Annual meeting

AJLS 34th Annual Meeting

University of Utah, May 14–15, 2027

Games and Play in Japanese Literature and Culture

Call for Papers

The 34th annual meeting of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies will be convened at the University of Utah on May 14 and 15, 2027. We anticipate beginning in the morning of 5/14 (Friday) and concluding in the evening of 5/15 (Saturday). The theme of this conference is games and play in Japanese literature and culture. We see games and play as fertile subject matter for humanistic inquiry into the interactions of bodies, texts, images, cultures, and spaces both actual and virtual. We invite paper and panel proposals about a wide range of possible topics and questions, grounded in any time period (or periods), including but not limited to:

- The rhetorical and narrative use of games: how do games figure in texts? what sorts of textual play do games enable?

- Games as popular culture and/or subculture

- Theorizations of games and play: interactivity, games in cultural studies, games and play as metaphors for social processes

- Games in Japan and elsewhere: transculturation, localization, adaptation

- Tensions between narratology and ludology in approaches to interpreting games

- Social and gendered aspects of gaming: who can play and who cannot?

- Games, media, and technology: tabletop games, video games, VR

- Games, competition, and internationalism: e.g., the cultural impacts of large events such as the World Cup and the Olympic Games

- Places and spaces of gaming: court salons, basement gaming rooms, Esports arenas, arcades, augmented reality

- Pedagogy and games: how are games being taught? how is teaching being gamified?

Please submit a 250-word proposal for a single paper, or a 500-word proposal for a panel (three presenters and a discussant), using this submission form by December 15, 2026. The form will also ask you to answer a few additional questions related to your submission.

We especially encourage proposals from graduate students and early-career researchers.

We will notify applicants of the results by late January 2027. Please direct inquiries to the following email address: ajls2027utah@gmail.com.

We look forward to welcoming participants to our Salt Lake City campus in May!

Ashton Lazarus

Cindi Textor