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Comparative Literature and Technology
Congress Themes & Call for Proposals
Congress Themes & Call for Proposals
ICLA 2025
  • Association Internationale de Littérature Comparée/International Comparative Literature Association
  • XXIV Congress, 28th July - 1st August, 2025
  • Dongguk University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  • EAST-WEST Comparative Literature Association (KEASTWEST)
  • TransMedia World Literature Institute/Digital Humanities Lab
  • Congress Venue: KINTEX, Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do/Main Building Auditorium, Dongguk University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Congress Theme: “Comparative Literature and Technology”

The Congresses of the ICLA welcome papers and panel sessions on all aspects of comparative literature. Without precluding this inclusivity, they also set a theme or themes as special focus for our triennial gathering. The theme chosen for the XXIV Congress in 2025 is “Comparative Literature and Technology”, a relationship that raises important and even urgent questions today, but which has been relevant through the history of literature and culture.

The circulation of literature transcends its cultures and languages of origin in rhizomatic webs of texts, images, and sound, and networks of texts from various eras address global issues. In a similar vein, literary text files, creative images, and other cultural materials are converted into computerized datasets. They are stored, retrieved, and sorted into digitized networks, and they are written to output devices in distinctive and continually evolving forms of digital communication. Texts from various eras and locations address transcultural and global themes.

At a more profound level, the technology of transmedial and intermedial futurities combines art and literature and investigates the ways in which the material conditions of technology are exposed through the combination of artistic and theoretical contemplation. How can technology be employed to foster new forms of ethical behavior, thought, and creativity in the arts and literature? Cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence have seen transformations over the past two decades, and they now emphasize the environmentally embedded and embodied nature of intelligent action. The retreat of the human agent into a broader ecological environment has been articulated by posthumanism through the use of computer and information technology. Currently, human agency is confronted with “the sublimation of matter into the digital.”

In this era of the “digital sublime,” the field of comparative literature is preoccupied with language models and artificial intelligence. Finally, the recent resurgence of computer-generated texts, translations, and other artificial intelligence-related accomplishments has once again prompted the inquiry regarding the author's and other actors' roles in the literary realm. In addition to being a literary topic or a problem that warrants comparative study, artificial intelligence can also be employed as a tool for comparative literary scholarship.

In a 2015 article published in Comparative Literature, Matthew Wilkens proposes that this reluctance can be overcome by evaluating computer tools for the purposes of comparative literature, including text mining, network analysis, sociology of literature, clustering, and mapping. In fact, the digitization of large textual archives and the development of techniques such as computer-assisted distant reading have opened new perspectives for the study of literature. Nevertheless, the terrain of Comparative Literary Studies remains one of the hot potatoes for digital research.

These issues affect us all in the present, but they also invite us to revisit, from a comparative, interdisciplinary, interacts and intermedial perspective the reciprocal relationships between literature and technology in earlier times, to include, for example, the invention of writing, the printing press, technologies such as film and photography and how they affect or relate to writing.

In attempts to balance the digital and the so-called “traditional comparative literature studies,” this call for proposals welcomes submission of a wide range of topics of interests to comparatists worldwide.

We invite proposals for group sessions and individual papers:

- Group session proposals can be closed (all speakers are already specified in the proposal) or open (they welcome proposal of papers). Deadline for proposal of group session: 31st October, 2024.

- Individual proposals can be made to the open Group sessions or to the Congress sessions. Individual proposal submisison will open on 7th November and close on 7th January, 2025.

There will also be sessions for early career scholars, under the aegis of the ICLA ECARE committee. These will also open on 7th November, 2024. More details about these will be published on the Congress website.

There will also be Special Sessions, by invitation.

Congress Sessions

A. Group Sessions: : “closed” (all speakers are already specified in the proposal) or “open” (they welcome proposal of papers): Titles of accepted group sessions will be published by 7th November, 2024.
B. Individual Sessions (Individual Sessions on topics proposed by the organizers and open to individual paper submissions)
C. ECARE/Next Gen Abstract Proposals
D. Special Session (Invited only)

A. Group Sessions
A1. Crossing the Borders
A2. Narration in Context
A3. Convergence of Literature and Technology
A4. Translation as Hospitality
A5. Korean Literature and Culture/Buddhist Literature
A6. Comparative Literature and Glocal Publishing
A7. Literary Prizes: Geopolitics and Aesthetics
A8. Open Session (We welcome your proposal of papers)
A9. Research Committees Proposal
B. Individual Sessions
Research Committee Session Proposals
Accepted Open Group Individual Session Proposals
C. ECARE/Next Gen Abstract Proposals
A WARM WELCOME TO GRADUATE STUDENTS AND EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS!
D. Special Sessions (Invited Only)
D1. Nobel Prize Winners in Literature
D2. Distant reading techniques and computational literary studies
D3. Presidents of National Associations Session
Call for Proposals
Guidelines
  • Proposals for Group Sessions must include: a title, an abstract of the session’s proposed theme and scope, the name(s) of the group session chair(s), the names of any other speakers already included, and if they are open or closed to further paper proposals.
  • If the group session is open, the session’s chair(s) will accept or reject proposals made to that session. Acceptance or rejection must be communicated to the Congress organizers by 19th February, 2025. Proposals rejected by the group session organizers will be considered for inclusion in the Congress Sessions.
  • Individual proposals may be submitted for Congress sessions as well as for open Group sessions, and they must include: a title, an abstract, and the title of the Congress or Group session applied for (e.g., A1 “East Meets West: Border-Crossings of Language, Literature, and Culture”).
  • Proposals must be written in English, French, or Korean.
  • Abstracts should be submitted in English, French, or Korean with 5 keywords.
  • Maximum 3000 characters; Font: Times New Roman; Size: 11; Line spacing: single.
  • Membership of the ICLA is required to present at the Congress. https://www.ailc-icla.org/membership-information/
Submission Types
  • A. Group Sessions
  • B. Individual Sessions
  • C. ECARE/Next Gen Abstract Proposals
  • D. Special Session (Invited only)
Important Dates
Group Sessions Submission
  • Submission due: 31st October, 2024
  • Acceptance Notice: 7th November, 2024
  • A list of accepted Group sessions will be posted on this site by 7th November, 2024.
  • The chair of the accepted Group sessions will be responsible for the choice of participants and, if the session is open, for the acceptance of individual proposals (to be communicate to the Congress organizers by 19th February, 2025).
Individual Proposal Submission
  • Submission period: 7th November, 2024 - 14th February, 2025
  • Acceptance Notice: 19th February, 2025