<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:center"><b><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)">Call for Papers<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:center"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)">\u201cDivine Violence\u201d and Noble Rage: Gender and Justice in Korean Crime Fiction (hybrid)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:center"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)">The Institute for Korean Studies, Pennsylvania State University, April 10-11, 2026<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><b><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)">Keynote Speakers<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:top"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)">Caroline Reitz, CUNY Graduate Center</span><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(33,33,33)"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)">Ted Hughes, Columbia University</span><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><b><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)">A Special Lecture on Korean Literature</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)">Young-jun Lee, Director of the Research Institute for Korean Studies</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><b><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)">Conference Description</span></b><b><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)"></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">In recent years, Korean crime narratives\u2014crime fiction and crime-themed TV dramas, films, and webtoons\u2014have attracted significant attention from readers, audiences, and scholars both within Korea and internationally. In response to this growing popularity and the increasing scholarly interest in the historical, social, and aesthetic dimensions of Korean crime narratives,<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span><b>the PSU-SKKU Consortium on Korean Popular Narratives and Media</b><span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span>is hosting its third international conference, aiming to explore cultural representations of state, institutional, political, and everyday violence against socially vulnerable and marginalized groups in both premodern and modern Korean crime fiction.<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p style="margin-right:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><strong>Drawing on Walter Benjamin\u2019s concept of law-annihilating \u201cdivine violence,\u201d which confronts the injustice embedded in legal systems, as well as feminist scholarship on gender and justice in modern crime narratives, this conference invites papers that examine the aesthetic and political potential of crime narratives in expressing the precarity of the marginalized and the meaning of justice. We are particularly interested in explorations of how such narratives engage with gender issues at the intersections of sexuality, age, class, and race.</strong><b><span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></b><strong>Under the broad umbrella of \u201ccrime fiction,\u201d we welcome submissions that engage with diverse media and subgenres\u2014including film, TV dramas, webtoons, premodern court novels, science fiction, gothic novels, detective stories, medical horror, spy fiction, etc.\u2014to address key questions about justice, violence, and rage. We encourage scholars to develop papers based on their presentations for publication in a special journal issue.</strong><strong><span style="font-weight:normal"></span></strong></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">We welcome submissions on a broad range of topics related to gender and justice, including but not limited to:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">- The state, institutional, and everyday gender violence<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">- Imaginations of femme fatale in historical and modern crime narrative</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">- Representations of LGBTQI+</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">- The problem of law and law enforcement</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">- The relationship between crime and justice</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">- Changing notion of motherhood</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">- Transnational dimension of literary and media crime genres<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">- Crime and masculinity</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">- Militarism, insurgence, and espionage in Cold War Korea(s)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">- Historical memory of colonialism, the Korean War, and the democratic movement</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">- Korean diaspora</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">- Refugees in South Korea</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">- Medicine and healthcare</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">- North Korean crime fiction</span><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">- (East)<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">Asian crime fiction about Korea(s) or Korean diaspora</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)">Two nights of accommodation and meals throughout the conference will be provided. Limited funding is available through the Penn State Institute for Korean Studies for presenters who travel to and participate in the conference (priority will be given to graduate students and international participants).<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span><b>Please submit an abstract (250-words)<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></b></span><a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1CyKCqT2GgIigUxCSH08SDI8CKS6eAK_Di8rRauRZtIE/viewform?edit_requested=true" style="color:rgb(150,96,125)"><b><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif">here</span></b></a><b><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)"><span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span>by November 15, 2025. When submitting your abstract, please also indicate whether you would like to participate online or in person.<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></b><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)">The selection committee will communicate with scholars in mid-December 2025. Any inquiries may be addressed to Jooyeon Rhee (<a href="mailto:jxr5820@psu.edu">jxr5820@psu.edu</a>).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;line-height:normal"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Thank you!</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;line-height:normal"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;line-height:normal"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Jooyeon Rhee</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;line-height:normal"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Pennsylvania State University</font></p></div>