Call for Papers
Global Transmedial Modernism
This special issue of English Language Notes invites contributions that examine the dynamic exchanges of literature and other nonliterary forms between Eastern and Western countries throughout the 20th century. Modernism, rather than being confined to regional or national categories, is characterized by its transcontinental, interdisciplinary agencies with different languages, cultures, and mediums intertwining. Far from being a Western-centric movement, modernism absorbed influences from around the globe, notably East Asia, where Japanese haikus, Chinese ideograms, and other artistic mediums took pivotal roles in reshaping avant-garde practices. This East-West dynamic has generated a transmedially-oriented aesthetic of formal spontaneousness, expressive essence, and spatial complexity that disrupt established conventions and redefine modernist poetics as cross-cultural and international.
Recent scholarship by Zhaoming Qian, and Ming Dong Gu, Yunte Huang, Steven Yao, and Christopher Bush, among others, has investigated the cosmopolitan interactions in the modernist era. Central to this special issue is the notion of transmediality—the confluence of literature with other artforms such as photography, music, visual art, cinema, and theatre—across the Pacific Rim. By exploring how Western and East-Asian traditions and innovations interacted with each other, the issue aims to unravel the collaborative energies that moved beyond colonialist or orientalist assumptions. What resulted was a broad spectrum of verbivocovisual experiments that opened new paths in reconsidering global modernisms/modernities.
We thus invite papers that critically work with these transmedial, intercultural exchanges during the transformative era of modernism. Submissions might address how East-West collaborations refashioned literary-artistic forms, questioned Eurocentric sociocultural dominance, and developed alternative approaches to literature and other arts that crossed geographic, disciplinary, and historical boundaries.
Topics include but are not limited to:
- New interpretations of East-Asian artforms (e.g., ideograms, haiku, calligraphy) and their aesthetic influences on Western modernist innovations.
- The role of transmediality in redefining modernism as a pluralistic, international movement that challenged Eurocentric frameworks.
- Intermedial explorations of modernist works, between literature and painting, dance, cinema, or theatre in the context of East-West exchanges.
- The reflection of modernist experimentation with various mediums on broader cultural, geopolitical, and ideological shifts in the 20th century.
Please submit essays of approximately 6,000-8,000 words by January 1, 2026 to wangbw@sjtu.edu.cn. Any inquires or abstracts of proposed essays are also welcome. All submissions will undergo a double-blind peer review process managed by ELN.