dont nous nous trouvons hériter », Étiemble dénonçait alors l’étroitesse d’une certaine tradition comparatiste eurocentrée et fixait des chantiers pour les générations suivantes, chargées de mettre en œuvre une approche généraliste de la littérature. La radicalité du constat, déclarant périmée « toute théorie littéraire qui s’élabore à partir des seuls phénomènes européens », ouvrait des voies qui ont, pour certaines d’entre elles, été effectivement empruntées. Étudier et enseigner des littératures, anciennes et modernes, du monde entier ; questionner, par la comparaison, les pratiques orales et écrites qui relèvent des arts de la parole dans des langues plus nombreuses et plus variées ; repenser les frontières entre culture lettrée et autres formes, nouvelles ou traditionnelles, de création artistique : autant de champs d’investigation (et bien d’autres) gagnés à la discipline comparatiste, sans d’ailleurs que les méthodes adoptées soient toutes tributaires au même titre des propositions d’Étiemble.

C’est pourquoi ce Congrès de l’AILC organisé à Séoul nous semble être l’occasion de revenir sur l’héritage d’Étiemble dans nos pratiques de comparatistes, et sur ses échos dans les débats épistémologiques actuels. En effet, comme chercheur et comme enseignant, mais aussi comme éditeur, traducteur, ou préfacier fécond, Étiemble a fortement contribué à faire connaître en France les littératures des continents autres que l’Europe, et notamment d’Asie de l’Est (on pense bien sûr à la collection « Connaissance de l’Orient » qu’il a fondée en 1956, série de la collection d’œuvres représentatives patronnée par l’UNESCO, où « Orient » est à entendre « au sens large »). Cette session collective contribuerait ainsi à la réflexion menée sur les thématiques A1 et A5 ; elle aborderait également les enjeux institutionnels et pédagogiques liés à l’élargissement du champ de la littérature générale et comparée à ces corpus promus par Étiemble ; enfin, certains contributeurs et contributrices en exploreraient les prolongements technologiques, dans la perspective de la thématique A3.

Aujourd’hui, plutôt que de revenir à Étiemble, il s’agit de revenir sur ce que nous lui devons, autant pour reconnaître la prégnance de cette référence que pour redéfinir les termes de son projet dans le contexte actuel, en engageant un dialogue à distance avec son œuvre de comparatiste.

While narratology flourished in European languages academia from the late 20th century onwards, shifting its emphasis on the structure per-se to the action of telling/narrating, similar studies also developed in East Asia around the turn of the century. Examining literary texts in East Asian languages, scholars adopted, refined, and sometimes modified narratological concepts and frameworks created based on mostly Western literatures. More recently, they started taking up diverse cultural artifacts and expanded their scopes including socio-historical issues. Regrettably, though, such rich studies of narratives in these languages are still underrepresented in global academic forums. This session revisits narratological approaches using Korean and Japanese examples, while showcasing latest developments in studies of narratives in East Asia and the Asia-Pacific region with a particular emphasis on their sociocultural contexts.

- Presenters (*: chairs): (1) AN Young-hee (Keimyung University)." The Discovery of the Inner Self: The Establishment of Narrative Style in Modern Japanese and Korean Novels." This paper addresses how two writers in East Asia, Iwano Hōmei and Kim Dong-in, established the fundamental style for a confessional novel in Japanese and in Korean respectively, which is related to the issues of subjectivity and objectivity.; (2) KOSAKA Eliko* (Toyo University). "Kibei Literature in Translation: Reexamining the Narratives of Minoru Kiyota's War Memoirs." This paper examines Minoru Kiyota’s memoir of his WWII and Korean War experiences written in Japanese and in English translation, exploring what their use of different narrative styles may convey and concurrently occlude.; (3) MAESHIMA Shiho* (University of Tokyo). "Changing Expression/Perception of ‘Reality’: Narratological Transitions in Modern Japanese Journalistic Reporting.” Taking up a modern practice of news reporting, this paper examines how narrative techniques to report current affairs changed in Japan from the late 19th century until the interwar period, which, concomitantly, led to transitions in perceptions of “reality.”; (4) PARK Jin-su (Gachon University). “The Narratology of Japanese and Korean Popular Music: The Function of Perspective in Enka and Trot.” – Popular music formed in the 1910s and 1920s in the Korean peninsula and Japan developed separately since the 1960s onwards out of their need to establish national identities. This paper addresses its cultural implications by analyzing perspectives in their representative songs.; (5) TAKEUCHI Akiko (Hosei University). “Narratological Approach to Noh Drama: Narration, Fusion of Voices, and Representations of Salvation.” – In noh, not only characters’ speeches but also narration is enunciated on stage, and the boundary between the two is often fused, making the voice ambiguous. This paper examines the use of such a unique language in the representations of hell and salvation, with the aid of narratology.

- Discussant: SAKAKI Atsuko (University of Toronto)

One of the greatest catastrophic experiences of the 20th century, often referred to as the "century of war," was certainly the nuclear bomb. Throughout the Cold War period, which began in the shadow of the devastating events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both the United States and the Soviet Union repeatedly conducted nuclear tests while the use of nuclear energy for “peaceful purposes” was also encouraged. Even after tensions between the East and the West eased following the Cuban Missile Crisis, fear of nuclear energy continued to be a familiar experience throughout the world from the middle to the latter half of the 20th century, due to accidents such as the ones at Three Mile and Chernobyl. As a result, the experience and fear of nuclear weapons and nuclear power in general were often represented in various literatures around the world, and many of the works of Japanese so-called “Atomic Bomb Literature” were translated, too. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nuclear theme temporarily lost its actuality. However, since the Fukushima accident in 2011, awareness of possible nuclear catastrophes has increased, and since Russia's invasion of Ukraine there is renewed awareness of the danger of all-out nuclear war. In literature, new works on the nuclear theme have been published one after the other, with recent examples being the novel Tasmania (2022) by Italian author Paolo Giordano and the series of poems “re: actor poems” (2022) by American-German author Paul-Henri Cambell.

　How has literature on the atomic bomb and nuclear catastrophe captured worldwide attention? In order to think about atomic bomb literature as world literature, it is not enough to consider its geographical reach. The science and technology that produced the atomic bomb in the 20th century developed globally, and the media that covered the results of this technology also had an international reach. Starting from this premise, in our session we will point out that the globally-shared technological experience of nuclear weapons gave rise to the global spread of A-bomb literature. We will pay attention to regional differences in the formation of imagery surrounding nuclear weapons, also taking into consideration A-bomb literature that does not take an anti-nuclear stance. By reconsidering the arbitrariness and political implications of nuclear weapons/ atomic power imagery — with representations that fluctuate between acceptance and rejection, and between fear and fascination — we believe we can shed light on new possibilities of interpreting A-bomb literature. During the session, Lukas Bruna will talk about Atomic Bomb literature in Czech, Go Koshino will focus on Russian language literature, and Akane Nishioka will discuss the topic in the German context. The session is open to participants who wish to make presentations on Atomic Bomb literature in other languages; discussions on literature about Chernobyl/ Fukushima are also welcome.

The panel is interested in contributions that focus on the various historical and recent transformations of literature in the continuing evolution of media technologies. We suggest to think of literature as a medium of representation and communication that is always in relationship to other media. Literature partly develops as a technology of representation, sometimes in weak, sometimes in stronger relationship to other media technologies (providing models, absorbing external aspects, entering competition), and, at the same time, it creates representations of techniques and technologies, including anticipations of future techniques, critiques of current technologies and records of forgotten practices. Literature, however, not only represents things but also requires and contains its own specific temporality. One assumption we wish to explore is that technological evolution unveils aspects of reading that were previously concealed within it (such as ‘skimming’, ‘automation’, and so on). Equally importantly, reading literature seems to provide an alternative to the technological understanding of reading as processing information or data. We are thus interested in the different temporalities within and of reading as they become visible in the changing mediascape. We invite papers interested in these collusions and collisions between literature (as a technology in its own right) and other media technologies that can never be disentangled from it pulling it in new directions, but being pulled at the same time.

We invite researchers to submit papers for the panel Translating the Other: The Process and Re-Creation of Dialogue Across Asian and Other Languages and Cultures, which explores the intricate role of translation in fostering intercultural dialogue and transforming worldviews, enhancing constructive perceptions of “Otherness.” Focusing on Asian languages, particularly Japanese, the panel investigates how translating the “Other” not only bridges linguistic gaps but also reshapes cultural and social understandings, contributing to broader discussions on identity, representation, and social justice in a globalized world.

This panel further highlights translation's creative and dialogic potential, fundamentally linked to comparative literature, and aims to examine how translation transcends mere linguistic substitution, acting as a transformative process that reinvents language, culture, and worldview. Case studies in this panel will explore the cultural and social shifts sparked by Japanese translations of the Christian Bible during the Meiji Period (1868-1912), the indirect translation of French literature in Japan during the same period, and the translation of Émile Gaboriau’s works in both Meiji Japan and Late Qing China (circa 1900-1912). Additional analyses include translations of American literature in Japan’s Meiji and Taisho (1912-1926) periods and their influence on Japanese academic circles engaged in democratic thought; self-translation practices in Japan and Indonesia, considering the distinct contextual differences and their consequences; and dual translations of Ishikawa Takuboku's (1886-1912) tanka into Portuguese, blending Black Brazilian and Nikkei perspectives to create novel conceptions of otherness.

We welcome papers that examine the complexities of translating into and from Asian languages and cultures, exploring how these processes generate new forms of expression and meaning. We particularly encourage research that dares to think of translation as a process that engenders new possibilities of diverse and non-oppressive otherness and cosmopolitanism. Join us in investigating how translation fosters dialogue across worlds, encouraging new perspectives on interlingual and intercultural connections.

This panel examines how world literature, translation, and cultural transfer shaped Soviet and Cold War intellectual contexts. Artem Serebrennikov (HSE/Gorky Institute) explores Valentin Parnakh (1891–1951), a peculiar figure of the 1920s cosmopolitan avant-garde. Poet, dancer, jazz musician, and scholar, writing in French and Russian, Parnakh left behind an eclectic and overlooked legacy. The paper argues that much of Parnakh’s 1920s literary output centers on the anxiety of language and identity. Struggling with anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia, unwilling to embrace the religious aspects of Jewish culture, and fascinated by France, Parnakh sought a resolution to his dilemmas, a reconciliation of antiquity and modernity, nationalism and cosmopolitanism. He found his answer during a 1914 trip to the Levant among Ottoman Sephardic Jews, who impressed him with their unabashed Jewishness, modern outlook, and use of French as a cultural language. In Paris, Parnakh studied Sephardic converso poets persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition, employed Sephardic imagery in his poetry and memoirs (Pension Maubert). The paper argues that although Parnakh’s quest was deeply personal, it echoed similar processes in French, German, and Spanish cultures. Both Jews and Gentiles used the image of the lost Sepharad as an alternative to mainstream Ashkenazi culture.

Peter Budrin (QMUL) analyses the reception of early modern modes of intellectual self-fashioning in Soviet intellectual culture. Budrin demonstrates how models of early-modern writers such as Erasmus and Montaigne, whose reception paradoxically flourished in the totalitarian 1930s—influenced a group of intellectuals known as "the Current", led by philosophers Georg Lukács and Mikhail Lifshitz. For the thinkers discussed in this paper, Lifshitz and Leonid Pinsky, the Renaissance offered models of intellectual autonomy, serving as a means to interpret their own turbulent era.

Benjamin Musachio (Princeton) examines John Updike as a translator of Russian poetry. The paper focuses on Updike's translations of the Soviet poet Evgenii Evtushenko (1932–2017). Updike’s translations of Evtushenko were published in LIFE magazine in February 1967, coinciding with the Soviet poet's U.S. tour. As Updike did not know Russian, Albert C. Todd, a Russian literature specialist, prepared literals for Updike to poeticize. Musachio analyzes Todd's literals, Updike's drafts, and the published translations to reconstruct Updike's aesthetic motivations. Yevgeny Yevtushenko Papers at Stanford offer a privileged window into Updike's translation process. Updike's translation was part of a 1960s trend of Anglophone writers translating modern Russian poetry (Robert Lowell's translations of Osip Mandelstam; W.H. Auden's translations of Andrei Voznesenskii). What sets Updike apart is his negative evaluation of Evtushenko as a poet: Updike assumed the twofold task of both translating and improving Evtushenko's poems.

Fear, contempt, hatred, more or less explicit hostility: negative feelings towards fiction have often been expressed through history, for political, religious, moral, aesthetic reasons. They are reflected in lists of censured works, in critical treatises, in the creation of authorities ensuring the respect of good morals, but also in fictional works. While much has already been said about Don Quixote or Emma Bovary succumbing to the influence of a particular genre of novels, the aim of this workshop is more general. It aims to observe the hostility generated by fiction as a world inhabited by imaginary characters, in different cultural areas and in different media: the appearance of a new medium may reactivate the fear of fictional immersion that could ensnare the reader. Fiction is accused of not telling the truth, of distracting the public from serious occupations, if not of perverting minds and inspiring deviant behavior. Hostility to fiction is often associated with a strong preference for historical facts, documentary writing or factual accounts. But has the fear of fiction always been expressed in the same way, with the same arguments, the same images? What are the contexts and schools of thought that foster distrust of imaginative productions? Is hostility to fiction an anthropological invariant, or is it conjunctural, resurfacing periodically in the wake of authoritarian regimes, political fervor, religious fanaticism, the invention of new media or the domination of formalist poetics? The aim of this workshop is to provide some answers to these questions, by focusing on comparative and diachronic approaches, and by studying critical and philosophical writings, as well as literary and artistic works (whether they express this hostility, denounce it or have been its target). Contributions evoking non-European cultural areas are particularly welcome. Papers may draw on literary analysis, discourse analysis, history of ideas, translation, and cognitive science.

Chair: Xi'an GUO, Fudan University

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Authorship is a common important issue in literary traditions. Meanwhile, the invention and evolution of technology have a profound impact on literary production, circulation and interpretation. This group will discuss the discursive occurrences that interact among technology, material context and literary production in different textual cultures. The various case studies all focus on the following questions: How has technology affected the creative ideas, procedures and technê of an author-agent? How does the author's self-orientation and presentation reflect changes in technology and the related material cultures? In the new era of technology, do we still need the concept of "author" and how does it function, etc.? Starting from early China, Zhuming YAO shows the technologies conditioned the writerly approach to literary creation are far from the modern parameters of authorship. Xiaojing MIAO analyzes the technical reading space in turn affects the author's self-presentation in early Medieval China. Chao LING explores reproduction as a freestanding stele in the Ming Dynasty to study how an author-agent controls the presentation of texts. Wan HUANG uses modern generative AI technology to re-examine the Qing scholars' discrimination of apocryphal books. Wen XU shows a new author-persona as the mediator of technology and enlightener of revolution at the beginning of modern Chinese literature. Zhenyao QIN talks about the concept of translator-author creativity in the machine era. Jing ZHAO revisits Mallarmé’s author-technology theory, especially his intriguing thoughts on ancient authorship. Lin CHENG compares two German writers who engaged in Turing tests with AI author surrogate and AI collaborator. Yui TONG reflects on the challenges of AI for creative writing in the postmodern era. In short, the group aims to produce multi-dimensional dialogues on the mutual-shaping relationship between authorship and technology across historical boundaries.

Confirmed Speakers: Prof. Zhuming YAO (Boston University); Dr. Xiaojing MIAO (Yale University); Prof. Chao LING (Chinese University of Hong Kong); Prof. Wan HUANG (Fujian Normal University); Prof. Wen XU (Suzhou University of Science and Technology); Prof. Zhenyao QIN (Fudan University); Prof. Jing ZHAO (Renmin University of China); Prof. Lin CHENG (Guangdong University of Foreign Studies); Prof. Yui TONG ( Hong Kong Baptist University)

Georgian Comparative Literature Association

Chair: Prof. Irma Ratiani, President of GCLA

CLOSED

Comparative Literature, a university discipline well-known in the West, was largely absent from Soviet university curricula, including Georgian institutions. Comparative Literature's emphasis on studying non-Soviet and non-socialist countries’ literatures made it a risky prospect for Soviet scholars. Instead, Soviet academia promoted “Literary Relations,” a term devoid of methodologies connecting Soviet literary studies with international approaches. In the post-Soviet era, however, efforts emerged to bridge this gap. Georgian universities began embracing Comparative Literature, expanding and deepening their literary studies. Today, Comparative Literature forms a significant part of the research and teaching in Georgia’s major universities, which are engaged in initiatives, particularly in digital literary studies.

This session will examine the emerging field of digital research in Georgian literature, focusing on current practices, future directions, and the role of Georgian literature within “small literatures.” Key topics include developing Georgian literary corpora and applying digital methodologies, especially distant reading. The session will also explore the digital infrastructure in Georgia, along with the opportunities and challenges for digital literary studies in the Georgian academic context.

In digital literary studies, creating literary corpora is essential for two reasons: it enables comparisons of Georgian texts across genres and eras, and it allows integration of Georgian texts into multilingual datasets. This cross-cultural integration broadens the scope of literary studies, enabling the discovery of patterns, genres, and movements that transcend national boundaries.

Another focal point will be the theoretical and technical dimensions of corpus creation. Presentations will delve into current practices in building literary corpora, examining their value, technical steps, and challenges. From a theoretical perspective, the importance of data-driven research will be emphasized for its role in expanding the literary canon and enhancing digital approaches to literary history.

The primary presentations will feature three significant Georgian literary corpora now part of European datasets: the Georgian corpus for the European Literary Text Collection, the Georgian drama corpus for the European Drama Corpora, and the Georgian poetry corpus for the multilingual European Poetry Corpora. Presenters will discuss the structure of these datasets, the digital infrastructure supporting them, and initial findings from digital analyses of these corpora.

This group session examines the trans-cultural transformations of protagonists of children’s literature who have gained iconic status, not only in their culture of origin, but in many languages and regions worldwide, through translations and adaptations in various media. One example of such iconic figures is Heidi in the novels by Swiss-born author, Johanna Spyri (1827-1901). “Heidis Lehr- und Wanderjahre” (Heidi’s learning and wandering years), published in 1880, and “Heidi kann brauchen, was es gelernt hat” (Heidi can use what she learned), which appeared in 1881, became very popular and were quickly translated into French and English in 1882, followed by translations into nearly 70 languages, sequels, and adaptations into films, plays, and animations. The original novels, in a strong pietistic tone, contributed to creating an image of idyllic Swiss mountain life as an antithesis to modernity. The various translations and adaptations moderated the religious overtones and localized the original work to fit the tastes of its readers, but it was “Heidi, Girl of the Alps” (Arupusu no shōjo Haiji), a Japanese television animation series, directed by Isao Takahata, that gave Heidi her definitive iconic status. This 1974 animation visually canonized the character and popularized Heidi in many countries in Asia and the Middle East, and this image was re-imported into Europe. The width and depth of its global impact has yet to be comprehensively assessed. How did other protagonists of Western children’s classics transform and travel over the ages and become cultural icons? We welcome contributions dealing with figures such as Pinocchio, Little Prince, Pipi Longstocking, Momo, etc. In addition, by way of comparison, the panel welcomes papers on figures of “non-Western” works who have become cultural icons in children’s literature and popular media. While crossing the borders of languages, eras, and media, how did these little heroes and heroines change, or not change?

In 1959, Charles Percy Snow, the British physicist and novelist, proposed the concept of “the Two Cultures”, namely, “humanities” and “science,” resulting in the two separate groups coming into conflict with one another. The essence lies in that the specialization of the modern educational system and the explosive development of science and technology expand the gap between “the Two Cultures”. However, this split has been integrated in science fiction, this special literary genre. As a dialogue platform, science fiction enables literature and science to see and understand each other again. Driven by arguments and discussions inside this field, “the Two Cultures” gradually move from conflict to integration.

Science fiction is an important window to re-examine the relationship between literature and science, bridging the gulf between humanity and technology. Since the 20th century, the ideas in early science fiction have gradually become reality. For instance, the Internet, Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence have become commonplace. A new round of science fiction imagination based on realistic technology continues to unfold, such as Metaverse, Grand Model, and Post-human. Literary tradition and technical future constantly converge in science fiction works, which naturally uphold the interdisciplinary perspectives. Amid the conflict between humanity and technology, science fiction makes it possible that technology is adapted to the stories; scientific ideas can be disseminated through literature; rationality of science is reflected through the sensibility of literature.

Nowadays, broad and deep discussions of technology have been held in science fiction, promoting the integration of literature and science. Centered in “technology”, science fiction creation and research has developed several important stages including “Hard Science Fiction”, “the New Wave”, “Cyberpunk”, and “Post-human”. It has gradually extended the discussion focus from technology itself to the complex and diverse future imagination between technology and human beings, society, environment, ethics, etc. Attention has also been paid to new technical issues, such as human-machine relationship, virtual reality world, technology ethics, and technical objects. Elements of different disciplines, regions and nationalities are integrated and expressed in the future space of science fiction, which allows science fiction interdisciplinary, cross-border and cross-cultural influence. It has also inspired many broad-horizon, intersecting and forward-looking research issues.

Some possible topics include, but are not limited to:

·Interdisciplinary Research of Science Fiction

·Science Fiction and Philosophy of Science and Technology

·Post-human Research in Science Fiction

·Science Fiction Ontology Research

·Research on Ethnic Issues in Science Fiction

·Artificial Intelligence and the Digital Future in Science Fiction

·Research on Objects and Resources in Science Fiction

1. Rationale: In today’s deepening globalization, literature, as a bridge of cultural exchange, has become an irreversible trend of cross-regional and cross-cultural dissemination and integration. Oriental literature, with its long history, rich connotation and unique artistic style, occupies a pivotal position in the world literary map. From Chinese classical poetry to Indian epic tradition, from Japanese aesthetics of object sorrow to South Korean contemporary literature, Oriental literature has profoundly influenced the formation of world literature, together constituting a rich diversity of human cultural interaction. Therefore, with the theme of “Oriental Literature in World Literature: Exchanges and Mutual Learning”, this forum aims to build an international exchange platform to bring together global literary researchers, writers, translators and cultural enthusiasts to discuss the status, influence and future development direction of Oriental Literature in the context of world literature, to promote in-depth dialog and mutual understanding of Eastern and Western literature, and to contribute to the advancement of human civilization. 2.Objectives: (1)To analyze the influence of Oriental literary traditions on Western/World literature and vice versa. (2)Cultural Identity and Identity in Literary Exchange. (3)To identify and discuss the challenges and opportunities in the integration of Oriental literature into the global literary canon. (4)To encourage mutual learning between Oriental and Western literary traditions.

Résumé de la thématique Depuis les années 1950 deux discours que l’on peut identifier comme posthumanistes, le transhumanisme et la singularité technologique, annoncent, pour le premier, une ère d’« amélioration » de l’être humain grâce à la science et la technologie (amélioration des capacités physiques et cognitives, la fin de la vieillesse et des maladies, la fin de la mort…), ainsi que, pour le deuxième, l’arrivée d’une puissante intelligence artificielle capable de s’autogénérer et de dépasser largement les compétences et possibilités intellectuelles des êtres humains. C’est seulement dans les dernières décennies que la littérature dite générale a commencé à s’intéresser à ces sujets, par ailleurs traditionnels de la littérature de science-fiction. Résumé du sujet Imbriqués dans l’histoire du XXe siècle, le transhumanisme et la singularité trouvent leurs origines lointaines dans les expériences eugénistes et dans la postulation de la physique quantique, les deux datant du début du siècle passé, mais se configurent plus précisément dans les années 1950 puis dans la période de la contre-culture étatsunienne. Il s’agit d’étudier ces thématiques comme sujet et représentation dans les littératures des latitudes et des aires linguistiques différents, afin de construire un regard comparé, qui sera également une mise à jour de ces défis épistémologiques. Parmi les nombreuses œuvres qui peuvent être convoquées, Les Particules élémentaires (1998) et La Possibilité d’une île (2005) de Michel Houellebecq, Los cuerpos del verano (2012) de Martín Felipe Castagnet, Zeo K (2017) de Don DeLillo, Machines Like Me (2019) d’Ian McEwan. * On peut considérer le posthumanisme comme un système de discours, dont le transhumanisme et la singularité, mais également le cyberpunk, la transgression des frontières humaines, la post-apocalypse et les critiques de l’humanisme (abhumanisme, antihumanisme hiérarchique et antihumanisme pessimiste). Voir : Carlos Tello, 2021, p. 9-38.

Chairs: Daniela Spina and Duarte Drumond Braga

Open group session

This panel proposal aims to gather critical reflections on the postcolonial coming-of-age novel, with a special comparative focus on fictional works set in the Indian and Pacific Ocean worlds. Defined as the European literary genre par excellence, according to Franco Moretti (2000), the evolution of the Bildungsroman is the key to understanding cultural transformations in modern Western societies. But what about reading the coming-of-age novel as a key to understanding cultural and social transformations after the end of colonial empires? By portraying the effects of colonial domination on education, family relations, and gender– among many other issues – literary works narrating colonial violence shaping young agents’ lives are essential to interpreting the complexity of postcolonial societies today. Going beyond Moretti’s idea of associating specific areas of the world to specific literary genres, and also questioning traditional views of the coming-of-age novel with its well-known and identifiable subgenres (Erziehungsroman, school novel, boarding school novel, etc), the panel will look at new tendencies in postcolonial coming-of-age literature as a form of reacting to the problems of the contemporary world. Our goal is to put forward critical strategies, from a comparative perspective, to help decentralize it from Europe. Accordingly, the panel will welcome papers proposals approaching the representations of the following topics in the coming-of-age novel:

- colonial education and school system;

- anticolonial student activism;

- imperial transits VS post-Bandung migrations of young agents;

- sexual education in colonial times and its aftermaths;

- contested girlhood and boyhood;

- the environmental turn and the postcolonial coming-of-age novel.

While the panel's language will be English, the organizers are open to receiving paper proposals on literatures written in any language.

Créé en 2023, le Prix Goncourt - le Choix du Vietnam est une initiative qui transcende la simple promotion de la littérature francophone. Il vise à renforcer les échanges culturels entre la France et le Vietnam, tout en favorisant la reconnaissance de la littérature vietnamienne à l'échelle nationale et internationale. Ce prix offre aux étudiants vietnamiens une opportunité unique de s'immerger dans la littérature française contemporaine, améliorant ainsi leur niveau de français et leurs compétences d'analyse littéraire. Il s'appuie sur des théories solides de l'apprentissage et des échanges culturels, encourageant une lecture active, un dialogue interculturel et un apprentissage par l'expérience. Au-delà de ses objectifs pédagogiques, ce prix soulève des questions cruciales sur la construction des canons littéraires et les enjeux de la reconnaissance, invitant à une réflexion sur le rôle des institutions littéraires dans la promotion de la diversité culturelle et l'émergence de nouvelles voix.

Version en anglais: Created in 2023, the Prix Goncourt - Le Choix du Vietnam is an initiative that transcends the simple promotion of Francophone literature. It aims to strengthen cultural exchanges between France and Vietnam, while promoting the recognition of Vietnamese literature at the national and international levels. This prize offers Vietnamese students a unique opportunity to immerse themselves in contemporary French literature, thus improving their level of French and their literary analysis skills. It is based on solid theories of learning and cultural exchange, encouraging active reading, intercultural dialogue and experiential learning. Beyond its pedagogical objectives, this prize raises crucial questions about the construction of literary canons and the challenges of recognition, inviting reflection on the role of literary institutions in promoting cultural diversity and the emergence of new voices.

Keywords: Goncourt Prize; Francophone literature; literary recognition; national canon; cultural exchanges

This panel explores the shifting meanings and multifaceted landscape of pornography in China from the Republican period to the present. Building on Linda Williams’ notion of “on/scenity,” which examines the visibility of pornography, our focus extends to audiovisual media including verbal, visual, and aural forms of sexually explicit media. We investigate the discursive reimagination and structural feelings they engender. By examining Chinese concepts such as se (materiality or sexuality), qing (emotions and affects), yin (licentiousness), hui (obscenity), seqing (the pornographic), and qingse (the erotic), we endeavor to understand how se/qing media, along with the rise of female consumers, challenges and redefines (non-)heteronormative frameworks, negotiates with the state, and transforms a formerly male-dominated market. Key questions include: What makes media pornographic? Is there a distinction between the pornographic and the erotic? Who decides what is considered pornographic/erotic? What affective experiences do they evoke? How are changing discourses of pornography (hard or soft, mainstream or alternative) conditioned on technological advancements, socio-economic changes, audience shifts, tastes, and evolving aesthetics and identities inform our understanding of past and present Chinese culture? Our studies encompass the evolution of counterfeit editions of Zhang Jingsheng’s Sex Histories and the boundaries of obscenity in Republican China; the production and reception of promiscuous voices in “yellow music” in the Reform era; and recent transmedia culture, including danmei (male-male relationships) and baihe (female-female romance), and how they create space for self-assertion and challenge views on sex and sexuality.

This panel investigates the intersectional relationships between translation, ethics, space and style, particularly as they relate to language difference and the writer’s sense of their place in the world. The utopian vernacularising spirit of Weltliteratur was contemporary with what Jacques Rancière refers to as the ‘aesthetic regime’ of a democratised style, freed itself from the constraints of style as a training in figures of classical rhetoric. But now world literature is often discussed through the lingua franca of English: there is a surfeit of translations from English, and English is the prized destination for narratives of alterity to be communicated worldwide. This encourages the translatability, commodification and portability of the global novel. Such fiction stands accused by some of renouncing the necessary localised ‘friction’ of style (Tim Parks) while others, amongst them Rebecca Walkowitz, have argued for the creative potential of the ‘born-translated’ novel. In the contemporary translating of style, questions of place and identity are thus entangled with those of ethics and aesthetics. Where am I writing from, who am I writing for, in what language and in what style? We invite papers which assess the creatively productive symptoms of David Bellos’s question: ‘Is your native language really yours?’ Possible questions include:

In what terms do writers, critics and theorists discuss questions of translatability and untranslatability? How do they place importance on what is and is not translated?

Are they writing for or against translation?

In what ways are the theory and practice of translation complementary or antagonistic? How do writers, translators and critics reflect upon the ethics of translation, including their own practice?

In what ways do writers translate themselves or involve themselves in the translation of their own work?

How, if at all, should translation be applied as a metaphor?

What role does translation play in the representation of fictional place?

To what extent is translation itself regarded as welcoming or alienating?

In what ways do writers make a home or build a world in language? Conversely, how do they represent being unhoused by it?

How do writers articulate a resistance to the risks of monoculturalism in English? How does an insistence on language difference manifest itself in literature?

How do debates about translation speak to those in literary criticism and theory?

How are concepts of so-called major and minor (or minoritized) languages and literatures articulated?

In what ways has the uprooted condition of the refugee, asylum seeker and migrant (and of voluntary exile, expatriate or émigré) been translated?

How do theories of world literary space and uneven cultural development (Casanova, Moretti, Warwick Research Collective) affect questions of translation, and vice versa?

What role does translation play in contemporary knowledge economies in the humanities?

Although in recent years small literatures have been studied from the perspective of how they received foreign influences and existed within transnational spaces, and although "famous" cases of authors from small cultures who managed to make a mark in core cultures have always been discussed, Eastern European countries—especially Romania—have yet to be systematically analyzed as "traveling communities." Despite the fact that out of 20 million inhabitants, over 5 million live outside the country, diaspora studies have failed to understand the way in which this migration has affected literature.

The concept of a "travelling nation" in the context of migrant literatures applies Edward Said’s concept of “travelling theory” to national identity and cultural narratives. Said’s concept highlights how ideas are not bound by borders; instead, they travel, transform, and adapt as they interact with diverse cultures and settings. When we apply this to the idea of a nation, we can see how a collective sense of identity and belonging evolves as it is “carried” across borders by people in migration. A travelling nation suggests that national identity is not static but rather a dynamic and evolving entity. Migrant writers and communities engage with their homeland’s cultural narratives but reinterpret these in light of new experiences, foreign cultural influences, and the challenges of life in diaspora. Much like Said’s travelling ideas, the identity of a travelling nation adapts and reshapes itself through exposure to different cultural environments, creating a hybrid sense of self that reflects both the original culture and the influences of the new one.

Therefore, we aim to analyze the concept of "world literature" within a single country on several levels, focusing on three main dimensions: 1) migration and the transformation of the global field through "proletarian authors"—whose contributions have been very little recognized to this day; 2) academic migration and the "elitist diaspora"—whereby we intend to revisit the idea of the "world literature" author from the perspective of intellectual history; 3) representations of Romanians worldwide and comparisons with the representation of other Eastern European peoples—through what we might call the imagological Balkanism of world literature.

In 2016, Korean journalist Chang Iou-chung asked this question:"Will serialized online novels also overturn their initial negative preconceptions that they're just low-end fiction with no literary value, and stand as a respectable publishing platform for the broader world of literature? We shall see."

https://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/Culture/view?articleId=131953

In his article Chang said that between "the mid- and late-1990s and the early 2000s, some writers who used to write online became big names in fiction by publishing their works as physical books", mentioning Guiyeoni, author of "He Was Cool" (그 놈은 멋있었다).

This year, in his essay for the German daily newspaper "Welt" from 23rd February 2024, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek called "Web Soseol" (웹소설), translated as "novel in the internet", "the best example for a literature which fits the depoliticized lifestyle of the younger generation" in South Korea.

https://www.welt.de/kultur/plus250049882/Entpolitisierung-Warum-die-Geschichte-der-Welt-in-Korea-enden-koennte.html

As Žižek claims, the popularity of "Web Soseol" has "exploded" in South Korea during the last decades, marking the rise of a new form of art: Due to the "direct interaction of producers and consumers" there is, at least according to Žižek,a joint ("collectivized") "process of production" in which Žižek discovers "an unexpected emancipatory potential".

Questions of a group session may be:

- Which role does internet technology play in fostering the popularity of "Web Soseol"?

- Can the "Web Soseol" really be a form of art instead of "low-end fiction with no literary value"?

- Is the "Web Soseol" a unique Korean phenomenon - or does it occur in other countries, too, especially in Western countries? For example, the British novel "Fifty Shades of Grey" was published from 2009 onwards initially only on internet pages.

- Is there a treshold when it comes to printing for new promising authors which they cannot cross, so that they are dependent on the "Web Soseol" model?

- Is there really - enabled by internet technology like online comments - a joint "process of production", making a text the work of author AND reader?

- Is the "Web Soseol" really an example for "literature which fits the depoliticized lifestyle of the younger generation" in South Korea?

The language of the group session shall be Korean.

Please submit abstracts by 15 December 2024 for presentation in the Open Group Session re "Body Image(s) of Women in Literature" for presentation at the Seoul congress of the ICLA/AILC: International Comparative Literature Association / Association Internationale de Littérature Comparée https://icla2025-seoul.kr/en (28 July to 1 August 2025). Session organizers are Peina (Alison) Zhuang https://lj.scu.edu.cn/info/1151/3281.htm @ alison19831208@163.com <mail to: alison19831208@163.com> & peinazhuang@scu.edu.cn <mail to: peinazhuang@scu.edu.cn>) and Steven Totosy de Zepetnek https://lj.scu.edu.cn/info/1105/7113.htm @ totosy.steven@scu.edu.cn <mail to: totosy.steven@scu.edu.cn> & totosysteven@mac.com <mail to: totosysteven@mac.com>). Paul Schilder defined body image as "the picture of our own body which we form in our mind, that is to say, the way in which the body appears to ourselves." Image(s) indicate(s) that we are not dealing with a mere sensation or imagination: there are mental pictures and representations involved, but it is not mere representation. Sarah Grogan defined body image as "a person's perceptions, thoughts, and feelings about his or her body. This definition can be taken to include psychological concepts such as perception and attitudes toward the body, as well as experiences of embodiment. The concept of body image is used in several disciplines, including neuroscience, psychology, medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, philosophy, cultural studies, feminist studies and the media also often use the term and concept. Definitions of body image extends to the conscious and unconscious, the external and internal, reality and fantasy, as well as cultural and social forces and factors which affect body image such as gender, social media, ethnicity, social class, etc. Perspectives of "body image(s)" include "beauty," "ugliness," relationships between men and women, age and ageing of women, the image of the body and eroticism of women, etc.

This panel, featuring four scholars, examines how body, representation, and narrative transcend the boundaries between East and West, shedding light on the intricate cultural, historical, and geographical interplay within the contemporary globalized world.

In “The Vietnamese-American Body in Motion: Diasporic Identity and Embodiment in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” Kai-su Wu, using Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, analyzes the narrator’s body as a metaphor for diasporic dislocation and identity navigation. Wu examines how the narrator adopts embodied communication to connect his lived experience in the U.S. with the enduring, haunting memories of his family’s past in Vietnam.

Liying Wang, in her presentation titled “When Mulan Crosses the Pacific Ocean: The Chances and Challenges,” discusses several Mulan-themed adaptations in the post-Disney era (since 1998), investigating how American cultural imperialism both blessed and cursed the story of this Chinese heroine. While globalization transformed Mulan’s legend from Chinese national literature into world literature, it also posed a challenge for China to reclaim her by initiating a series of ideological, generic, transmedial, and narratological modifications.

Lijun Wang’s paper, “Shangri-La in American Apocalypse: Toward a Contemporary Tibetan Orientalism,” aims to renew and complicate our understanding of how Tibet is reimagined in contemporary American apocalyptic fantasies. By focusing on disaster films and science fiction such as 2012 (2009), The Creator (2023), and Zero K (2016), Wang argues that while the Western convention of romanticizing Tibet continues to permeate, the patterns observed by Donald Lopez Jr. have notably evolved. Although Tibet remains idealized as a utopia, the West is now portrayed as a dystopia, with Westerners depicted as destroyers of the world while Tibetans emerge as saviors.

In “The Western Tentacles and the Chinese Great Serpent: Cthulhu Literature in China,” Jingyun Xiao traces how Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos was introduced into China and gave birth to a genre that might be called “Chinese Cthulhu literature” over the last few decades. By comparing four Chinese Cthulhu tales with Lovecraft’s original works, Xiao argues that Cthulhu, the evil god originating from Western modernism, has intertwined with Chinese mythology, history and culture, contributing to transnational circulations within the globalized mediascape of Cthulhu.

Together, these four panelists engage with border-crossings of the body, representation, and narrative between the East and the West, offering rich insights into the globalized nature of comparative literature and culture.

This session explores the dynamic process of cultural morphing, wherein elements from diverse temporal and geographical contexts evolve and adapt through interaction, creating hybrid forms that transcend simple linguistic translation. Moving beyond traditional ideas of cross-cultural translation, this session investigates how literature, performance, and media morph as they traverse eras and geographies, integrating local and global influences into innovative cultural interpretations. Through these morphing processes, acquiring new layers of meaning resonates with readers and audiences across boundaries of time and place.

Our interdisciplinary panel will present case studies that highlight the creative possibilities of cultural morphing, including the adaptation of a Shakespearean work in Mongolian contexts, the reinterpretation of analog culture within digital frameworks in the United States, and the integration of multimodal literature into classroom environments in Uzbekistan. This session offers fresh frameworks for understanding cultural evolution as an active, adaptive process. By examining how texts and performances morph through diverse cultural exchanges, this session proposes that cultural morphing catalyzes innovation.

N. Katherine Hayles defines “technogenesis” in How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis (2012) as the presumption that “humans and technologies have co-evolved” (10). The co-evolution of humans and their technological environment is embodied in ubiquitous networked digital media; this is referred to as “technogenesis.” The extent to which we intentionally create and modify novel human environments, thereby generating fresh feedback loops and amplification between technological progress and human evolution, is in question. Presently, nevertheless, the emergence of ubiquitously networked “encoded” digital devices has created a sociotechnical milieu in which hyperattention is systemically prioritized. Klaus Schwab explains in The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means and how to respond (2016) that this phenomenon induces hyperattention to the rapidly evolving, disruptive, and systemically transformative “emerging technological breakthroughs,” which have profound ramifications for human cognition. By virtue of this ontogenetic simultaneous adaptation/adoption, human beings modify their technological environments to require an even heightened state of vigilance. The purpose of this seminar is to focus on the question of “how can we interpret the convergence of art, literature, media, and digital technology in the age of ecotechnological feedback loops?” We as a group attempts to examine the logic of convergence from the perspectives of transmedia/intermedia in the interactive fields of transmedia art, world literature, and digital humanities.

From the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, the British Museum held more than ten exhibitions related to Chinese art, which were of great significance in the history of Sino-Western art exchanges. Among them, the three Chinese painting exhibitions held in 1888, 1910-1911 and 1914 displayed the museum's newly acquired Chinese art collections, offering valuable opportunities for scholars and ordinary people in Western countries to perceive and appreciate Chinese art. The occasion for all three exhibitions was the acquisition by the British Museum of a large collection of Chinese and Japanese paintings from private collectors, including William Anderson's collection in Japan in the 1870s, Olga Julia Wegener's collection in China during 1907-1909, and Arthur Morrison's Chinese and Japanese painting collections, which greatly enriched the British Museum's Chinese art collection. By these purchases the British Museum took the lead among Western museums in collection of Chinese pictorial art . At the same time, influenced by the artistic tastes, knowledge background, and acquisition channels of collectors and acquirers, the nature of the specimen, the psecific arrangements, the introduction and evaluation of exhibitions in different periods also vary accordingly, thus reflecting the historical evolution of the Western collection, acceptance, and interpretation of Chinese art aesthetics. Therefore, this article will focus on the evolution of the West from the taste appreciation of Chinese decorative art with porcelain, lacquerware and screen paintings to the professional research of Chinese aesthetic concepts and techniques with classical paintings, by combing the historical background, exhibition layout and social evaluation of the three Chinese painting exhibitions held by the British Museum between 1888 and 1914. This article will explore the powerful cross-cultural interpretation ability and eternal charm of Chinese aesthetic concepts.

This group session proposes to rethink the concepts of world literature and global literature from the perspective of Erich Auerbach's masterwork _Mimesis_ and his "Philology and Weltliteratur" essay. How can the categories of realism and national literature be relevant to the construction of cosmopolitan ideas of nation, representation, politics, and ethics?

A recent dissertation by Madigan Haley ("Global Mimesis: The Ethics of World Literature after Auerbach," 2014) argues that "that the global in the literary is best approached not as a stable content, imposed ideology, or economic byproduct, but rather as an ethos, which has been at stake and emerging over the past half century in literature from around the world." But, as Haley suggests, does Auerbach argue for "world literature’s ability to figure 'a common life' as a process of cultural and political standardization"? This session will consider the inherently ethical and political dimensions of Auerbach's project, insofar as it seeks to reveal the democratizing power of literary representation, a power that is global in its reach and effects, and not merely European. One of the best examples of this approach is Jacques Ranciere's idea of the "politics of aesthetics," which is inspired by Auerbach's example (see Ranciere, "Auerbach and the Contradictions of Realism").

Literary Anthropology emerged from the anthropological turn and the worldwide interdisciplinary trend, and after half a century of development, it has created a set of theoretical discourses rich in Chinese local characteristics under the joint efforts of three generations of scholars, and has grown to be an outstanding representative of China's emerging and cross-disciplinary disciplines. The study of Chinese Literary Anthropology not only advocates looking back from the first 5,000 years of new knowledge to the next 5,000 years of civilization, opening up a path of mythological research on the origins of Chinese civilization, but also reexamines the occurrence and development of Chinese thought in the perspective of the ‘Great Cultural Tradition’; at the same time, it looks forward to studying the development of human civilization and its literary significance. ‘Digital-Intelligence Civilization’ is the Literary Anthropology community's perception and generalization of the current intelligence revolution, which is being explored by the Chinese Literary Anthropology community in an effort to respond to and reflect on this new civilizational revolution of human.

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.

David Foster Wallace’s famous essay Consider the Lobster makes a meticulous analysis of the ethics of boiling a lobster alive, which also emphasizes the irresolvable dilemma between satisfying human needs and reducing animal cruelty. To be more general, it represents the dilemma about whether human should sacrifice more in exchange for the benefit of the nonhuman animal, which is also an innate dilemma that almost all animal narratives are faced with. Based on three major items of zoocriticism initiated by Anna Barcz, this article investigates three innate dilemmas between human and the nonhuman animal within animal narratives, namely (1) anthropocentric nature of narrative versus animal autonomy of the animal agent, (2) anthropomorphizing the animal agent versus restoration of its animality, and (3) the understanding versus misunderstanding of animals as the effect of reading animal narratives. The article claims that even though the above dilemmas will exist for now and future works, we can see through these dilemmas and focus on the special characteristics of animal narratives. Meanwhile, such dilemmatic traits are also the carriers of the distinctive aesthetic values of animal narratives.

Since the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism, much discussion has centered on how Europeans have portrayed the “Orient.” However, the perceptions of the “Orient” within the regions categorized as such by Europeans —and how these perceptions changed or expanded throughout history—have been relatively overlooked. This group session explores the diverse notions of the “Orient” that coexisted in the early 20th century, examining their representations in literature, visual arts, performing arts, and natural philosophy. It brings together discussions on a wide range of geographical areas including Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia, and Iran. While in Asian countries, the “Orient” is often a concept adopted from the Western world, its geographical and semantic scope is shaped by factors such as race, religion, culture, language or national ideologies. Thus, it can be said that Asian individuals and countries have subjectively engaged in reconstructing their notions of the “Orient”. By focusing on the different contexts within which these multiple “Orients” are represented, this group session seeks to uncover how they might resonate with or contradict each other, contributing to a deeper understanding of the concept’s complexity.

By imagining technological developments, ethical issues, and social changes, contemporary Chinese science fiction addresses in engaging and innovative ways the conditions of, problems with, and the future for humanity and the human world. Humanism and the critical negotiations with it, post-humanism, are two remarkable trends of thought represented and reflected in contemporary Chinese sci-fi. This panel looks into the rich humanist and post-humanist discourses in contemporary Chinese sci-fi as situated in the specific socio-political, cultural, and intellectual context of post-socialist China. We explore how Chinese sci-fi writers use historicity, locality, and technology for presenting humanist concerns and post-humanist queries.

What might theories of translation, research in translation studies, and the literary history of translation look like if we center the work of migrant translators, rather than making them exceptional cases? As texts circulate within the space of world literature, it is often individual displaced authors—and their movements—who carry, foster, and translate those texts. A writer and/or translator’s migration sets in motion conflict, dialogue, and synthesis; border crossing often entails cultural negotiation and linguistic transformation. These movements often serve as the prelude to further activity as translators, actively seeking to communicate prior experience in one language to another in a different place. This panel welcomes fresh approaches to translation focused on the many instances where immigration, emigration, and other kinds of human movement have subtended and created the conditions for texts to move across languages. We equally encourage both new theoretical work as well as empirical and historical research in translation studies. Potential keywords might include diasporic and refugee literatures; transculturation and transnationalism; translanguaging and code-mixing.

Indeed It is very difficult to discuss the archetype (origin, basis) of literature, but I think sticking to the archetype research is the most important thing in comparative literature. When discussing the archetype research of East-West literature, we think of the archetype of Asian literature and ancient Greece, which is the basis of Western literature. Although we are accustomed to the dichotomous thinking, Persian literature as the archetype, which connects the East with the West, has been forgotten in our minds.

In this paper, I bring out the concept of archetype, whose meaning is containing the origin in the transmitting stages. The realm of literature in Persia is extensively composed of Iran, Asia Minor (Turkey of present), Pakistan, Central Asia, western region in China, and from the ancient era, these countries have had history and culture in common. The ancient literature must be understood from the ancient point of view, not the present.

We commonly remind the ancient Asian civilization of the China and India. We do not remember Persian civilization which had affected China and Indian civilization. The flow of literature is not different from the that of civilization. On the one hand, Persian literature have transmitted to the domains of India, Tibet, South eastern literature, and on the other hand, have spreaded over the China, Korea, and Japan, by means of western region in China. The Korean traditional literature, the Zen's poem, had derived from the these genealogy. Along with the archetype of Asian literature, the relation with ancient Greek literature will be revealed. Its literature had been affected by Aryan culture including Mithraic and Zoroastrian literature.

In searching for the archetype of literature, the most important thing is the flow and genealogy of literature related to the comparative literature. The others might think that the literary works itself is more important than the literary flow and genealogy. The imitation and transmission in literature is one of the important aspects in ancient era. The great literary works in the Ancient and Medieval era have had a great influence on the works in the other literary realm, and the first works gradually have been changed and transmitted. Nevertheless until now on the literary works has been focused on its contents and language's classification, not the literary flow and genealogy.

The literary works in the ancient era is laid on the foundation of the Religious Thought. Supposedly a scholar do not recognize the flow and genealogy of literature along with that of religion. If he knew Sufi literature within the Islamic Sufism, he would not analyze it correctly. Accordingly to know the flow and genealogy of Sufism is the first thing to do. For Sufism has the history of 3000 years of the Aryans holding Pantheism.

As globalization deepens and new technologies rapidly evolve, the world is experiencing unprecedented cultural exchanges, the dissemination of ideas, and the movement of people and goods. In this context, literature plays an increasingly prominent role as an important medium for recording, representing, mediating, and reshaping these dynamics. This forum, themed "Cosmopolitanism and Localism: Comparative Literature in Global Flows in the Digital Age," aims to explore how to understand and address the tensions between cosmopolitanism and localism in literature, particularly against the backdrop of accelerated global flows driven by new technologies.

We welcome discussions around the following possible topics:

1. How the development of digital technologies challenges the formation of comparative literature theories and methodologies;

2. The diverse representations of cosmopolitanism and localism in literary works within a globalized context;

3. How the digital economy reshapes contemporary literary genres and forms;

4. The role of digital platforms in transforming literary creation, dissemination, and reception, and how these changes impact the relationship between global and local cultural narratives;

5. How literary works navigate the tension between group identity and individual autonomy in a technology-driven globalized world.

In 2024, South Korean writer Gang Han won the Nobel Prize in Literature, once again bringing East Asian literature into the global spotlight. Previously, in the history of East Asian literature, Japanese writers Yasunari Kawabata and Takamoto Kajiya, as well as Chinese writer Yan Mo, who all won the Nobel Prize in Literature, have already demonstrated the significant influence of East Asian literature on world literature. Thus, East Asian literature has become an important part of world literature. In the East Asian academic community, comparative studies of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean literatures, as well as researches on the relationship between East Asian literature and world literature, have always been the core issues and focal points in the field of comparative literature. Based on this, the Pannel 11 will conduct multidisciplinary and multi-angle studies on East Asian literature from a global perspective, with a particular focus on comparative studies between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean literatures.

The literary form now widely known as biofiction (texts that reimagine historical individuals, transparently using their name and with varying degrees of faithfulness to the historical record) locates itself at the boundary between biography and fiction and stands in a neighbouring relationship with forms such as autofiction and biopics. Biofiction has become a prominent literary genre and subject of critical inquiry, raising questions (literary, narratological, historical, philosophical, ethical) about the concept and value of the life and of “truth”; the perception and representation of subjects, of inner consciousness and material facts; the varying relationships between individual and history, individual and community, determinism and agency. The form is not new (Goldschmidt, Afterlives of the Roman Poets, 2019) and has a rich 19th-century tradition (Lackey, Biofiction, 2022) and a modernist moment (e.g. V. Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group), but it has expanded exponentially in the last 50 years. If its critical discussion started in the 1980s and 1990s (Schabert, “Fictional Biography, Factual Biography, and their Contaminations”, 1982; In Quest of the Other Person: Fiction as Biography, 1990; Jacobs, The Character of Truth: Historical Figures in Contemporary Fiction, 1990; Buisine, “Biofictions”, 1991; Boldrini, Biografie fittizie e personaggi storici, 1998; Franssen & Hoenselaars, The Author as Character, 1999; Middeke & Huber, Biofictions, 1999), it has become increasingly varied in the last 15 years, focusing on historical periods (Kohlke & Gutleben, Neo-Victorian Biofiction, 2020); individuals (Layne, Henry James in Contemporary Fiction, 2020; Latham, Virginia Woolf’s Afterlives, 2021); forms (Boldrini, Autobiographies of Others, 2012; Castellana, Finzioni biografiche, 2019); countries or languages (Gefen, Inventer une vie, 2015; Lackey, Ireland, the Irish, and the Rise of Biofiction, 2021; Rademacher, Derivative Lives: Biofiction, Uncertainty, and Speculative Risk in Contemporary Spanish Narrative, 2022); gender (Novak & Ní Dhúill, Imagining Gender in Biographical Fiction, 2022); post-colonialism (Tunca & Ledent, “Towards a Definition of Postcolonial Biographical Fiction”, 2020); transnational representations (Rensen & Wiley, Transnational Perspectives on Artists’ Lives, 2020), or the significance of the genre for world literature (Cernat’s conference Biofiction as World Literature, KU Leuven, 2021).

This open Group Session invites papers that reflect on biofiction from a comparative or world literature perspective, by focusing on specific texts; on histories, traditions and significant moments of development or rupture; on cultural specificities and differences; on biofiction’s role in the construction of national or transnational identities; on the boundaries of the genre or relationships with other genres; on narrative and aesthetic aspects; and on biofiction as tool of political, ethical, sociological or philosophical inquiry.

Chairs：

Prof. Liu Yading, Sichuan University, Chengdu/ China.(liuyd@scu.edu.cn)

Yuan Zhe , Sichuan University, Chengdu/ China.（yuanzhe_katy@163.com）

Historically and in contemporary contexts, both China and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have intermittently occupied marginalized positions in the “World Republic of Letters” as noted by Pascale Casanova, largely due to the dominance of Westocentrism. This shared marginalization has created a unique foundation for cross-cultural dialogue between these regions.

This panel explores how the peripheral status of Chinese and CEE literature and culture has allowed for a distinctive space of exchange, fostered by shared political, cultural, and ideological experiences. A key part of this dialogue has been the translation of Chinese works into CEE languages, alongside the influence of CEE literature on the shaping of modern and contemporary Chinese literature. This mutual exchange through translation and adaptation has enriched both literary traditions, offering alternative narratives that challenge Western literary dominance.

We will also examine how these regions engage in transmedia interactions—through film, theater, and digital platforms—that further expand their cultural ties. Additionally, in the contemporary context of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, new opportunities for cultural diplomacy have emerged, strengthening these historical connections. This panel highlights how China and CEE, through shared marginalization, have cultivated a rich dialogue that contributes to global literary reshaping and cultural dynamics.

This panel has the following four subtopics:

1. Chinese Literature studies in Central and Eastern Europe：This subtopic encompasses research on the translation of major epic poems from various ethnic groups, such as Manas, King Gesar, and Jangar, within Central and Eastern European contexts.

2. Central and Eastern European Literature and Contemporary Chinese Literature：This subtopic primarily examines the translation of modern Chinese literature into Central and Eastern European languages and explores the influence of Central and Eastern European literature on modern and contemporary Chinese literature.

3. Parallel Comparisons of Chinese Literary Culture and Central and Eastern European Literary Culture：This subtopic primarily discusses literary and cultural phenomena that, while not directly influencing each other, display similarities between Chinese and Central and Eastern European literary cultures.

4. Transmedia Studies of Chinese Culture and Central and Eastern European Culture：This subtopic explores the transmedia cultural exchanges between these regions and provides parallel comparisons of similar transmedia cultural phenomena.

This study explores how Bolaang Mongondow folk songs imagine the homeland and contribute to shaping the discourse of nationalism in Indonesia. Folk songs, as expressions of local culture, often contain symbols that reflect love for the homeland and national identity. Through a critical discourse approach and semiotic analysis, this study examines the meanings contained in the lyrics of Bolaang Mongondow folk songs, as well as how these songs articulate local nationalism that is connected to the national context. This study focuses on the elements of nature, history, and struggle used in the lyrics as representations of identity and pride in the homeland. The results show that Bolaang Mongondow folk songs not only represent the beauty and richness of nature, but also evoke a sense of nationalism by emphasizing the spiritual and emotional connection between the community and their ancestral land. These songs play an important role in strengthening local identity while voicing the spirit of nationalism, making them an effective medium in spreading nationalist values. Amidst the challenges of modernity and globalization, this regional song remains a relevant cultural instrument in maintaining the unity and identity of the nation.

Negotiating across linguistic and cultural divides involves language barriers, sartorial codes, culinary practices, and philosophical and religious endeavors. This panel examines cross-cultural dialogues through embracing diverse interpretations in the lesser-known contemporary novels and films produced in Hong Kong, Japan, Canada, and the United States.

Jessica Tsui-yan Li will present a paper on “Eileen Chang’s The Greatest Wedding on Earth (1962).” This paper focuses on the screenplay, The Greatest Wedding on Earth (Nanbei yijiaqing 1962), written by Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing 1920-1995). Li argues that the film depicts the linguistic and cultural conflicts between the Mandarin-speaking Chinese northern migrants and the Cantonese-speaking southerners in Hong Kong in the early 1960s. Li will also examine the Hollywood cinematic techniques in portraying the images of new women of the time.

Jack Hang-tat Leong will give a paper, “Transcultural Identity: Chinese Opera in Chinese American Literature.” Leong argues that the depiction of Chinese opera illustrates the struggles and dynamics of Chinese Americans remembering and negotiating their cultural identities between their hometowns and North America. Leong will examine the cultural imagination, identity and social memory transmitted by Cantonese opera in the writings of Chinese American writers, such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Wayson Choy and Denise Chong, who remade and reinterpreted the stories and cultural space of Cantonese opera in their Chinatown stories and memoirs.

Hsiu-Chuang Deppman will present a paper, “The Good Death in Ann Hui’s A Simple Life.” What is a good death? Deppman explores Ann Hui’s response to this question in A Simple Life (2011) in this paper. A Hong Kong New Wave pioneer, Ann Hui (b. 1947), describes the end-of-life choices of a maid—Ah Tao—who decides to retire to a nursing home after a stroke. Her clairvoyant preparation for what lies ahead as death looms draws attention to two pivotal approaches to ming: “accepting fate” (认命rènmìng) and “knowing the divine will” (知天命 zhītiānìing). Deppman argues that Ann Hui gives Ah Tao the agency to integrate acceptance (rèn) with acknowledgment (zhī) to illustrate the art of dying well in simple living.

Chialan Sharon Wang will present a paper, “Traversing and disinheriting cultural memory: the “pure language” and invisible future in Li Kotomi’s An Island Where Red Spider Lilies Bloom.” This paper studies Li Kotomi’s 2022 fantasy novel, An Island Where Red Spider Lilies Bloom (彼岸花盛開之島), and investigates how the trope of translation illustrates a utopia of resistance. Wang argues that similar to how Taiwan is a geopolitical location of both the colonized and the colonizer, the fictive island designated as “the other side” (仁良伊加奈伊) which the priestesses come from and return to after death in the novel, symbolizes an origin of trauma giving rise to a linguistic practice that resists constancy and lineage.

Translation studies have become more and more visible within marginal literary spaces especially in the context of the emergence of world literature as an explanatory paradigm after 2000, the more so as literary translations have been at the center of state-funded programs in these regions, programs meant to promote national literatures abroad.

The Romantic stance of emphasizing original creation (“translations do not make a literature”, argued a Romanian essayist back in 1840) has been since then periodically revised and reversed, such as nowadays there seems to be a consensus that a literature could become known on the world stage mainly through translations.

In this context, the current call for proposals aims at starting a conversation about the circuits of translations and their impact on regional and world canons within the East-Central European literatures and literary cultures after the fall of communism and up to the present. We are interested in exploring the policies of translations from the Eastern and Central European literatures into Western languages of large international circulation (English, French, Spanish). Also this group session aims at following the effects on the writers’ literary legitimacy on the regional and world scale. As Pascale Casanova argued in her seminal book The World Republic of Letters (1999; Engl. transl. 2004), the international fame of a writer from a marginal literary culture largely depends on the recognition they get within the literary centers of power, which their more or less ‘exotic’ experimentalism manages to rekindle. Once successfully ‘exported’ and acknowledged, such an author returns on the national and regional scenes and is generally perceived in different ways. The circulation and legitimating networks that are formed as a result of a translation’ echoes could also bring about different reactions to other writers in this region. They could also provide the basis for intra-regional comparisons and hybridizations which otherwise would have been much less probable.

This group session aimed at researches of East-Central European literatures proposes topics of discussion as follows (and also others, at the participants’ suggestions):

- translation as a strategy for acquiring literary legitimacy during post-communism;

- national translation policies and their regional echoes;

- how to translate literary marginality?;

- reshaping national and regional canons as a result of successful translations;

- rhythms and speeds of translations from East-Central European literatures between 1990-2020;

- the creation of a market for translations from East-Central European languages following the writers’ legitimation through translations into languages of international circulation;

- changes undergone by East-Central European writers’ literary projects following the international circulation of their translated works.

The ghazal has roots in the classical Arabic poetic tradition, as the word “ghazal” originates from the Arabic language. The Arabic influence can be traced in its formal features, imagery and symbolism, and theme of love, longing, and mysticism. Nevertheless, the Persian poets developed the ghazal as a distinct poetic form by braiding the Arabic cultural traditions with their Persian poetic sensibility. Later, the ghazal became popular in the Mughal-India as Mirza Ghalib braided the Arabic and Persian poetic traditions with Mughal-Indian local sensibility. Although its popularity declined under British colonial rule, with most writers intrigued by European art and literature, the ghazal continued to evolve, written and appreciated by the locals. The ghazal began to spread to the Anglophone world through translations and adaptations in the late 19th century and since then, numerous Anglophone poets translated, adapted and created ghazals. In the 21st century, the ghazal has gone global as the contributors of Thomas Bauer and Angelika Neuwirth’s two-volume anthology Ghazal as World Literature (2005-06) explore its origin and its influence in world literature.

In this context, we will explore the diaspora of the ghazal from the perspective of global humanities research since the Persian civilization served as a dynamic crossroad in the Middle Ages, where Hebraism, Hellenism, Tibettan Mysticism, Buddhism and classical Chinese metaphysics blended and influenced one another. Therefore, we will first focus on the evolution of ghazal forms and themes from Persian to Mughal-Indian cultural contexts. We will also discuss how they dispersed and evolved worldwide, reflecting unique cultural histories and local poetic sensibilities. We will then explore hyper-connection of global love songs, including Qasida, Ghazal, Sonnet, Canzone, Liu-shi (律詩), Jueju (绝句), Song-shi (颂词), Gayo, and Shijo, in terms of their formal features and perspectives on love, longing, and mysticism.

Here are specific aspects we would like to cover:

*Cultural Transmission: the role of traders, travelers, and truth-seekers as translators and messengers, interpreting and adapting one another’s cultures

*Cultural Exchanges: interactions among the Arabians, Greeks, Persians, Tibetans, Tang & Song-Chinese, and Goryeo-Koreans along the Silk Road in the Middle Ages

*Diverse Poetic Forms and Voices: exploration of how various poets deliver distinct cultural perspectives on love, longing, and mysticism and how these forms evolved through cross-cultural interactions.

*Themes of Love, Longing, Mysticism, Belonging, Memory, Nostalgia: exploration of how these themes transcend geographical boundaries and resonate differently across cultures, shaping cultural identities

This panel attempts to explore and discuss about the pivotal issues in the studies of Chinese literature and culture from the late Qing to the modern era by reflecting upon the sophisticated and dynamic relationship between the Self and the Other. In Kejun Xu’s study, Eileen Chang’s Psychological Realism in her works of fiction in the 1940s serves as a typical example of combining traditional Chinese Aesthetics with Western Modernism. The juxtaposition of Interiority demonstrates Eileen Chang’s unique way of exposing her characters’ inner struggles and tragic flaws which led to their inevitable destinies. Cao Yujie’s study of “self-representation in Chinese media culture around the 1930s” probes the complex relationships among cigarettes, female, and subjectivity by tracking the dual visual intoxication which crosses different genres, flowing among cigarette advertisements, early films, novels, and screenplays. Fang Weiwei’s study of “Yang Yuelou Case” (杨月楼案) in Shen Bao Newspaper（《申报》）and the “Chinese Theater” in “Shenjiang Shengjing Tu” （《申江胜景图》）displays the interconnection of modern identity among the famous characters, the media and the city, which reveals the emerging urban culture in the late Qing Dynasty. Huang Yafei’s investigation of the cinematic adaptations of The Invisible Man treats the "invisible" as a modern imaginary of technological threats which has initiated a diachronic contemplation across multiple contexts and national borders over a century of cinematic wandering, in the form of a thought experiment. The Chinese movie adaptations of H. G. Wells’ fiction have also invited further questions about transcultural modernity and novel ways of imagining Otherness as embodied in the invisible man.

This panel proposes to provide new thoughts on the above-mentioned studies of Chinese literature and culture from the late Qing to the modern era. We welcome papers that investigate the borders between the Self and the Other. Possible topics include: 1, How do literary texts in this period boost our understanding of concepts such as the modern self and the modern Chinese national identity? 2, How do we imagine Otherness in literary texts, movie adaptations and other artistic genres in this period? 3, How do we interpret the dynamic and complex relationships between the Self, the Other and the Other-self in literature and culture in this period? 4, How does urban and transcultural modernity transform traditional paradigms of literature studies from the late Qing to the modern era? Please provide concrete analyses and examples to solve this problem.

This session is open for further paper proposals. For those interested in joining this panel, please contact Kejun Xu at Kejun89@sjtu.edu.cn by 31st January, 2025.

Session Chair: Kejun Xu, Junior Research Fellow at the School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Comparative literature is innately cross-cultural and globally inclusive. With the advent of a new vision of international comparative literature, comparative literature in East Asia “connects the East and the West” by foregrounding communications between the Eastern and Western worlds that turn away from unilateralism and narrow-mindedness and actively advocating “cross-cultural scholarly practices and endeavors.” In this light, the emergence and evaluation of myriad canonical texts in the East Asian cultural circle, traditional East Asian culture, and modern and contemporary literature are no longer stagnantly defined, but instead dynamically generated. “Cross-cultural practice that bridges the East and the West” provides sound conditions for these texts to respond to issues in literature and culture, and even the clash of civilizations in the current world.

This panel seeks to address the following topics:

Theories and methods of international comparative literature and comparative literature in East Asia

Comparative literature studies and cross-cultural practice in East Asian countries, including China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Mongolia, among others

The dynamic generation of traditional East Asian literature, modern and contemporary literature, and cross-cultural practice that connects the East and the West

Comparative literature in East Asia, issues in literature and culture, and the clash of civilizations in the current world

Interrelations between East Asian cultural circle, Chinese culture and the development of 20th-century European thought

Coding-based data sets have witnessed a convergence process in the second digital age, resulting in a greater volume and increased velocity as their complexity and variety have been converted. The domain of sciences and technology, which includes social sciences, human sciences, and digital humanities, is enduring a profound transformation into an intricate network of "connectivity," encompassing vast convergent areas of big data. Humans are required to exert "hyperattention" in order to perform operations on these vast encoded datasets. This requires continuous reinforcement, but it also enables the rapid scanning of vast quantities of data to achieve a comprehensive understanding or to identify specific patterns. The ubiquitous networked digital media that embodies the co-evolution of humanity and their technological environment is referred to as "technogenesis." Currently, the extent to which we intentionally construct and modify novel human environments, thereby generating fresh feedback loops and amplification between technological progress and human evolution, is being questioned in terms of both temporal and spatial dimensions. The seminar has centered on the inquiry of "how can we interpret art, literature, media, and digital technology in the era of ecotechnological feedback loops?" in this context. Our goal is to demonstrate the aesthetic and ethical articulation of the forms of "new technological humanities," which merge (transmedia) art, (world) literature, and (digital) humanities.

Artificial Intelligence / Large Language Models have created new possibilities for creative, decolonial translation practices. Longer-established tools such as Google Translate or DeepL work with what is at root a colonial regime of standardised languages: you translate between something defined as eg ‘Italian’ and something defined as eg ‘Swahili’. But LLMs, though still involved in standardization, present a more nuanced landscape of language variation. You can ask them to translate into a particular dialect, style, or form, or the language of a historical period, or a mix of languages. So LLMs have the potential to contribute to translation practices that recognise the varied linguistic usage of different communities, and that disrupt the norms of standard languages.

However, LLMs also bring significant dangers. The vast majority of the world’s languages are not well represented in the datasets used by most LLMs, so they may simply reinforce the hegemony of English and other dominant tongues. The datasets also typically reveal Eurocentric, racist and sexist biases, and the technology poses threats both to the environment and to the livelihoods of creative people.

This panel seeks to explore and clarify these contradictions, and to plot a way through them, exploring the actual and potential uses and abuses of LLMs for literary translation in a range of locations, with a particular interest in Global Majority contexts. The panel arises from the AIDCPT project hosted by the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation Research Centre (https://occt.web.ox.ac.uk/ai-decoloniality-and-creative-poetry-translation). We welcome proposals that address any aspect of the potential of LLMs to support creative, decolonial translation practices, and/or that analyse their dangers.

In the process of modernizing literature in Asia, including Korea, the role of Buddhism, which serves as the ideological foundation of these regions, is undoubtedly significant. While research has predominantly focused on the influence of Western literature and Christianity, it is now essential to shift attention to Buddhism and understand its impact on the modernization of Asian literature.

The cultural Cold War (1945-1989/1991) initiated by the Soviet Union-led Communist bloc and soon joined by the United States-led capitalist bloc, was marked by aggressively ideological and propagandistic deployments of literary education and research. The Soviets claimed the glories of Russian literature as proof of the superiority of Communism, while the US spread the idea that British and American literature carried a clear ideology of freedom and democracy. Both sides made extensive use of cultural diplomacy efforts – including establishing and funding journals and publishers, supporting and staffing academic programs, and sponsoring author lecture tours – to engage in a form of information and psychological warfare that had an enormous impact on institutions and cultures throughout the world.

This Group Session will build on studies of individual examples of each bloc to explore how in East Eurasia the East-West, communist-capitalist binary became obscured and contested, as well as deeply entangled in local colonial, post-colonial and decolonializing contexts, resulting in a changed and charged literary-cultural terrain. Through archival research and theoretical analysis, papers in this session will address relationships between state and non-state cultural diplomacy programs, literary representation, and institutional developments – aspects of the cultural Cold War which deserve greater scrutiny, given how present and future geopolitical conditions carry echoes of a not-too-distant past.

The convergence between literature, media, and technology has sparked significant transformations in the production, dissemination, and reception of texts, underscoring the dynamic nature of literature and its remarkable adaptability to technological advancements. This convergence has fostered the creation of interconnected narrative ecosystems. The interaction between the literary text, its material forms (such as the book), and its abstract categories (authorship, readership) cannot be seen as solely a contemporary phenomenon. Rather, it reveals an enduring impulse that has shaped cultural production throughout history – from oral transmission to the web, from linearity to fragmentation, and to interactivity. Today, the novel and its medium, the book, are increasingly viewed as one of many gears in complex processes of adaptation and the creation of transmedia storyworlds.

The dissemination of literary texts across contemporary digital media – platforms, websites, social media, and more – not only aligns with the dominant transmedial logic but also touches on material and dematerialization processes in the life of the book. This context encourages a reevaluation, and even an expansion, of several historically established elements in literary theory and criticism and their intersection with media studies – such as authorship, reception, reader/user, and text.

The fragmentation of the book’s materiality into a mosaic of digital, nonlinear, and interactive texts, for instance, hints at a form of reception rooted in gamification. Meanwhile, a narrative impulse has been increasingly integrated into video game experiences (narrative video games). Similarly, immersive experiences generated through the interplay between the physical medium of the book and various forms of extended reality invite new practices and reflections on the ‘transmateriality’ of media. In immersive experiences using augmented or virtual reality, the materiality of the book often reappears as a symbolic value – a tangible record of an intrinsically ephemeral experience due to its virtual nature.

The aim of this panel is to explore the intersections between books and digital media supports through a broad, interdisciplinary perspective that bridges diverse methodological approaches. Below is a non-exhaustive list of potential topics:

- The book in the adaptation processes and the construction of transmedia storyworlds

- Expanded literature: the role and use of books in media art

- The intermedial dimensions of the book (e.g., game books, digital narratives, interactive storytelling)

- Hypertext and the digitization of writing (e.g., automated writing, algorithms, and AI)

- Augmented literature: books beyond the page in extended reality experiences

The objective of this closed group session is to address two key "border-crossing" phenomena that characterize 21st-century literature in the context of the advancing information age and media diversification: “transmediality” (adaptation across media) and “transnationalism” (consumption and adaptation across national borders). The session aims to construct an analytical framework to explore how these phenomena give rise to new forms of tourism.

Specifically, the session will first review the existing frameworks of literary tourism research and their limitations. Following this, four scholars—two men and two women from both Korea and Japan, ensuring a balance in both nationality and gender—will examine the characteristics of recent literary works in terms of transmediality (e.g., adaptations into manga, anime, video games, TV dramas) and transnationality, through several concrete case studies.

The case studies to be discussed include: the new literary pilgrimage phenomenon inspired by the Japanese manga and anime Bungo Stray Dogs; the transnational development and tourism surrounding Chinese detective novels; the transmedia and transnational expansion of the Three Kingdoms as classical literature and its related tourism; and the transmedia and transnational spread of Korean webtoons.

The session will then analyze how such border-crossing phenomena are triggering interactive tourism experiences and clarify the characteristics of these interactions.

It will argue that traditional approaches to literary tourism studies are insufficient to fully capture these phenomena and that the framework of contents tourism, which has recently gained attention in tourism studies, offers a more effective analytical tool.

Through this session, we aim to demonstrate the potential for literature studies to transcend disciplinary boundaries and explore new applied research fields.

In his One Hundred Years of Solitude, Márquez drops a hint that the indigenous populations of Latin America migrated from Asia, through the purported Bering Land Bridge, with the implication that a look towards the East can potentially reshape the pattern of globalization that had doomed Latin American communities since 1492. This symposium proposes to provide new thoughts on this question. We welcome papers that investigate literary means of remaking the world. Possible topics include: 1. How the literary imagine and reimagine international relations, trade patterns and global traffic of people, goods and ideas, merging general perspectives with detailed depictions of lived experiences. 2. How changes in patterns of globalization converge with the emergence of new literary genres or transformations of existing genres. 3. How literary works negotiate the dialectic of forcing group identifications (along social and ethnic lines) and maintaining individual mobility. 4. How media, communication technology, and material culture have facilitated new translocal or transnational networks of communication and action at significant historical moments. The symposium does not limit itself in regard to periods or languages, though we imagine most papers will focus on authors and texts from the early modern period onwards from a broad geographical and linguistic scope, including in particular literary/cinematic texts offering thoughts on Euro-Asian encounters, Asian diasporic experiences or cross-racial connections. Papers that consider the intersections of the material and media conditions of global exchange and literary conceptions of globalization are particularly welcome.

We have already recruited a number of participants. If accepted by the Congress, we would like to make it an open session and recruit more participants who we believe will bring interesting contributions.

Currently, the presentations already included in this panel fall into two time periods, the early period and the 20th-21st centuries. Topics range from the diversity of global imaginings in early modern European literature informed by Asian culture to colonial and postcolonial responses to Eurocentric models of globalization enabled by new technologies of mediation.

Prof. Jin (East China Normal University), Prof. Cheng (Fudan University), Prof. Gao (Beijing University), and Prof. Wang (Guangdong University of Foreign Studies) will present on early modern literature. Prof. Huh (Seoul National U niversity), Prof. Li (Fudan University), Liu (PhD student at Nottingham University) and Ni (PhD student at Nanyang Tecchnological University) will present on modern and contemporary topics.

This panel aims to redefine diaries as a genre by focusing on the intricate relationship between technique and technology that takes place during the processes of writing, reading, and editing diaristic materials. Traditionally viewed as linear and monological, diaries are often interpreted as spontaneous, authentic reflections of an individual’s inner life, and edited consequently. However, this panel will explore how diaries, particularly those authored by women in the 19th-20th century, often result from complex cross-genesis practices that involve specific techniques and demand to be rendered through specific technologies. By integrating methodologies from textual genetics, gender studies, and digital humanities, this panel will reconceptualize diaries as dynamic objects, shaped by the interplay between the writer’s technique and the reader’s technological engagement. This approach will illuminate how both the material practices of diary writing, and the digital technologies used to analyze these texts contribute to their evolution and interpretation. Panel Objectives: 1. Exploring Intermedial, Co-Writing and Cross-Genesis Techniques in Female Diaries: - This panel will investigate the specific writing techniques employed in diaries, such as revision, annotation, and commentary, which reveal the collaborative nature of these texts. By examining how male readers interact with and influence these diaries, the panel will discuss how traditional writing techniques contribute to the complex, multi-layered production of meaning within the genre. The focus will be on how these techniques—often viewed as purely authorial—are, in fact, part of a broader co-writing process that involves readers and their technological tools. 2. The Role of Technology in Diary Analysis and Editing: - By employing digital humanities methodologies, this panel will showcase how modern technology allows for a deeper genetic analysis of diary manuscripts. Digital tools can uncover the layer

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Intermedial studies, a growing field in the humanities, explores the evolving relationships between various media forms through intermedial combination (heteromediality), transmediation/media transformation, and intermedial representation. Our session aims to introduce new directions and interdisciplinary perspectives in this field, focusing on four key topics:

1. Digitalization: Digitalization is likely one of the most important watershed lines between the old and new studies of intermediality. Even though intermediality is not a new historical phenomenon, digitalization seems to accelerate its impact. The hybrid forms of digitalization across media forms reshape our understanding of human and non-human communication, bringing significant epistemological changes that will continue to evolve.

2. Intermediality and Performance: Intermediality often works in tandem with deep understandings of performance and performativity. The concept of performance has undergone numerous changes, with new modes emerging in visual arts, installations, and multimedia concerts.

3. Media Agency: The ways in which the agency of media and technology in intermedial art reflects new notions of mediation as a quasi-performative function. Media has inherent agency affordances: they communicate aspects of the world, but by doing so media also perform an act upon the world.

4. Intercultural Perspectives: The age of globalization and the new political and ideological borders necessitate an intercultural approach to the conventional notions of intermediality and mediation.

In summary, based on the above four key topics, this session will foster dialogues on how intermedial experiences, driven by innovative artistic practices, lead to significant ontological and epistemological changes, and whether current intermedial studies can adequately address contemporary and historical intermedial phenomena.

Conveners of the session:

Prof. Feng Wei is a professor in the School of Foreign Languages and Literature at Shandong University, China.

Prof. Jørgen Bruhn, Linnaeus University, Sweden; professor of comparative literature and director of the Linnaeus University center for intermedial and multimodal studies, and co-chair of “CLAM”, the ICLA standing research committee on Literature, Arts, Media.

Participants:

Prof. Chengzhou He, Dean of School of Arts, Nanjing University, China, vice-president of the Chinese Comparative Literature Association

Prof. Svend Erik Larsen, Aarhus University, former vice-president of Academia Europaea

Prof. Espen Aarseth, Dean of School of Media and Communication, City U of Hong Kong

Prof.Wei Feng, Shandong University

Prof. Yuqin Jiang, Shenzhen University

Prof. Lanlan Du, Nanjing Univeristy

Prof. Hansong Dan, Nanjing University

Prof. Rong Ou, Hangzhou Normal University

Associate Prof. Chang Chen, Nanjing University

Associate Prof. Weiyi Wu, Nanjing University

L’intégration des extraits littéraires dans l'enseignement du FLE ne doit pas être perçue comme un simple ajout, mais comme un moyen de rendre l’apprentissage plus vivant et engageant. Il s’agit des outils puissants pour stimuler l’intérêt des apprenants et approfondir leur compréhension de la culture francophone. Cependant, de nombreux enseignants de FLE hésitent à exploiter ces extraits ou les omettent. Ce constat est fréquent dans l’enseignement du FLE, où l’accent est souvent mis sur des approches plus fonctionnelles ou pratiques. Avec l’omniprésence de la technologie, ces extraits tombent parfois dans l’oubli.

Une question s'est alors posée à nous, enseignants de FLE : la technologie constitue-t-elle un défi pour l’intégration des extraits littéraires ? Notre travail démontre le contraire. Grâce aux outils numériques, ces extraits prennent une nouvelle dimension, rendant l'enseignement plus interactif et engageant. Les technologies modernes permettent aux apprenants d’accéder à une vaste diversité d’œuvres littéraires francophones via des plateformes de lecture en ligne, des podcasts ou des ressources multimédias. Cela ouvre la voie à un véritable enrichissement culturel francophone, en plongeant dans les réalités historiques et sociales à travers des supports variés.

En parallèle, les extraits littéraires, associés à des activités interactives comme des quiz ou des discussions en ligne, favorisent le développement des compétences linguistiques des apprenants. Ils peuvent donc mieux comprendre les subtilités de la langue, tout en étant guidés par des outils d’analyse de texte et des plateformes éducatives.

De plus, l’utilisation de la technologie permet un engagement culturel plus fort. En participant à des forums en ligne ou en analysant les textes à travers des outils numériques, les étudiants s’approprient les œuvres de manière plus active. Ils apprennent à interagir avec la culture francophone tout en renforçant leur compréhension des textes littéraires.

Enfin, les extraits littéraires, même intégrés dans un cadre technologique, continuent de transmettre des leçons de vie intemporelles. Nous avons ainsi réussi à exploiter un extrait du roman Bel-Ami de Guy de Maupassant, introduit dans la méthode Inspire 3, comme étude de cas. Ces extraits apportent aux apprenants non seulement la richesse de la langue et de la culture, mais également de nombreuses autres vertus telles que l’ouverture d’esprit, l’engagement émotionnel, la pensée critique, et l’empathie à travers des leçons de vie significatives sur des thématiques universelles.

Des pages numériques aux cœurs, l’alliance de la littérature et de la technologie offre un apprentissage du FLE plus enrichissant.

In the Humanities, notions of coloniality and postcoloniality are usually entangled with nation states that are, by nature, multilingual and multicultural. The societies of each of these nations are further stratified based on hierarchies of economic and social-political classifications. In other words, motivated and maintained by and through power and notions of telos, differences of race, sexuality, caste, and religion exist in differing ways. Literatures of these differences then occupy their space(s) under the larger category of ‘postcolonial literature(s)’.

The question that subtends and underscores this panel is one that is simultaneously critical of and constitutive of this categorisation. What makes a text 'African' or 'Anglophone'? What makes a text 'Muslim' or 'queer' or 'diasporic'? We are asking: if what the reader encounters is a ‘voice’ in a particular work of (postcolonial, for the purposes of this panel) literature, how then does or does it not end up becoming the voice? Individual voices resist classification; yet collectives provide agency. How then can we map the tension between the collectives of the categories mentioned above and the voices they constitute?

Barthes says that “the multiplicity of all writing” has a site, and it is not the author – it is the reader. By centering the reading of a text (as opposed to work), we learn of not just polysemy, but of the inevitably plural nature of meaning and reception itself. Literature then, understood as an event that requires the author’s intentionality, the reader, and the text, becomes the site of infinite relational possibilities of reading. Each reading, then, being particular and unique, has the capacity to form a relation with the text differently.

It is inside the practice and philosophy of Comparative Literature wherein we situate such a conception as the discipline, by name and definition, assumes – and rightfully so – the existence an ‘other’ who exists as different and apart from the ‘I’. By assuming this difference, Comparative Literature allows us to reopen and critically examine categories of difference.

Even after facing “deaths”, this discipline remains acutely relevant and thriving through its foregrounding of method, rather than theory worship. Perpetually assuming, perceiving, and acknowledging alterity, the methods and frameworks of comparative literature perceive existences as opposed to essences.

We are looking for papers that employ conceptual frameworks that challenge and go beyond (both, Western and local) categorisations and hierarchies, and we would welcome papers that also disagree with this panel.

Please send in your abstracts (around 250 words) that involve any of the following categories: Postcolonial Studies, South and Southeast Asian Studies, Queer Studies, African Studies, Migration Studies, Dalit Studies, and other areas categorised by geopolitics and experiential markers.

Recently, even among humanities scholars, the use of database technology has led to a new type of analysis and methodology, particularly in the use of data which draw a cognitive map of the relationship between research subjects, in the collaborative nature of data generation, and in the final visualization of information patterns. It is a known fact that a new research environment is being created by linking existing fields with interdisciplinary research in terms of “convergence.” Both unstructured and structured data can be said to be “metastable pre-individual.” When the “database” of literary texts is put in the context of the “pre-individual” of the existing literature of the entire world, world literature can be constructed from various perspectives. We can look at foreign literature from the future-oriented and progressive perspective to redirect the national literature as an individual. How should we read the digital world literature that is being coded as it spreads through the logic of change? In order to understand the system as a whole, one must accept to lose something, and that humans always have to pay the price for their theoretical knowledge. In addition, reality is infinitely rich, and concepts are abstract and poor. World literature as a pre-individual existence is the repository of discourses of human intellect, sensibility, and understanding with infinite potential. This seminar will deal with the logic of transduction as a structural and executional inventive and creative logic that lies at the center of the continuous and dynamic conversion between the pre-individual and the individual of each converging event of digital world literature.

This panel investigates border crossings manifest in the works of European travellers and scholars as they reflect on their physical and intellectual encounters with India, Japan and Korea from the earliest encounters until the present day. Spatial and metaphorical crossings are equally considered: geographical border crossings as manifested, explored and reconceptualised in earlier and contemporary travel narratives; border crossings in cultural historical terms through geographical and linguistic texts and dictionaries, and border crossings understood symbolically through their translations and creative transcreations. A commitment to the interrogation of World Literature’s genealogy underpins these enquiries through the panel’s exploration of the dimensions of European encounters with the different cultures of the Indian subcontinent, Japan and Korea. Papers will address the physicality of literal and textual encounters during the past four centuries with a view of establishing patterns of the modality. The perception of the Other will be traced through largely non-canonical travel narratives and lesser-known representations by European authors. Whilst acknowledging that, since Said’s work, the framework of Orientalism and its exposure of colonialism has provided the guiding narrative for understanding European encounters with India, Korea and Japan, this panel will offer an interrogation of the generalisability of Said’s assumptions. Inviting discussions on lesser-known texts describing India, Korea and Japan will offer new avenues to theorising East-West encounters. Reflections on patterns underpinning linguistic or geographical treatises will contribute to the cultural history of representations, and will lead to a more nuanced understanding of the assumptions underlying contemporary world cultural histories.

Themes may include (but are not limited to) the dimensions below:

• Languages of international circulation then and now and their influence on Europe and encounters with India and the Korean Peninsula

• Attending to historicity: minor literatures or literatures of non-circulatory languages?

• ‘Small’ European literatures encountering literatures of India and Korea and Japan: modalities, intellectual projects and patronage

• The representations of the Far East in less commonly translated European languages

• In what terms do travellers, linguists and geographers discuss their interest and motives in physical and intellectual travels?

• How are India, Korea and Japan represented in travel writing and scholarly texts?

• Generic conventions and their relationship to representing the lived experience in travel writing

• Homogeneities and particularities over time in travel writing about India, Korea and Japan

As AI technologies advance, language departments face questions of relevance, while exophonic writing by authors like Jhumpa Lahiri and Yoko Tawada flourishes.

The etymology of the term “exophony”: “exo” (from Ἐξ [ex] = “outside, external”) and “phony” (from Φωνὴ [phōnē] = voice) can be understood as the voice from outside. Yet, what’s "outside"? Every “exo” inherently implies an “endo”.

As Yasemin Yildiz suggests, languages are shaped by nationalistic frameworks that confine their identity to the nation-state with which they are associated. Primarily articulated by Tawada in her 2003 essay Exophony: Travels Beyond the Mother Tongue, exophony aims to transcend such restrictive assignments. However, it remains a theoretically under-explored field, with limited research dedicated to it. While “migrant literature” and “translingualism” engage with related themes, they are not interchangeable concepts. Further investigation could thus unveil new avenues of inquiry and significantly advance this area of study. Additionally, exploring the definition of exophony may serve as a heuristic tool for examining and understanding the evolving landscape of language technologies, particularly in relation to artificial intelligence.

We welcome papers aiming at defining exophony by engaging with, but are not limited to, the following themes:

1. Exophony in the Digital Age: How does the rise of AI-powered translation and language learning tools impact the practice and reception of exophonic writing?

2. The Politics of Linguistic Choice: What are the political and philosophical impacts of writing in a non-native language in AI-driven globalization?

3. Exophony and Translation Studies: How does exophony challenge or complement current approaches to translation, in light of advancing AI translation capabilities?

4. Future of Linguistic Diversity: Reflections on how exophonic practices might influence the preservation and evolution of linguistic diversity in an AI-dominated future.

The group session “Factory of the present: literature, culture and criticism in the Global South” aims to analyze the reach of Global South theories, seeking, in parallel, to reflect, in a comparative perspective, on the production, circulation and institutionalization of literary, artistic and critical works investigated in the cultural fields in which they are inserted, looking to shed light on initiatives which, within the sphere of culture, can contribute to a counter-hegemonic globalization.

The key conceptual component of the session is the emergence of the so-called Global South in contemporary cultural and literary trends and developments, which is viewed as an opening to a differential approach to globalization that represents a counter-hegemonic turn towards an inclusive and cosmopolitan global society. It must also be emphasized that what is named here the “Global South” is a relational rather than geographical entity, which means it comprises a set of relations and contacts that may occur anywhere in the world or within interactive networks and that aims to offer alternative narratives to the hegemonic ones emanating from the metropolitan sites of power and decision-making.

The title of the group session is based also on the theoretical proposition by Argentine researcher Josefina Ludmer regarding the concept of post-autonomy. According to the author, these writings no longer possess an outside and an inside, and in them reality and fiction aren’t articulated in a specular way because they merge into reality-fiction. Thus, literature ceases to be the construction of other possible, utopian worlds, and becomes part of the “public imagination” that plays out in the fabrication of the present. This procedure originates in the suspension of the field of literature, which becomes situated in the indefiniteness of a reality-fiction that transforms its space into a means of producing reality. For the author, this ensures the critical principle of post-autonomous writings since, by fabricating the present without opposing reality and fiction, such works engender other writings about the “real” and, thus, insert themselves aesthetically, ethically and politically into a public arena.

The papers to be presented will focus on contemporary artistic and theorical-critical works that adopt the position outlined above and discuss the variations that the term Global South have been taking on and that fall within the reflective field of the tactics of survival and resistance to late capitalism.

Since the rise of postcolonial studies, Chinese culture in Singapore and Malaysia—emerging from the Chinese diaspora and developed within British colonial settings—have been examined against the backdrop, and, in the subversion of, two dominant cultural hegemonies: Eurocentrism and Sinocentrism. However, with cultural studies increasingly engaging with diverse fields such as minority, intercultural, class, and gender, the postcolonial "center-periphery" logic has, in recent years, been called to greater scrutiny. Scholars like Simon During, Makoto Miyoshi and Paul Jay re-examine colonial history from a “transnational” perspective, shifting from the binary narrative of "colonized/periphery—colonizer/center" to a more nuanced observation of transregional and intercultural interactions, while also considering how transnational flows of political and economic forces affects cultural commodities. From the perspective of Singaporean and Malaysian Chinese culture and literature, this transnational turn in cultural studies has opened many previously unexplored research areas, including the interplay between Singaporean-Malaysian Chinese culture and other marginalized Southeast Asian cultures, as well as its connections to broader cultural phenomena, such as the Cold War and 21st-century migration.

This collection of papers seeks to re-imagine Singaporean-Malaysian Chinese culture and literature within this broad academic framework, while also introducing significant yet lesser-discussed writers and cultural figures from Singapore and Malaysia to the global scholarly discourse. In her macro-study leading this panel, He Qianru conducts digital text mining on 56 Chinese-language novels from Singapore published between 1936 and 2015. By extracting references to global literary, musical, and cinematic works within these texts, she creates a geographic heatmap that reveals the changing influence of global cultural works on Singaporean literature over time. Sun Zhiwei examines how Dr. Lim Boon Keng (1869–1957), a prominent cultural figure in colonial Singapore, contributed to Singapore's unique multiculturality by bridging the gap between the English-speaking Peranakan community and the broader Chinese population. Moh Lee Fair explores how the experience of East Malaysian Sarawak writer Liang Fang (b. 1953) studying in the UK influenced his novels—not through the lens of the Eurocentric, but through cross-cultural humanistic connections he found among elderly in UK care homes and the Iban community in Sarawak. Teoh Jia Yu analyzes Taiwan’s complex role as a nexus of Eastern and Western academic cultures amid the Cold War of the 1960s-1980s through the experiences of Singaporean Chinese writers studying in Taiwan. Lastly, Zhou Liting discusses how Singaporean online literature attracts Chinese-speaking authors from across Southeast Asia and the broader Asia region, creating a space characterized by cross-regional, cross-class, and cross-linguistic diversity.

This group session proposes to rethink the concepts of world literature and global literature from the perspective of Erich Auerbach's masterwork _Mimesis_ and his "Philology and Weltliteratur" essay. How can the categories of realism and national literature be relevant to the construction of cosmopolitan ideas of nation, representation, politics, and ethics?

A recent dissertation by Madigan Haley ("Global Mimesis: The Ethics of World Literature after Auerbach," 2014) argues that "that the global in the literary is best approached not as a stable content, imposed ideology, or economic byproduct, but rather as an ethos, which has been at stake and emerging over the past half century in literature from around the world." But, as Haley suggests, does Auerbach argue for "world literature’s ability to figure 'a common life' as a process of cultural and political standardization"? This session will consider the inherently ethical and political dimensions of Auerbach's project, insofar as it seeks to reveal the democratizing power of literary representation, a power that is global in its reach and effects, and not merely European. One of the best examples of this approach is Jacques Ranciere's idea of the "politics of aesthetics," which is inspired by Auerbach's example (see Ranciere, "Auerbach and the Contradictions of Realism").

While the term "renaissance" traditionally evokes a specific Western time period and cultural movement, this panel challenges that narrow interpretation by expanding the concept to include diverse cultural rebirths across the globe. It critiques Eurocentric narratives in renaissance studies, advocating for a more inclusive understanding that recognizes the vibrancy of cultural revitalization in contexts such as the Arab Nahda, the Chinese Renaissance, the Hebrew Renaissance, the Persian Renaissance, the Catalan Renaixença, the Harlem Renaissance, the renaissances in India, and the Maori Renaissance, among others.

By exploring these varied movements, the panel highlights the unique historical trajectories and social dynamics that shape each renaissance, emphasizing the intrinsic cultural forces at play. Moreover, it proposes the establishment of a new field of "global renaissances," spotlighting often-overlooked cultural phenomena and their significance. Ultimately, this panel aims to illuminate the rich tapestry of these movements, encouraging readers to reconsider what a renaissance can signify in our interconnected world.

This Group Session is open to further paper proposals. Any questions should be addressed to Gang Zhou (gzhou@lsu.edu).

Futurism is usually considered to be a series of explorations and practices across genres and media centered in Italy and Russia in the first half of the 20th century. But with the hindsight of the 21st century, Futurism has a greater temporal and spatial depth. If we experimentally define Futurism as a long-term trend of thought that focuses on the future, explores and imagines the changes caused by technological development, especially changes in production relations, social structure and world order, then we will start from the first wave of Futurism centered on the European continent, go through the second wave of Futurism (Futurology) centered on the United Kingdom and the United States, and arrive at the third wave of Futurism that emerged after the Cold War, that is, the Global South Futurism as the theme of the panel.

Starting with Afrofuturism proposed by Mark Dery in 1993, the non-Western futurism movement, which mainly emerged in the Global South, has become a grand spectacle today, including but not limited to Arab/Gulf Futurism, Latinx Futurism, Chicana Futurism, Sinofuturism, and Indigenous Futurism. Writers and artists in the Global South use a variety of forms such as science fiction, folk music, documentaries, digital images, and installation art to express the true feelings of ethnic groups and individuals who are caught up in the deepening globalization, reject ideological imagination of the future, and develop a local and world vision that reflects the cultural self-awareness of the Global South. The significance of this imagination is to strive for the right to define the future (as part of cultural hegemony), that is, the power/right to portray, write and predict the future world picture, life pattern and invention.

Our panel is dedicated to the discussion of Global South Futurism of various regions and forms. We especially welcome the following topics: How does Global South Futurism understand the past, present and future? How to view the relationship between locality (particularity) and globality (universality)? How to transcend the Western/North-centered imagination of the future? What role does Afrofuturism (African Futurism) play in the rise of Global South Futurism? How does Global South Futurism move from literary and artistic creation to social practice? How do the imaginations of the future of the South and the North communicate?

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was a world-renowned writer. Born in Greece, raised in Britain and Ireland, worked as a journalist in the United States, translated French novels, and spent time in the French West Indies to collect folklore and write novels. After coming to Japan in 1890, while teaching at high schools and universities, he wrote many essays introducing Japanese folklore and customs and played a role in conveying various aspects of Japanese culture to the world. In his later years, he published “Kwaïdan”, which is known today as a reflection of various ghost stories from his childhood in Ireland to the United States and the French West Indies, rather than a compilation of Japan's unique "ghost stories."

Throughout his life, Hearn was influenced by various things in each place where he stayed, enriching his life and writings. Although he was forced to drop out of high school, he continued to read books and enrich his bookshelf as an educated person. For Hearn, not only his encounters with people but also his encounters with books had a great influence on his later writing activities. In addition, Hearn's writings have had a great influence in various places. Just as “Kwaïdan” and other writings on Japan made Japanese people aware of aspects of Japan's traditional culture, “Youma” provides the West Indies people with testimonies of the good old days, while at the same time reminding and encouraging them of the subtleties and pride of the human heart, which is now often lost.

The most well-known materials for studying Hearn are the Lafcadio Hearn Library at the University of Toyama in Japan, which houses most of Hearn's books during his lifetime, and the Barrett Collection at the University of Virginia in the United States, which contains many letters and manuscripts left by Hearn's family after his death. We believe that to promote Lafcadio Hearn research by utilizing the materials in these archives or by developing research resources left in other places, it is necessary to collaborate with researchers in various regions.

With this international conference, we would like to collaborate with Lafcadio Hearn researchers around the world. The common theme is "Hearn and Asia," and we are planning to give the following speakers, and we hope that researchers from all over the world who are interested in Hearn will participate.

Comparing eastern and western literary works, we examine varied forms of technologies in relation to society and politics. Through the lens of Socrates’ and Heidegger’s concept of “techne” and Taoists’ “Jixin”, our group investigate technology’s potential for revolution and corruption. Encompassing works from Victorian Britain, Ireland, China, and Singapore, our four studies focus on the complicated interrogation of technologies in the literary narratives and cultural imagination. The panel starts with a study of The Invisible Man (1897) by H.G. Wells, a Victorian prototypical sci-fi. Drawing on the alienation critique by Karl Marx and Rahel Jaeggi, this interdisciplinary study of literature and philosophy explores the motif of alienation as a loss of command caused by capitalization on knowledge and power. This foreshadows a more unsettling moral dilemma in Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones (2016), where the posthumous protagonist-narrator recalls his family’s various reactions to the power oppression from politicians with different priorities. This study explores how postmodern and artistic narratives are employed as literary techniques to navigate through the moral dilemma by integrating technology with humanitarianism. Then the panel continues with the analysis of a contemporary Chinese novel, The Seventh Day (2013) by Yu Hua, which examines how misfortunes come into being in the lives of the characters, deeply entangled in the dialectic between technology and power. It argues that this novel warns against imprudent wielding of power with technology in modern society, a reminder of prudent choices in individuals. The panel concludes with The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia (2017-) by Ho Tzu Nyen. It explores how technology potentially expands aesthetic elements, employing virtual reality tech to immerse the audience in the experience of distorted history. By extending the technological canon as an artistic medium, he allows for imaginative explorations of a world free from the constraints of power dynamics. Comparing these narratives and works, we aim at uncovering how technology provides the source of power for individuals, how it enmeshes citizens in moral dilemmas of modern society, how it breeds misfortunes and manipulates the ruled once deployed by the ruling, how it embodies resistance against a society already governed by a system armed with technology. Considering the bold representation of the dialectic between technology and power in these literary and art works, we propose that literature, being “techne”/ “technique” per se, at once functions as a critical force, a resistance point, and a remedy to the technologies in the technologized society (polis). Therefore, our group read literature as an “alternative technology” and methodology (“art”/techne) that reflects the technological progression and resists moral “regression” within the framework of systematic power, governance, and socio-political-technical relations.

In the digital age, social media has emerged as a cultural archive, dynamically shaping and reshaping narratives within a shared, yet often polarised, public sphere. This paper examines the role of social media in constructing and disseminating narratives surrounding Lord Ram and the Ram Mandir (RamTemple) in Ayodhya, India, particularly within the complex socio-political landscape of the post-truth era. Utilising a comparative literature framework, the study analyses digital discourses and user-generated content across social media platforms where historical accounts, mythological interpretations, and political ideologies intersect and often conflict. This study foregrounds the idea that social media functions as a modern-day archive, where fragmented memories, collective emotions, and competing truths converge, each contributing to an evolving digital mythos of Ayodhya. The study examines how traditional narratives are reimagined to fit contemporary ideological motives, creating a hybridised form of storytelling that reflects the values, beliefs, and anxieties of diverse online communities. Additionally, it explores the mechanics of algorithmic amplification, whereby specific narratives gain prominence, potentially distorting historical or cultural facts to reinforce particular ideologies. By comparing these digital representations with classical literary accounts and folk traditions, the paper highlights the transformative effects of digital technology on cultural memory and collective identity. It argues that in the post-truth era, where facts and emotions are often indistinguishable, social media not only archives but actively reshapes public understanding of cultural identity. This study ultimately calls for a critical examination of how technology mediates cultural memory and the historiography of Ram Mandir.

We are a group of PhD candidates who meet the invitation of Comparative Literature by working across unexpected and underexplored axes of Japan Studies. In light of the transnational turn in literary scholarship, we seek to foreground comparisons that complicate the traditions of East-West and North-South analysis. Thus we have found productive common ground in our challenge to the assumptions of literary influence. In place of a hierarchy of texts (as implied in popular theories such as Moretti’s law of literary evolution), we seek to read in juxtaposition and consider the multilateral influence and resistance of literary cultures and voices. To this end, we have found genre studies to be a fertile ground for such reconsiderations.

Julia’s presentation examines A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki, as symptomatic of a transpacific dialogue in autofiction. Approaching this genre from the perspective of shishōsetsu, or the “I-novel”, a Japanese genre to which Ozeki calls attention in her text, the work is read as an intervention into the deeply gendered generic histories on both sides of the Pacific. Through the doubled voices of Ruth and Nao, two Japanese women who write to each other across an ocean, Ozeki underlines the effacement of women’s writing across time and space, broadening the contours of genre whilst presenting reading as a form of care.

Oliver’s work in crime fiction juxtaposes the earliest detective fiction in Japan and Argentina, a hitherto unexplored axis that sheds light on the impact of genre on an emerging global market. As the successful model of the literary detective spread from Europe and America, its impact had remarkable parallels in both Tokyo and Buenos Aires. Lawyers and policemen found new routes into a literary marketplace, where imported structures of law enforcement and justice were challenged on a narrative level. Read in comparison, the assumptions of imitation embedded in detective fiction must be reevaluated in light of narratives of resistance and rebellion from the Global South.

Harry's paper offers a comparative reading of the Russian exilic poet Eduard Limonov’s It’s Me—Eddie with Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask. Drawing upon the socio-political context of each author, the presentation identifies unexpected traces of far-right extremism in their earliest literary work. Through their glorification of tight muscles, killing machines, purity, and the absolute binary of Self/Other, both writers hint at a fascist aesthetic driven by a fetish for the perfect and able-bodied male physique. In dialogue, these texts suggest that while the personal is political, the political is also transnational.

Ninety years after the publication of Benjamin’s essay Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, the debate around the challenges of technology and concomitantly the (im)possibilities of human imagination as a translational site of hospitality is still relevant, albeit in different ways. This panel aims to look at and into the multiple ways in which translation, hospitality and imagination intersect at a time when technology appears paradoxically both a promise and a threat. Drawing inspiration from Benjamin’s essay and his refusal to give in to pessimism, the panel will discuss the place of imagination in reconceptualizations of hospitality through translation in an age when creativity is often subsumed to technological innovation. Challenging the assumption that creativity rhymes with innovation, the panel will explore avenues of enquiry that resist anticipatory proclamations of the death of human translation, and suggest instead that translation should be reframed as the sign of imaginative interpretation, i.e., of endless potentiality and nuance.

In this light, translation and translatedness become the locus of the human in its multiple fractures and entanglements (Pratt 1987), be these geographical, linguistic, political, or social – in a word, experiential. As such, translation cannot be mistaken for a technique, it is an ethical and political gesture capable of reimagining the world as a hospitable place. ‘L’hospitalité, dans son principe, renverse l’ordre des urgences. L’étranger deviant prioritaire. Elle offre une autre possibilité de penser et de vivre notre présent’ (Schérer 2004) – hospitality becomes a provocation of the standardization of discourses and experiences, as it forces the self to meet what is foreign to itself, to imagine otherwise. Hospitality via translation is transformative in more ways than one, as it implies a refusal of ‘philosophies of the One’ (Glissant 2010), and builds upon the premise of relation(ality) between languages, people, experiences. Out of translation as relation (the opposite of translation as equivalence) emerges a poetics of contamination that becomes the clay from which one fashions one’s interior language, to heterodoxically paraphrase Mireille Gansel (2017). How this ‘interior language’ subsequently shapes the language of the community, emerging as a ‘communal language’, is one of the quandaries of our current experience. Examining translation as the language of languages (wa Thiong’o 2023), this panel aims to question the role of translation as a lens – a technology of sorts – through which one sees, and thus makes, the worlds one lives in, as well as the blind spots any lens produces.

In this context, participants are invited to explore the links between translation, hospitality and imagination in an age where capitalism and technology meet in unprecedented ways (Zuboff 2019) and pose ever new challenges to the understanding of what being human means.

In the 21st century, literature is no longer confined to printed books or written text but is mediated by digital technology in multisensory ways. These technological and sensory changes call for a fundamentally intermedial perspective to literature. This article presents intermediality as a crucial framework for unpacking the changing interplay between objects, communicative resources, and conventions of literature in general. Specifically, Lars Elleström’s intermedial framework (2010, 2021) enables a more fine-grained exploration of the digital condition of literature. Analysing Swedish poet Johannes Heldén’s digital artwork Evolution (2014) with Elleström’s media modalities enables us to trace how technological changes transform our literary experience, compared to a printed poetry collection or AI-generated poems. Apart from interart relationships and an approach to digital literature, an intermedial perspective highlights the potential of literary language use and offers valuable insights for the future design of man-machine-creativity.

This individual presentation as part of a proposed group session: The Intermedial Networks of Texts and Narratives Across Media

This group session explores the intermedial networks that arise between and within narratives and texts, images and sounds in hybrid media ecologies and transmedial storyworlds, explores the role of literature between media, as well as the role of narration transformed by digital technologies and new digital media types.

Beate Schirrmacher is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Linnaeus University, a member of the Linnaeus University Center of Intermedial and Multimodal Studies, and head of the International Society for Intermedial Studies. With Jørgen Bruhn, she is co-editor of Intermedial Studies—An Introduction to Meaning Across Media (2021). She has previously published on literary transformation of music and performative aspects of intermediality. Her current research focuses on intermedial perspective to the digital transformations, truth claims of media and narrative strategies of journalism.

This panel examines how black women navigate, challenge, and reimagine transnational spaces through literature and performance in the 20th century via three papers. Bringing together analyses of literary works and stage performances, these papers explore how black women writers and artists employed various strategies – from storytelling to bodily performance – to resist racial and gender constraints while negotiating their identities across national boundaries. The papers trace both the possibilities and limitations of transnational movement, revealing how black women’s creative expressions serve as powerful vehicles for critiquing social norms and fostering new forms of community and belonging beyond national borders. Together, these studies illuminate the complex intersections of race, gender, and nationality in black women’s transnational experiences, while questioning conventional narratives about identity formation and cultural resistance.

Opening with a critical examination, He’s paper “Nella Larsen’s Quicksand (1928) and the Limitations of Transnational Identity” underscores the inherent challenges in transnational identity formation through Larsen’s protagonist Helga Crane. By examining how racial and social realities often complicate or inhibit the seamless integration of multiple cultural identities, this study provides a crucial framework for understanding the complexities and constraints that shape black women’s transnational experiences.

Moving from these limitations to strategic resistance, Zhu’s paper “‘Fearless and Free’: Josephine Baker’s Transnational Performatives of Raced Femininity” demonstrates how black women could negotiate and subvert these constraints through performance. Through analysis of Baker’s theatrical presentations in 1920s Paris, particularly her strategic deployment of exoticized tropes, the study reveals how performance could become a powerful tool for claiming agency within transnational spaces.

Building on these strategies of resistance, Wang’s paper “Everyday Politics of Transnational Community in Gayl Jones’ Mosquito” explores how transnational solidarity can emerge through everyday practices and cultural exchanges. By examining the U.S.-Mexico border region as a space of transformative interaction, the study shows how mobility and movement can foster new forms of community among marginalized groups, suggesting possibilities for transcending traditional concepts of identity and belonging.

Together, these papers trace a trajectory from the structural constraints that have historically limited black women’s transnational mobility to the creative strategies they have employed to resist these constraints, and finally to the possibility of building sustainable transnational communities. This progression allows us to understand both the persistent challenges and the emerging opportunities in black women’s navigation of transnational spaces.

Writers, critics, and students have been prominent in protest movements across the world since the 1950s. Indeed, the identity of the "intellectual," according to some scholars, is inseparable from the act of protesting (consider Zola's "J'Accuse"). With the global spread of economic models, political movements, and means of communication, public expression of dissent has seen international loops of mutual learning and exchange. At the two ends of the Eurasian continent, we have seen the rise of a culture of protest both rooted in local conditions (language, literary heritage, imagery, evocation of historical traumas) and open to new influences (slogans, mediatization, non-violence, "being water," "blank paper," "stumbling stones"). This panel welcomes comparative discussions of movements, methods, aims, cultural agendas, and means of work with memorials and archives.

Cette recherche explore la fragmentation et la reconstruction de l'identité dans l'œuvre de Marguerite Duras, marquée par son expérience de l'entre-deux culturel en Indochine. En analysant des romans dans le cycle indochinois et indien, nous montrons comment la confrontation de l'Orient et de l'Occident influence la construction identitaire des personnages, notamment féminins. Tiraillés entre des influences multiples, ces personnages s'engagent dans une quête identitaire qui les amène à défier les normes sociales et à se réinventer.

Notre analyse portera sur la formation identitaire des Occidentaux orientalisés, à savoir Anne-Marie Stretter/la Dame de Vinhlong, la jeune fille, le vice-consul. Ils sont tous les personnages qui vivent dans un entre-deux et la présence de la culture orientale modifie leur personnalité, déforme leur vision sur la société coloniale. La merveille des paysages exotiques dans les récits de voyage cède la place à la plaine dangereuse et mortelle, à la discrimination même au sein des colons, à l’humiliation devant la richesse des Chinois. Ainsi, la culture orientale – culture dominée – ébranle la fierté de la culture occidentale – culture dominante. Si les parents de Duras sont venus en Indochine pour faire fortune, pour mission d’éclairer la civilisation orientale comme l’idéologie coloniale voulait désigner, les préoccupations quotidiennes, médiocres comme la nourriture, le vêtement, ou l’argent se substituent rapidement à cette mission. L’Orient durassien n’est pas l’Orient vu par un orientaliste comme Edward Saïd afin d’éclairer ses mythes pour l’Occident, pour montrer que l’Orient ne fait pas partie de l’Occident. Il exprime la rencontre entre l’Occident et l’Orient « entre l’expérience asiatique, l’écriture romanesque et un traumatisme originel ».

Que ce soient les Occidentaux ou les Orientaux, le cycle indochinois et indien reconstitue le regard rétrospectif de Duras sur les anciennes colonies françaises, le terrain de rencontre avec autrui, en regroupant les pièces identitaires éparpillées lors du contact avec la culture de l’Autre.

Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor and Guan Hanqing`s Rescued by a Coquette both demonstrate concern for women`s ethical choices and orthodox order by depicting their unique ways of maintaining ethical order and their struggle against ethical order disruptors. The high similarity in plots makes it possible to conduct comparative research between the two plays. Two plays depict the different ethical choices made by various female subjects under the manipulation of the Sphinx factor, highlighting the decisive role of humanistic and animalistic factors. Writers use the subtle ethical choices made by female characters to form a complete process of ethical choices and present the maintenance of ethical order. This article aims to clarify the various ethical choices made by ethical subjects under the influence of the Sphinx factor, as well as the progressive relationships between subtle choices. The wave like process of making choices has achieved the ultimate success of ethical choices for female characters.

Languages are mobile, continents stay where they are. This makes the notion of ‘European’ languages questionable, given the global spread of English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. The former ‘core’ nations have reduced influence. We are living in a post-European world.

From a literary point of view, the situation is complex and exciting. Writing in European languages, especially in the global south, continues to grow. Intra-European dynamics (and crises) have in turn injected new vitality into the literatures of the continent, where publishing and reception infrastructures remain robust and to some extent internationally dominant. Migrant writing, ‘Afropean’ writing, Eastern European literatures, small literatures––all of these are currently multiplying the many facets of European-language literatures.

With this in mind, ICLA’s Committee on the Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages invites papers that address aspects of this evolving, global literary landscape.

Questions to be discussed include:

• What theoretical models are needed to account for the post-European condition?

• How can we rethink literary history in the light of this development and, conversely, what can history teach us about our present situation?

• What different (and even contradictory) cultural policies are at play in this plural field?

• Can the global and local dimensions be considered together, or are they incommensurable perspectives?

• Has linguistic difference as a literary quality been superseded by the hyper centralism of English and social media, or has it been revived?

Muhyidhin Mala and the Imagination of ummah (community) in early 17th century Kerala.

Abstract: This paper attempts to read the 17th century text, Muhyidhin Mala and explores how identities were imagined through a hagiography. The collective imagination of ‘people’ brought forth through this text, at the centre of which faith organises the Islamic moral order, sheds light on Islam in South India in the context of a multicultural society. The language of faith, as narrated through the miracles (Karamat) of Abdul Qadir Jilani (1077-1166) may be situated within the historical context of Bhakthi in 17th century Kerala. But it also gives valuable hints about the ummah-the Islamic followers from the region, the kind of self-fashioning and disciplining aspired to be a follower of the religion. The reimagining and retelling of the saint’s life, distanced from the locus of its origin in Persia, also freeze temporalities, making the text important both as a site of memory and also as a contemporary experience in the socio-religious landscape. Qazi Muhammad, the author, inserts himself in the text urging the followers to listen and follow. However, the reception of the text also reveals the interconnected nature of the material in the text, since the Abdul Qadir Jilani had many textual representations in multiple performative practices of Muslim communities in South India. Muslims all over Kerala and other regions in the South continuously practised performances that praised the life of this sufi saint and the founder of the Qadiriyya order through Maulids and Ratheebs. Reading this text through aspirations that shaped the community, I argue that linguistic identity is pushed to the background as a negotiable medium, whereas the politics of faith/ piety functions as the intermediary to bring people together.

The twelve short stories in Chimamanda Adichie’s, The Thing Around Your Neck (2009) each is a tour de force. This great Nigerian writer who lived in Enugu and was partly educated in America draws from her life in both countries and writes in English. She tackles various themes in this collection such as challenges of migration to America, racism, sexism, and the brutality of colonialism to name but a few. This study will compare two pairs of her story “The Thing Around Your Neck” to Osama Allam’s Tareek Motassea leshakhes Waheed (2023) [ A Boulevard for a Lonely Person]. Allam who is an Egyptian writer focuses on the experience of patriots in the USA and other countries too. However, the researcher will analyze the stories with America as a setting for various stories. Alienation and loneliness loom large in both collections. This presentation will focus on all the previous issues from a postcolonial perspective. Such a perspective will rely on numerous critics such as Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Robert Young, J.G. Ballard, Elaine Showalter, Gayatri Spivak, and Julia Kristeva among others.

Keywords: Adichie, Allam, Postcolonial, short stories, East and West