[KS] [Call for Papers] "Politics of the Multilingual: Language, Form, and Cultural Expression" (Feb. 18-19, 2027 @ UCLA)

[Jinaeng Choi]

Dear All,

Please find below a call for papers for an international workshop on
the *“Politics
of the Multilingual: Language, Form, and Cultural Expression" *at UCLA on
February 18-19, 2027.

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We seek contributions for presentation at an international workshop on the
“Politics of the Multilingual: Language, Form, and Cultural Expression,” to
be hosted by the Korean Humanities Initiative at UCLA on February 18-19,
2027.


While “multilingualism” often describes a way of thinking about the
coexistence or circulation of multiple discreet languages, this workshop
asks how texts, images, performances, and/or archival work reshape
comparative, national, and area-based modes of inquiry through
nonmonolingual practices—formal or conceptual operations that challenge the
one-language paradigm and unsettle boundaries between languages, nations,
media, and fields.


We invite scholarship that asks how literary, visual, and cultural
practices resist readings constrained by such monolingual or multilingual
modes, and how that resistance becomes legible within institutions,
archives, canons, and disciplinary frameworks shaped by the one-language
paradigm. We are especially interested in approaches that move beyond
celebratory accounts of linguistic diversity to examine the political,
aesthetic, and institutional conditions through which cultural expression
becomes recognizable as such. We welcome comparative and interdisciplinary
work across Korean and East Asian literary studies, comparative literature,
translation studies, linguistics, art and art history, media studies,
photography, performance studies, and other related fields.


Selected participants will be asked to submit a paper for circulation prior
to the workshop; the event is intended to support sustained discussion and
the development of future publication projects. Possible topics include,
but are not limited to:

·    the limits of multilingualism and/or translingualism
·    formalist approaches to multilingual and nonmonolingual texts
·    visual/media arts and the limits of monolingualism
·    representations of dialect, accent, “broken” language, and nonstandard
speech
·    translation, transliteration, untranslatability
·    mixed scripts and script politics
·    nationalism, literary history, and the monolingual paradigm
·    colonial, postcolonial, diasporic, and migrant language practices
·    canon formation and linguistic classification
·    literary works that resist national or area-studies containment
·    world literature and lingualism
·    language, race, nation, and the politics of literary legibility



Funding is available through the UCLA Korean Humanities Initiative for
contributor travel to and participation in the workshop. Brief abstract
(350 words or less) and CV (max. 2 pages) may be submitted via email at
politicsofthemulti at proton.me by October 11, 2026. Any inquiries may be
addressed to co-organizers Jinaeng Choi (jinaeng.choi at georgetown.edu) or
Chris Hanscom (hanscom at humnet.ucla.edu).
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