Standing Session

Asian / World Literatures and Comparative Studies

Yuchen Yan (University of California - San Diego)
y9ya@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

Huiqi Zhang (University of Arizona)
huiq@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

The "East-West Literary Relations" session seeks to foster a discussion that crosses various disciplines and methodologies, including but not limited to literature, history, science, anthropology, religion, philosophy, film, art, and music. We welcome papers highlighting the cross-cultural exchanges and encounters between “East” and “West,” or challenging binaries and dominant discourses, or further deploying alternative geocultural frameworks from any historical period. We are also interested in studies that provide critical perspectives on canonical literature, cinema, and art, or studies on lesser-known works that spotlight marginalized voices and narratives. Particular consideration will be given to papers that engage with the conference theme of “Translation in Action.”

The "East-West Literary Relations" session seeks to foster a discussion that crosses various disciplines and methodologies, including but not limited to literature, history, science, anthropology, religion, philosophy, film, art, and music. We welcome papers highlighting the cross-cultural exchanges and encounters between “East” and “West,” or challenging binaries and dominant discourses, or further deploying alternative geocultural frameworks from any historical period. We are also interested in studies that provide critical perspectives on canonical literature, cinema, and art, or studies on lesser-known works that spotlight marginalized voices and narratives. Particular consideration will be given to papers that engage with the conference theme of “Translation in Action.”

The distinction between East and West once held significant influence in knowledge production, ranging from voluminous travelogues from Western authors to the prosperity of Oriental Studies in the academia of the 18th and 19th centuries. Postcolonial scholarship since the 1970s, including Said’s Orientalism and Spivak’s subaltern studies, sheds new light on the East/West distinction as a dynamic relationship, instead of two settled categories. As globalization significantly boosts the movement of humans, material goods, cultural products, and texts, it gives rise to a wide range of imaginations, potentials, and intellectual tools, but meanwhile crises, conflicts, and unequal distribution of power in the constantly changing geo-political landscapes.

Highlighted topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

● (Colonial) modernity and modernism; Postcolonial critique

● Translation studies/Violence of translation and untranslatability

● World Literature(s)/National Literature; Language and grammatology

● Critiques of institutionalized knowledge and academic epistemology (area studies; global south studies)

● Writings of the Other; Writing as/against violence

● Narratives of trauma and violence

● Imperialism/De-imperialization

● Literature, cinema, and art about diaspora, migration, displacement

● Transpacific studies; oceanic etymologies

● Utopian/Dystopian views on relationality/connectivity

● (Techno) Orientalism/Occidentalism

● Global media and mass culture

● Discussions on nature-culture relations; ecological studies; science and technology studies

● Metropolitan cities and cosmopolitanism

● Alternative world-making strategies