Shifting Worlds: Navigating the Global English Context

English and its global study have been in a constant state of flux. The emergence of new fields within the discipline allows for new forms of innovative and interdisciplinary research. Our geographical location affords a unique perspective within these emergent structures, making collaborative research particularly pertinent. In the second annual Coalition of English Departments in Asia conference in Hong Kong, we turn to themes of identity, mobility and place in pursuing our own research and histories in the global English context.

Whether it be linguistics, literary criticism, gender studies or media research, many fields are rapidly expanding and reshaping the study of English. These developments encourage the formation of new methodologies and intellectual networks, inaugurating new possibilities for research. Our coalition brings postgraduates and scholars together within a global English context and introduces participants to future colleagues.

Writing in Times of Crisis

Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom

The turn of the 21st century ushered in a series of crises at a supranational scale. From humanitarian to environmental, from economic to epidemiological, crises tend to galvanize change—changes in policies, as Friedman observes, but also in epistemologies, philosophies, and practices.  From a structural perspective, a crisis is that which disrupts, parenthesises, and/or suspends quotidian life. During a crisis, an array of political strategies are employed to maintain order social order: nations declare martial law, emphasize national security, declare states of emergency, and/or re-work tax legislations, with varying effects and public responses. The corollary fallout of these strategies raises questions concerning temporalities and potentialities, legislated boundaries and borders, and hospitalities and resistances. And indeed, in some cases the concept of crisis has been intentionally deployed as a justification for political change, for better or for worse. We warmly invite all papers – from across the fields of Literature, Linguistics, and Theatre Studies – that investigate how crises are represented, interrogated, perpetuated, and/or mediated. Focusing on either one specific crisis or more general notions of crisis or crises management, papers might also discuss how the crisis is mobilised as a political, aesthetic, ethical, linguistic, and/or theoretical tool, or how writing is a site of contesting and/or mediating crisis.

COEDA 2020 is now open for submissions. Papers should be no more than 15 minutes long in delivery. Each panel will likely be comprised of 3-4 postgraduates working in different fields and/or disciplines. Please email your title, 250-word abstract, and two-page c.v. in a Word document to your university's COEDA representative. The submission deadline is 30 May, 2020.

Reading Healings, Writing Cures

In the current era of multifaceted crises, not only human beings but social institutions, nation-states, and the non-human world are caught in a state of precarity. The “catastrophic times,” as Isabelle Stengers characterizes, bespeak the urgency of reconsidering the scope of literary intervention, particularly in terms of literature’s healing and curative potential. From ancient oral traditions to contemporary “narrative medicine,” humans seek healing and curing through stories. The rise of “reparative reading,” “bibliotherapy,” and “narrative care” also provide enriching, interdisciplinary approaches to how health discourses and narratives engage with politics, economics, ethics, religion, and identity.

The 2021 COEDA Conference will be held on September 24, 2021 at National Taiwan University. This conference welcomes papers that re-examine ways of practicing, imagining, and representing healing/curing. We look for new critical perspectives and approaches from fields including literature, linguistics, and cultural studies across all eras.

COEDA 2021@NTU is now open for submissions. Papers should be limited to 15 minutes long in presentation. Please email your title, 250-word abstract, and one-page bio in a Word document to your university’s COEDA representative by May 31, 2021.

For more information and latest updates, please visit the 2021 COEDA Conference website at https://sites.google.com/view/coeda/home. 

Please direct further queries to:

Prof. Hamilton Yang at mtyang@ntu.edu.tw

Rebecca Ning Lee at coeda2021@gmail.com