2021 ELLAK International Conference: “Beyond Pandemics: Reimagining the Humanities and the New Normal”

Abstract

188 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 48 (2021) NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE David Langford’s Ansible Editions. Ansible Editions, an ebook and print-on-demand enterprise, is owned and operated by David Langford, a British fan who has won 29 Hugos for his writing and editing. The press, which launched in 2003 (and is named for Langford’s long-running news zine, Ansible), has released a number of titles of significant interest to scholars of Anglo-American sf. These include the collected book reviews and critical essays of Algis Budrys in several volumes; the essays Brian Aldiss published in the legendary British zine, SF Horizons; Rob Hansen’s superb history of British fandom, THEN: Science Fiction Fandom in the UK, 1930-1980 (2017); the fan writing of American editor Terry Carr; and many more. The print editions are reasonably priced, with e-book options being cheaper. Ansible even offers a number of free e-books usefully gathering material in the public domain, including complete runs of Charles Platt’s New Wave zine The Patchen Review and Bruce Sterling’s cyberpunk zine Cheap Truth. The list of titles can be viewed at .—Rob Latham 2021 ELLAK International Conference: “Beyond Pandemics: Reimagining the Humanities and the New Normal.” Organized by the English Language and Literature Association of Korea (ELLAK), the conference will take place at Korea University, Seoul, South Korea, on 16-18 December 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic has turned our world upside down. In addition to disrupting our day-to-day work, travel, and interactions with others, the pandemic has had far-reaching consequences for the economy, educational system, healthcare services, and international relations. As we continue to come to grips with the havoc that the new coronavirus has wreaked on the world, the “new normal” has become an integral part of our vocabulary. It is not an entirely new term, however, having been discussed in relation to other major crises such as the 2005 avian flu, the 2008 financial crisis, and the global recession that shortly ensued. The “new normal” enables us to shed renewed light on the frailties of the human condition—as well as the structural inequalities that prevail in our societies—and consequently to reimagine the post-pandemic world. ELLAK aims to examine how the studies of English language and literature (more broadly, the humanities) can contribute to the interrogation of this term. It is during such times of crisis and radical change that literary and cultural texts can play a significant role. That catastrophes have a stimulating effect on the imagination is made evident by the plethora of plague narratives across human history. As previous works such as Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron (1348), Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), Charles Brockden Brown’s Arthur Mervyn (1799), Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842), and Albert Camus’s The Plague (1947) demonstrate, literary and cultural texts can help us imagine alternative modes of being and thinking as we face an uncertain future. The 2021 ELLAK conference organizing committee invites 189 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE scholars, educators, and students in the humanities as well as other disciplines to submit papers that directly or indirectly address issues related to the imaginative reconstruction of the “new normal.” Topics may include crises and disasters, conflict, and war. Among topics that might be of special interest to those in science-fiction studies are biopolitics, media and culture, environment and ecology, digital humanities, posthumanity, and transhumanity. To apply for participation in the conference, submit an abstract and short bio to 2021ellak@gmail.com by 30 June 2021. Proposals may be submitted for either individual papers or sessions. Individual paper proposals should include an abstract of no more than 250 words and a short bio. Session proposals should include a one-page proposal with a title and topic for a session of three or four papers, along with individual abstracts and short bios. Notification of accepted proposals will be on 31 July 2021. Presentations, which can be delivered in either Korean or English, will be no longer than 20 minutes. For further inquiries, please contact the Organizing Committee at 2021ellak...