Call for Papers: Special Issue of Cross-Cultural Studies on Han Kang and the Cross-Cultural Imagination

• Deadline for abstract submissions: November 30, 2025
• Deadline for full manuscript submissions (upon acceptance of abstract): September, 2026
• Publication Date: December, 2026
• Languages accepted: English
• Full name / name of organization: The Center for Cross-Cultural Studies, Kyung Hee University, South Korea
• Guest Editor: Dr. Hyeryung Hwang, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
• Contact email: hhwang@cpp.edu

Overview

In light of Han Kang’s receipt of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, this special issue seeks to reframe her work as a powerful entry point for examining intersections of global aesthetics, cross-cultural expression, and the poetics of historical trauma. We invite contributions from across the humanities—including but not limited to comparative literature, history, philosophy, gender and sexuality studies, translation, performance, visual culture, anthropology, and media studies—that engage Han Kang’s texts not only as literature but also as cultural and ethical acts situated within transnational dialogue.

We particularly encourage submissions that take innovative approaches to form and methodology, that engage Han Kang’s works across diverse disciplinary contexts, and that address broader global and humanistic questions through her oeuvre.

Scope and Objectives

This issue aims to:

• Reposition Han Kang’s writing within global literary frameworks, critically engaging concepts such as world literature, minor literatures, the literary periphery, and cosmopolitan circulation.
• Examine the historical, ethical, and cultural frameworks embedded in her fiction and nonfiction, from the Gwangju Uprising (Human Acts), to eco-critical narratives (The Vegetarian), intergenerational loss (We Do Not Part), lyrical mourning (The White Book), and linguistic estrangement (Greek Lessons).
• Analyze processes of global transmission including translation practices, international reception, cross-cultural pedagogy, and institutional infrastructures (e.g., translators, literary awards, funding bodies like LTI Korea).
• Connect Han Kang’s work to urgent questions in the global humanities, including but not limited to embodiment, environmental ethics, traumatic memory, language politics, gendered resistance, and multi-modal expression across genres and disciplines.

Potential Areas of Inquiry

Below is a non-exhaustive list of potential themes and topics. We welcome creative interpretations, cross-disciplinary methodologies, and comparative frameworks:

• Han Kang and the global literary landscape
• Local writing, international recognition: Korean literature on the world stage
• The symbolic politics of the Nobel Prize and its global literary hierarchies
• Historical violence, postcolonial memory, kinship and care
• Ethics, testimony, and collective memory
• Representations of atrocity, mourning, and survival
• From individual grief to national trauma: layered remembrance in Han Kang’s fiction
• Ethical aesthetics and narrative responsibility
• Embodiment, ecology, and resistance
• Language, voice, and translation
• Author-translator dynamics and the politics of mediation
• Korean literary poetics in translingual circulation
• Pedagogical approaches and public humanities engagements
• Dialogues with other traditions of witnessing: Latin American testimonio, Holocaust literature, Caribbean and Indigenous poetics etc.
• Cross-cultural feminist readings and ecocritical juxtapositions

Submission Guidelines

To submit to this special issue, please first send an abstract (250-500 words) to the guest editor, Dr. Hyeryung Hwang: hhwang@cpp.edu. After your abstract is accepted, you will be invited to submit the full manuscript through the Cross-Cultural Studies submission system.

• About The Center for Cross-Cultural Studies at Kyung Hee University:

https://ccs.khu.ac.kr/?language=eng

• About Cross-Cultural Studies journal (https://ccs.khu.ac.kr/publishing/cont5): Cross-Cultural Studies, published by the Institute of Cross-Cultural Studies at Kyung Hee University, had been issued quarterly since its inception in 1994. Since 2021, the journal has been jointly published by the Institute of Cross-Cultural Studies and the Global Academy for Humanities at Kyung Hee University three times annually—in February, June, and October. Recognized as a peer reviewed academic journal listed by the National Research Foundation of Korea since January 2010, Cross-Cultural Studies features scholarly articles that adopt an integrative and interdisciplinary approach. The journal encompasses a broad spectrum of fields, including literature, linguistics, language, education, and culture, from both Eastern and Western perspectives.

Timeline

• Abstract Deadline: November 30, 2025
• Notification of Abstract Acceptance: December 15, 2025
• Manuscript Deadline: September, 2026 (Upon acceptance of abstract)
• Editor/Peer Review and Final Revisions: September to November, 2026
• Publication Date: December, 2026