Korean Literature, Language, and Culture at MMLA invites proposals exploring Korean literary studies, language pedagogy, film and media, translation studies, diaspora studies, and cultural production across historical and contemporary contexts. For the 2026 MMLA Convention, we especially invite proposals that engage with the conference theme, “After the Archive.”

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
• Colonial and postcolonial archives and knowledge production, and historical memory in Korea and the Korean diaspora
• Gendered silences in literary and institutional archives
• Counter-archives, protest media, and alternative documentation practices such as activist print culture and community archives
• Literary and cultural engagements with archival absence, trauma, and historical silences
• Korean literature and film as sites of archival reconstruction or critique
• Translation as an archival practice and the global circulation of Korean literature
• Digital archives and the preservation of Korean cultural heritage
• Diaspora memory, migration narratives, and transnational archives
• Linguistic archives and the history of Korean language preservation
• K-pop, film, and popular media as archives of contemporary cultural memory
• Artificial intelligence and the future of cultural documentation in Korean literature, language, and culture
• Archives of repression and the politics of cultural preservation
• Literary and cultural resistance to censorship

Please send a proposal of 250-300 words and a short biography to the Section Chair, Dr. Heejoung Shin (hs27@uic.edu) by April 24, 2026. Proposals should include the author’s name, email address, and institutional affiliation. Graduate students, early-career scholars, and interdisciplinary researchers are encouraged to submit.