[KS] CFP: KICKS 2026 "Material Modernities in 20th-Century Korea"

[Academia Koreana]

Call for Papers


*Material Modernities: Materiality, Space, and Mobility in 20th-Century
Korea*


Conference Statement:



The 2026 Keimyung International Conference on Korean Studies (KICKS 2026),
to be held at Keimyung University in Daegu on *November 11–12, 2026*,
invites scholars of Korean Studies to examine how material environments,
urban infrastructures, and mobility systems reshaped everyday life and
social consciousness in 20th-century Korea. Roads, electricity networks,
railways, streetcar lines, ports, water systems, factories, housing
projects, and digital infrastructures not only altered physical landscapes
but also reconfigured sensory experience, social relations, labor, and
collective aspirations. These material systems operated not merely as
technical supports but as formative conditions of social life. As Korea
transitioned through the Great Han Empire, Japanese colonial rule, post-war
reconstruction, rapid industrialization, and the rise of global
metropolitan cities, material transformations fundamentally reorganized how
people lived, moved, and imagined their presents and futures.

By foregrounding materiality, this conference seeks to understand how
matter, space, and mobility produced new forms of belonging, alienation,
imagination, and resistance. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches from
history, cultural studies, anthropology, geography, literature, and visual
arts, and related fields that critically explore how material forces shaped
Korean subjectivities and everyday practices. Moving beyond earlier
theories of materialism, the analytic focus on “material modernities”
emphasizes how things themselves participate in social life. This
perspective reconsiders the relationship between human and non-human actors
by defining objects, substances, and technologies as active mediators and
showing how meanings are co-produced by both humans and non-humans. Through
this dialogue, KICKS 2026 aims to articulate new frameworks for
interpreting the material and experiential dimensions of modern Korean
history.

To be considered as a KICKS 2026 presenter, please send a short bio and
abstract (approximately 300 words) to kicksconference at gmail.com by *February
15, 2026*. The conference organizers will notify selected participants by
mid-March. Selected presenters will receive round-trip airfare or domestic
transportation expenses, accommodations, and meals during the conference.
Following the conference, outstanding presenters will be invited to submit
manuscripts for publication consideration in *Acta Koreana*.



Brainstorming Questions:

   - How did modern infrastructures, including railroads, ports, roads,
   water systems reorganize everyday life, rhythms of labor, and social
   hierarchies in Korea?
   - In what ways did forms of mobility such as streetcars, buses, highways
   and automobiles reshape Korean understanding of space, time, and modernity?
   - How did new materials and mass-produced goods, including cement,
   glass, plastics, household appliances, and textiles, transform domestic
   life, sensory experience, or gendered divisions of labor?
   - How did Koreans contest, appropriate, or reimagine the infrastructural
   systems imposed by colonial powers, the developmental state, or global
   capital?
   - How did material practices of consumption, waste, and recycling
   reflect or challenge dominant narratives of development and progress?
   - How might we conceptualize materiality and mobility as co-producers of
   historical consciousness and cultural identity in twentieth-century Korea?


Please feel free to reach out to kicksconference at gmail.com, if you have any
questions.

Best regards,
Janet Y. Lee
Keimyung University
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