[Sorry for repetitive post. Please ignore this CfP if you have already checked it.]
I am Longlong Ge, a PhD candidate at the University of Nottingham and an early career scholar in feminist literary studies. I am currently forming a panel titled "Uncanny/Queer Bodies in Contemporary Asian Literature".
This panel explores the figuration of uncanny and queer bodies in contemporary Asian literature, focusing on how bodily transformations, disidentifications, and liminal embodiments disrupt dominant paradigms of gender, species, and nationhood. The term "uncanny" here refers not only to the Freudian sense of the strange within the familiar, but also to the affective charge of bodies that elude normative legibility-be they gender-nonconforming, racially hybrid, posthuman, or otherwise culturally misrecognized. Meanwhile, "queer" is understood in an expansive sense: as a mode of unsettling fixed identities, temporalities, and corporeal regimes, rather than solely a designation of non-heteronormative desire.
Situated within and across diverse Asian contexts, the papers in this panel examine how bodies rendered uncanny or queer challenge essentialist discourses of authenticity, purity, and belonging. From animal-human assemblages and transgressive desires to the spectral traces of colonial histories, these texts invite a reconsideration of embodiment as a site of resistance and reimagination. By engaging with a range of literary forms-including speculative fiction, historical novels, and mythic retellings-this panel brings together scholars who critically interrogate the affective, political, and ontological possibilities opened up by non-normative bodies in literature. In doing so, we aim to foster a cross-regional, cross-disciplinary dialogue attentive to difference, multiplicity, and the ethics of representation.
I sincerely invite scholars from diverse cultural backgrounds and research fields to join this exciting discussion panel. Please do not hesitate to send your first and last name, email address, affiliation, rank, gender, and current city/country via email to longlong.ge@nottingham.ac.uk.
Additionally, if you are a strong candidate interested in serving as either a discussant or a panel chair (neither of whom is expected to present a paper), I would be honoured to welcome you. I appreciate your interest and look forward to further communication.
Best wishes,
Longlong
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Longlong Ge
University of Nottingham (UK)
m15827384281@163.com------------------------------