ANNOCEMENTS FOR INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE SPRING 2023
AMJLS is pleased to announce that the annual conference of Spring will be held as the International Conference to promote collaborative research activities between domestic and oversea scholars on modern and contemporary Japanese literature. It will be an excellent opportunity to organize panels and exchange vibrant discussions. Please read the guideline below to start the submission process.
Date: June 24-25, 2023
Venue: Aoyama Gakuin University, Aoyama Campus, In-Person*
*It may change to Web conferencing due to the COVID-19 restrictions.
Conference Theme: Intersection in Literature: Plurality of Translations and Texts
For the 4th International Research Conference, we have chosen the topic “Intersections in Literature” to rethink literature as an intersection, a place where various elements collide, mix, and converge. We will attempt to clarify the multi-layered aspects of literary texts by focusing on how seemingly heterogeneous elements, such as language, space, and time, intersect and transform each other.
This topic will centralize the problematic nature of translation. As postcolonial studies and cultural studies have shown, the act of translation embraces and involves the hierarchical attitude that leads to the formation of nation-states. Recently, studies on world literature have demonstrated how the act of translation can relativize English-centrism. Although the initial purpose of translation is to convey linguistic information from the original text as intended, it will also reinterpret a new text—translation functions as a creative and dialogical practice. It opens the dialogue not only to the author and translator but also between author and reader, and sometimes even between different cultures. A multi-layered aspect of literary creation will emerge by examining how words intersect to produce a text. For the lively discussion, we would like to invite active participation from both domestic and oversea researchers that will share the aim of re-establishing the stimulative, though complicated, aspects of translation.
GUIDELINES FOR PRESENTATIONS
- Presentations regarding the conference theme or individual presentations regarding Japanese modern and contemporary literature are welcome. Please note that topics should not be previously published or presented. We do not accept the summary of the dissertation. If your presentation includes the chapters in a dissertation, please inform us what changes are made to participate in this conference and the URL of the institutional repository.
- Presentations should be either panel discussions or individual papers. For the types of presenting, you can choose either A) In Person or B) On Demand (You need to provide the link of your video on our home page).
- We welcome the proposals regardless of your membership, but non-members should pay 10,000 JPY, and we do not have reimbursement for your travel to participate.
- For panel and individual presentations, the language should be Japanese or English. For panels, languages other than Japanese and English are welcome but be sure to provide interpreters.
- Please note that you have two hours for the presentations for a panel in person and 30 minutes (plus 10 minutes for Q and A) for individual papers. There are no limits on the maximum number of members for panels, but please ensure enough time for discussion with the audience. For Virtual presentations, panels are in 90 minutes, and individual presentations are in 30 minutes.
- You can submit your proposals from September 30th to November 30th online. We do not accept any submissions after the deadline. Please select either A) the application form on our website (encouraged) or B) sending the entree sheet and the abstract to the address: kindaibungakukai〔at〕gmail.com *change〔at〕to @ in use. The panels’ abstracts are maximum of 1500 words and 400 words for the individual presentations (in Japanese).