[KS] [CFP] MLA 2026, Korean LLC Forum

[Ivanna Yi]

Dear Korean Studies Colleagues,

Could you please post the following CFP? Thank you.

MLA 2026 in Toronto
January 8-11, 2026

Call for Proposals sponsored by the Korean Languages, Literatures, and
Cultures (LLC) Forum

*“If I had Your Body”: Resemblance and Decolonizing Bodies in Korean Visual
Media*

This panel gathers scholars of visual media who aim to disrupt the
hegemonic process of enforcing and managing “ideal bodies” in contemporary
South Korea — a process that violently silences the socially vulnerable.
The normalization of physically able, young, and beautiful bodies — bodies
that can produce and reproduce — often manifests across gender, age, and
class as a form of epistemic violence. To decolonize bodies trapped in this
hegemonic culture of normalcy, this panel rethinks “resemblance” not as an
internal structure of similarity but as a dynamic network of relations —
visual, social, and otherwise. Engaging with films and visual art, the
panel examines how “other” forms of resemblance emerge between radically
heterogeneous bodies, challenging the very definition and categorization of
“ideal bodies.”

Please submit a 250-word abstract and one-page C.V. to Jooyeon Rhee (
jxr5820 at psu.edu) and Hyun Seon Park (hpark63 at gmu.edu) by March 15, 2025.

*Im/Mobility in Korean Language, Literature, Culture, and Media*

This panel brings together papers that explore the diverse ways in which
perceptions, experiences, and imaginations of time, people,
objects—including texts and ideas—and languages have shaped
boundary-establishing, boundary-crossing, borderlands, and borderlessness
in Korean language, literature, culture, and media. Centering on
im/mobility as a key concept, the panel examines how notions related to
movement—such as departure and arrival, inside and outside, en route and
off track, progress and stagnation, uprooting and replanting, traversing
and staying put, directionality and speed, fit and misfit, and past and
future—have generated new perspectives, reconfigured knowledge, fostered
social networks, and inspired literary and artistic experiments as well as
intertextual and media practices. The panel welcomes scholars interested in
identifying new research sites and reexamining well-established areas to
advance innovative conceptual and methodological approaches to the study of
change, continuity, and the expansive scope of Korean language, literature,
culture, and media.

Please submit a title, 250-word abstract, and one-page C.V. to Si Nae
Park (*sinaepark at fas.harvard.edu
<sinaepark at fas.harvard.edu>*) by March 15, 2025.


*Animals and More-than-Human Relationality in Korean Literature and Culture*

Ecocritical approaches to the “Anthropocene” are increasingly being
recalibrated to decenter the human and to foreground multispecies networks.
This panel explores more-than-human animals and their relationality with
other species, including the human, in Korean literature, culture, and
media. Possible topics include: How have Korean authors articulated the
significance of multispecies relationships, both in the pre-20th century
context and increasingly in a time of accelerating climate change and
biodiversity loss? How has kinship with more-than-human animals been
imagined and contested in Korean narratives? How have humans labored with,
and for, the more-than-human, and vice versa? The period for this panel is
open. Transtemporal and transpacific approaches are welcome.

Please submit a 250-word abstract and one-page C.V. to Ivanna Yi (
isy4 at cornell.edu) by March 15, 2025.


Ivanna Sang Een Yi
Assistant Professor of Korea Studies
Department of Asian Studies
Cornell University
372 Rockefeller Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
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