2022年第30屆英美文學學會研討會

 

主題：（不）好客的年代

 

徵稿說明

 

 

2019年底開始的新冠肺炎疫情無疑地是廿一世紀以來影響人類社會最重大的事件。病毒快速蔓延，而且不斷地變種，似乎並無止息的跡象，令人聯想起過去造成死傷慘重的流行病。過去的瘟疫留下了許多醫療與人文紀錄，例如薄伽丘的《十日談》、狄福（Daniel Defoe）的《大疫年紀事》、波特（Katherine Ann Porter）的《蒼白的馬，蒼白的騎士》，和卡拉（Daniel Kalla）的《全球感染》等。人類從這些經驗中學習了對抗瘟疫的方法，其中一項是「檢疫」（quarantine）。此次新冠肺炎的疫情讓人們經歷了前所未有的大規模流行病之傳播，人們不但重拾檢疫方法對抗疫情，更是以各種隔離自我和他人的方法，保護個人不受病毒襲擊，確保自己身體是「乾淨」與「健康」的。

 

為了對抗新冠肺炎的超強病毒，人們被迫進入了不好客（inhospitality）的狀態。這裡的不好客是從德希達（Jacques Derrida）「悅納異己」（hospitality）概念出發，重新思考好客的意涵。德希達在《論好客》（Of Hospitality）中藉著好客的概念，探討我們要如何對待異鄉人∕陌生人（the foreigner∕the stranger）。德希達認為真正的好客應該要不問來者姓名、背景，無條件接納，不過德希達也稱此種好客為不可能的好客，因為在一般的狀況之下，主人都會對其所有地具有某種程度的掌控權與規範，主人決定如何對待來客，好客（hospitality）與敵意（hostility）其實是一線之隔，陌生人是敵是友則賴主人的態度與規範。也因此，好客與不好客是界線∕限的問題，也並非是截然的二分法。

 

本次年會以（不）好客的年代為主題，希望重新思考我們該如何對待陌生人與異物的議題。新冠肺炎的衝擊只是一個思考的起點，從過去到現在，我們的生活當中一直存在著許多未知的、意外的陌生人和陌生物，例如奇特的動物、植物、細菌或機器等等都是我們要面對的課題。以喬叟（Geoffrey Chaucer）的《坎特伯里故事集》（The Canterbury Tales）為例，三十位陌生人偶然間聚集在一起旅行，雖然彼此說故事展現了一種親密感，但框架故事夾雜著當時社會階級之間的敵意；又或者，狄瑾蓀（Emily Dickinson）的詩作中對死亡十分著迷，她以各種奇特的想像貼近死神這個隱形的陌生人，死神帶來的肉身死亡對詩人而言彷彿是禮物而不是恐懼；另外，在醫療文學中，人們記錄著面對侵入式的醫學科技以對抗意外的疾病;電腦叛客小說中，人們與電腦空間融為一體，網路成為人們生活中最親密的入侵者;在末日小說中，極端氣候的變化是最常見的想像，災難造成人類生存困難，人們必須學習與極端氣候這個可怕的陌生人共處;在後殖民議題的作品中，如何對待過去殖民時代的遺緒不單只是對抗入侵者留下之痕跡的問題。其他文學主題中亦多有因為特殊情境，「異」與「己」或「主」與「客」的界線∕限須重新檢視之議題，值得深究。

 

本次會議建議的子題如下，但不限於此，也歡迎其它與大會主題相關的論文：

 

（不）好客與瘟疫

（不）好客與非人

（不）好客與社群意識

（不）好客、文化生產與創造

（不）好客的社會正義

（不）好客、科技、治理與共群

（不）好客年代的醫療人文

（不）好客、社會福利與公共安全

（不）好客與身體

（不）好客與風險

烏托邦、反烏托邦與末日想像

生態、疾病與情感

災難與意外的訪客

科技與入侵者

 

 

本會議接受中、英文投稿，開放個人與小組（三人）提案發表論文，請於2022年1月15日前以電子郵件夾帶Word檔提案申請。個人提案者，請準備論文摘要（500字），並附上個人簡歷（包括學經歷、現職、簡要代表著作目錄、電郵信箱）； 小組提案者請準備整組提案說明（500字以內）以及各篇論文摘要（500字／篇），並檢附所有成員簡歷。提案請寄：

大會地址：80201高雄市苓雅區和平一路116號

電郵信箱：2022eala@gmail.com

郵件主旨：投稿第30屆中華民國英美文學會議

 

會議籌備小組將於2022年1月底前通知審查結果。獲接受者需於2022年10月15日前繳交論文全文，且須在會議議程確定之前取得本會會員資格，相關入會資訊請見學會網站：https://eala.org.tw/。

 

重要日期

摘要截止期限：2022年1月15日

摘要接受通知函寄送時間：2022年3月15日

全文繳交期限：2022年10月15日

入會期限：2022年10月1日

會議日期：2022年10月29日

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The 30^th Annual Conference of English and American Literature Association

 

Call for Papers

 

Conference Organizers: ROC English and American Literature Association (EALA, Taiwan) and National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan

【Date】 October 29, 2022

【Venue】 National Kaohsiung Normal University (Main Campus), Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Call for Papers

(By January 15, 2022)

 

Theme: The Era of In/hospitality

 

The spread of coronavirus disease starting from 2019 is undoubtedly the most serious event since the beginning of the twenty-first century. The virus soon became ubiquitous and turned into different variants rapidly with no sign of being contained. This event reminds one of those deadly pandemics in the past. Those who suffered from the pandemics in the past left us numerous medical records, journals, and imaginative accounts, such as Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, Katherine Ann Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider, and Daniel Kalla’s Pandemic. From those experiences, people learned how to tackle plagues, and quarantine is one of the methods among them. The pandemic we are going through now is an unprecedented one, forcing us to take all sorts of measures to isolate ourselves from, or reduce our close contact with, others to make sure that our bodies are virus-free and healthy.

No matter what methods we have taken, in order to fight against this highly infectious disease, we are forced to enter a state of inhospitality. Here, the conception of inhospitality is drawn from Jacques Derrida’s theory of hospitality to re-consider this concept. In his Of Hospitality, Derrida explores the issue of how we should treat foreigners/strangers. As he points out, real hospitality means that a good host should welcome all strangers without making any demands on them, like asking their names and backgrounds. Derrida also tells us that this is an impossible degree of hospitality since a host would expect a certain degree of control and regulation over his/her guests under normal circumstances. In other words, a host decides how s/he would like to treat his/ her guests and whether s/he wants to show hospitality or hostility to strangers. Therefore, the relationship between hospitality and inhospitality depends upon the host’s attitudes, and the relations between them are often ambiguous, not based on binary oppositions.

We chose in/hospitality as the theme of the conference, hoping that we can re-consider the issue of how to treat strangers, foreigners, and strange objects. The impact of COVID-19 is just a starting point to re-think issues related to unexpected, invisible, or unknown strangers and strange objects. In our daily life, we might see or confront strange animals, plants, bacterium, machines and other strange objects, and we have to learn how to deal with them. In different fields of literature, there have been innumerable descriptions and metaphors of strangers and strange objects. Take Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales for example. Thirty strangers accidentally gathered together in their pilgrimage. Their choice of story-telling as an entertainment during their journey became an action of showing intimacy to each other although Chaucer’s strategy of frame tales also presented the hostility among different social castes at that time implicitly. Emily Dickinson’s poetry is another example. Obsessed with death, Dickinson provided several bizarre imaginations to depict death, an invisible but intimate stranger to her. It seems that, for Dickinson, the demise of the flesh is a gift, rather than a source of fear. Also, in the field of medicine and literature, writers describe people’s suffering when dealing with diseases due to the “invasion” of advanced medical technologies. In cyberpunk, cyberspace, almost merging with humans, becomes the most intimate invader of humans. In post-apocalyptic novels, one of the most popular scenarios is the changes brought by extreme weather conditions which lead to disastrous events for human beings who have to learn to co-exist with these terrible weather conditions as unexpected strangers. In novels dealing with post-colonial issues, presenting the legacy of the colonial past often creates predicament for writers because it is not merely a problem of combating invaders and their traces. In other literary works, there are also many themes and scenarios examining the boundaries between “me” and “strangers,” or those between “subject” and “object,” and they are worth discussing.   

      

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

 

In/hospitality and plague

In/hospitality and non-humans

In/hospitality and social consciousness

In/hospitality, cultural production and creativity

In/hospitable social justice

In/hospitality, technology, political management and community

Medical humanities in the era of in/hospitality

In/hospitality, social welfare and public safety

In/hospitality and bodies

In/hospitality and risk

Utopia, dystopia and the post-apocalyptic imagination

Ecology, illness and emotions

Disasters and unexpected visitors

Technologies and invaders

 

Proposals for papers in English or Mandarin Chinese are accepted. Proposals for three-person panels are also welcome. Please email proposals as MS Word (.docx) attachments before January 15, 2022. Proposals for single papers should be accompanied by an abstract (250 words) and a cover sheet including the presenter’s education and employment history, current institutional affiliation, brief list of representative works, and email address. Panel proposals should be accompanied by a panel abstract (under 250 words), an abstract (250 words) for each paper, and a cover sheet including the aforementioned information for each panelist. Please send your email as below:

 

Email: 2022eala@gmail.com

Subject line: Proposal for the Annual EALA Convention 2022

Mail address: Department of English, National Kaohsiung Normal University, No.116, Heping 1st Rd., Lingya District, Kaohsiung City 80201, Taiwan(R.O.C.)

 

The conference committee will send out acceptance emails by the March 15, 2022. Accepted presenters must submit a full manuscript by October 15, 2022, and must become a member of EALA before the conference schedule is finalized. For membership application details, please see the EALA website: https://eala.org.tw/.

 

Important dates

Deadline for proposals: January 15, 2022

Acceptance emails sent by: March 15, 2022

Deadline for full manuscript: October 15, 2022

Deadline to join EALA: October 1, 2022

Conference date: October 29, 2022