cfp.english.upenn.edu

Literature is related to everyday life in a subtle way. Everyday life often manifests itself as the textual Other outside the major narrative thrust, and, therefore, receives scant critical attention in literary studies. In fact everyday life can be seen as an arena of two-way negotiation: it is where power reproduces itself in daily practice, but it is also where both personal and collective creativity intervenes in the reproduction of power. Moreover, everyday life often emerges, becomes visible, or acquires meaning through its engagement with other social categories—gender, race, class, ethnicity, nature, and so on, whose different relations with dominant regimes of power call for different strategies of everyday life practices. Can everyday life be taken as a micro site of resistance to the biopolitical production of social relations and forms of life? How do we conceive aesthetics in a living condition increasingly defined by urbanization, information, media, science, and technology? How do we connect the socio-historical forces of globalization and empire with the mundane details of everyday life practices? In terms of English and American literature, how do we mobilize “everyday life” as a working concept to approach literary texts of all ages, be it Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare’s drama, 18th-century domestic fiction, Romantic poetry, Thoreau’s writings, or American ethnic literature, to name just a few.
This conference invites abstracts that explore and reflect upon the theories / issues of everyday life within the field of literature in English. Possible topics include but are not restricted to the following:

 *Popular literature and popular culture
 *Life of common people
 *The aesthetics of everyday life
 *Everyday life and religion
 *Gender and the body in everyday life
 *Technology in everyday life
 *Theories/discourses of everyday life
 *Everyday life and ethnic and aboriginal literatures
 *Everyday life and urban writing
 *Modernity, globalization and everyday life
 *Work and livelihood
 *Everyday life and ecological writing
 *Fashion and consumption
 *Leisure, entertainment, and travel

Conference/Paper Language: All the papers need to be written and presented in Chinese or English.

Guidelines for Abstract Submission:
1. The maximum length of the abstract should be limited to one page.
Page 1: title, abstract, and keywords
Page 2: author’s CV in one page (including author’s name, working experience, selected publications, e-mail, phone number, and postal address)
2. Submission via e-mail at: foreign@dragon.nchu.edu.tw (Please put “Abstract for EALA Conference” as the subject).
Submission Details:
1. Full papers: Papers should be no more than 20 pages in length. 2. Paper format: MLA; Paper size: A 4; Font: Times New Roman 12;
Line spacing: 1.5
Important Dates:
Due date for domestic abstract submission: December 20, 2009
Due date for international abstract submission: December 31, 2009 Notification of abstract acceptance: January 15, 2010 Due date for full paper submission: October 25, 2010
Contact:
Mr. James Tsai, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures,
National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan
Tel: 886-4-22840322 ext. 703
E-mail: foreign@dragon.nchu.edu.tw