Call for Papers
“Pacing Worlds: Speed and Literature”
2027 International Conference
The English Language and Literature Association of Korea (ELLAK)

December 16-18, 2027
Sogang University, Seoul, Korea

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Steve Mentz (St. John’s University, USA)
Simon Swift (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Dongshin Yi (Seoul National University, Korea)

If we consider the etymological meanings of speed that are “success, a successful course; prosperity, riches, wealth; luck, good fortune; opportunity, advancement,” it seems that no other centuries have lived up to these meanings than the twentieth-first century, in which the future of individuals, industries, societies and nations is said to hinge on how well they keep up with, steer, or even run ahead of the inhuman speed of advanced technologies and hyper-capitalism. But the same century witnesses the future is being taken away from those in pursuit of speed, ironically, by speed-induced events—to give a couple of examples, “the slow violence of climate change” (Nixon 2011) that the industrial speed has caused and accelerates, and the “entropic synchronization of consciousness” by the technological speed that seems fated “to add up to nothing less than the end of time” and detonate “a neutron bomb of the mind” (Stiegler 2011). Living in this century thus means having our lives determined, complicated, enhanced or even terminated by the problematics of speed.
The truth is, however, that we have always lived with the problematics of speed, although time or temporality has been a more familiar term, only to be precipitated as speed recently so as to encourage speedier responses to the problematics. It is this truth that, for Martin Heidegger, has made us what we are, that is, human beings and instructed us to build up the enlightening history of humanity, the light of which is being precariously dimmed out, ironically, by the same problematics. Yet, if the problematics of speed has always assailed us, it also means that the light of the history has been flickering all the time, only faster in this century, and our contemporary lives as “flickering signifiers” (Hayles 1999) could be brightened up in the future as something new, for instance, as posthuman lives. Whether viewed as apocalyptic or transitional, and no matter how singular it is, this century has this truth that guarantees us that, from the history, we will have a lot to learn, criticize, revise and discard to work through our own problematics of speed.
For those of us who work in the field of English literature and are willing to take on the problematics of speed, the field indeed has ‘a lot’ to offer. In Marvell’s “Time’s winged chariot” and Shakespeare’s speedy creatures like witches and Ariel, for example, we see how “the early modern speedscape” (Steggle 2022) is captured and transformed by the literary imagination of the time; Dicken’s Signal-man and Wells’ Time Traveler are haunted and inspired by speedy modern technologies; Flatline’s inhuman speed in cyberspace from Neuromancer and the near-light speed of the Ares in space from Green Mars show what to expect from the speed of the future. On the other hand, elegy, bildungsroman, rhythm and meter, analepsis, prolepsis, ellipsis, chronology, pacing, in medias res—these time-concerned literary forms and techniques, now coupled with such cinematic and theatrical ones as slow motion, time-lapse, montage, long takes, episodic theater, happening, endurance art and cycle plays, could be discussed as imitative, critical and creative responses to different speeds of the world. Finally, speed is changing how we research and teach literature. From (slow) close reading to digital methods that can process large amounts of readings at unprecedented speed and produce writings almost instantly, our scholarly and educational practices engage in constant, and increasingly fierce, negotiations between different scales and speeds of reading. These, and really a lot more, are what literature offers for our “success, a successful course; prosperity, riches, wealth; luck, good fortune; opportunity, advancement” in exploring how we have paced—and should pace—worlds running in different speeds. In the name of “Pacing Worlds: Speed and Literature,” the 2027 ELLAK International Conference thus invites scholars and graduate students not only in English literature but in many other disciplines to take literature’s offerings, participate in the exploration, and venture into speed-inspired themes of their choice.

Suggested Topics:
We invite papers and session proposals from scholars and graduate students. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

 Histories of Speed
 Philosophy of Speed in Art and Literature
 Timed Literary Forms and Rhythms
 Speed and the Politics of Gender and Sexuality
 Acceleration in Media, Technology, and AI
 Planetary and More-than-Human Times
 Reading, Writing, and Institutional Time
 Speed in Embodiment and Affect
 Localized or Localizing Speeds
 Intercultural and Transcultural Time
 Crip time and Polytemporalities
 Slowness and Fastness
 Haunting and Afterlives across Time


Proposals should be submitted by January 31, 2027 to “ellak27conference@gmail.com”
An individual paper proposal should include:
- Title of the paper;
- An abstract of the paper (up to 150 words);
- Following information on the speaker: full name, title, affiliation, email address, and brief bio (up to 100 words).
A session proposal should include:
- Title of the session;
- A brief description of the session (up to 100 words);
- Titles of the papers (3–4 papers per session);
- Abstracts of the papers (up to 150 words each);
- Following information on each participant (the organizer/moderator and the speakers): full name, title, affiliation, email address, and brief bio (up to 100 words).
- (Before you submit a session proposal, please ensure that all participants have agreed to participate.)