In the era of Covid-19, we are often forced to enter a state of in/hospitality while taking measures, including quarantine, to control and prevent the pandemic. The relationship between hospitality and inhospitality is, however, not based on binary oppositions but rather ambiguous. The impact of COVID-19 serves as a starting point to re-think issues related to the unexpected, invisible, or unknown strangers and strange objects that we might see, confront, or learn to live with in our daily life. In English and American literature, from the ancient period to the contemporary, we can also find plenty of works that portray the outsiders, strange animals, plants, bacteria, machines, and supernatural power, as exemplified by Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Dickinson’s poetry, cyberpunk, postcolonial, and post-apocalyptic fiction.
The English and American Literature Association (EALA) and the Department of English at National Kaohsiung Normal University will host a conference on “The Era of In/hospitality” on October 29, 2022. This special issue invites the conference presenters as well as other scholars to contribute papers that examine the boundaries between the “self” and “others” or between the “subject” and “object” in English and American literature. REAL accepts manuscripts written in either Chinese or English.
Please submit the manuscript online at https://www.eala.org.tw/zh-hant/comment/online- submission, or email it to realtaiwan@gmail.com. The manuscript should be in Word format and well paged, include a Chinese and an English title, a Chinese abstract (350 to 400 words), an English abstract (200 to 250 words) as well as Chinese and English keywords (3 to 5 items). A cover letter should be attached, stating the author’s Chinese and English name, name and the address of his or her affiliation, as well as the corresponding contact information, address, email, and phone/ fax number.
A submission in Chinese should be no more than 20,000 words. A submission in English should be between 6,000 and 12,000 words (including works cited and footnotes). The paper should follow the 8th edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. All submitted papers will go through double-blind review process. There must be no indication of personal identity or other related information. If the paper contains any copyrighted material (such as photos or pictures), the author is solely responsible for obtaining written permission for the material.
For the information of call for papers for general issue, please see the attached.
