ELLAK 2026 International Conference

The End: Reclaiming the Beginning

Dates: December 17–19, 2026
Venue: Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea
Host: The English Language and Literature Association of Korea (ELLAK)

Keynote Speakers

• Jongsook Lee (Professor Emerita of English, Seoul National University; Scholar of Early Modern English and Greco-Roman Cultural Studies)
• Ursula K. Heise (Professor of English, UCLA; Scholar of Environmental Humanities)
• Sean D. Kelly (Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University; Scholar of Phenomenology)

Conference Theme

The ELLAK 2026 International Conference invites scholars across disciplines to respond to the theme of “the end” as a generative framework for humanistic inquiry. Rather than viewing “the end” as mere finality, the conference will explore it as a complex and dynamic concept—one that reveals the underlying forces of transformation and renewal. “The end” highlights the fragility of human and non-human life and enables us to better understand an era currently beset with international conflict, ecological collapse, technological upheaval, and sociopolitical turmoil. Far from being a cause for resignation, it inspires us to ask critical questions: What is ending? What ideas, values, and forms of life are dissolving around us—and why? What historical, cultural, or ideological conditions motivate claims that particular discourses, identities, or paradigms have ended, will end, or should end? How might attentiveness to endings reshape our understanding of knowledge, language, and existence itself?

For decades, much of modern academia has adhered to discourses of “crisis,” reinforcing linear, evolutionary master-narratives that frame change as a disruption to be managed or exploited. Shifting our attention to “the end,” we seek to foster a more dialectical understanding of what is being lost and what might yet be reclaimed or reimagined in these disruptive times. In keeping with this critical rethinking, ELLAK 2026 highlights the literary worlds of Han Kang, 2024 Nobel Prize laureate, and Don Mee Choi, winner of the 2020 National Book Award. Through their profound engagements with memory, erasure, and disappearance, they embody the power of literature not only to confront the end, but to transfigure it into a space of witnessing, rupture, and poetic renewal.

Suggested Topics

We invite papers and session proposals from scholars working in fields such as literature, philosophy, cultural studies, environmental humanities, and digital humanities. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Post-Identity Politics and Subjectivity Beyond Identity
• Post-Language Aesthetics and Experimental Literary Forms
• Genre Transformations Across Fiction, Poetry, and Drama
• Translation, Translingualism, and the Politics of World Literature
• National and Post-National Paradigms in Literature
• Crisis Narratives, Futurity, and Speculative Imaginaries
• Trauma, Memory, and Modes of Cultural Mourning
• Extinction, Ecological Imagination, and Environmental Ethics
• Posthumanism, Multispecies Entanglements, and Biopolitics
• Platform Capitalism and the Politics of Care
• Technological Disruption, AI, and the Digital Humanities
• Experimental Humanities and Alternative Scholarly Methodologies
• Media Ecologies, Performance, and the Afterlives of Texts
• Korean Wave and the Politics of Cultural Hybridity

Proposal Format and Submission Guidelines

Proposals should be submitted by February 8, 2026, to 2026ellak@gmail.com

For detailed submission guidelines, please see the full CFP here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zYq_j38zspoLZS8ccq2PzB3TmIcBXQdu/view?usp=sharing 

Important Dates

• Abstract submission deadline: February 8, 2026
• Notification of acceptance: March 31, 2026 
• Submission deadline for conference proceedings: June 30, 2026

Registration Fee

The standard registration fee is USD 50. This fee covers participation in all conference sessions, access to conference materials, and admission to official events and activities.

We look forward to your participation in what promises to be an enlightening and memorable conference.