Call for Papers--2026 EALA Annual Conference--From Technē to Technology
Conference Organizers: ROC English and American Literature Association
(EALA, Taiwan) and Department of Foreign Languages and Literature,
National Sun Yat-sen University
Date: October 17, 2026
Venue: National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
The Greek word for “art,” technē, which denotes not only creative expression but also skill or craft, also forms the root of “technology.” This shared etymology of “art”and “technology” suggests a longstanding intimacy between artistic making and technical invention. However, this ancient affinity has been obscured by the entrenched modern binary between the humanities and the sciences, what C. P. Snow famously called “the two cultures.” Recently, Alva Noë reminds us that “works of art are strange tools,” which, like other technologies, organise our lives and through which we “understand our organization and, inevitably, [. . .] reorganize ourselves” (Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature xii-xiii). It is this parallel between art and technology that the conference aims to uncover.
Among the arts, literature, with its defamiliarizing effect, renews our perception and sharpens our awareness of what Roman Jakobson refers to as the “poetic function” of verbal communication. Attentive to the interplay between form and content, writers experiment with literary techniques, such as styles, narrative voice, and rhymes, to probe emotional complexities, interrogate philosophical problems, or express political concerns. For instance, John Milton in Paradise Lost releases the shackles of rhymes to evoke not only the epic tradition but also the idea of liberty; William Wordsworth considers Lyrical Ballads as an experiment in meter and prosaic style that brings poetry closer to the language of people; Virginia Woolf’s use of stream of consciousness and free indirect discourse is an attempt to capture a reality that is more real than the one represented by materialists. Literary forms or techniques are part of the constitution of the meaning.
As our everyday life is increasingly surrounded and structured by computers, smartphones, and AI, modern technology equally shapes the expression of literature. While Rita Felski highlights the affordance of literature manifested in the dynamic interaction between texts and readers (The Limits of Critique 164–65), recent technological development prompts us to reflect more deeply on how it reshapes human
sensibilities in reading experience. This change in readers’ interaction with texts and their media suggests that technology is thus not necessarily an enemy to literature as often represented in dystopian fiction; instead, it can unleash creativity and invite multimedia engagement. Digital literature such as Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries’s Dakota, a reinterpretation of Ezra Pound’s Cantos, immerses audiences in poetry through striking visual and sonic effects. Short story dispensers, now installed in libraries, cafes, and universities, also foster storytelling that can be tailored to brief reading intervals. Such emerging modes of expression compel us to reconsider the existing methods of literary analysis that are grounded in print culture. Recognising this shift in reading habits, scholars such as Maryanne Wolf and Adam Hammond emphasise the growing importance of a literacy that is informed by new media. In response to a new technological era, Digital Humanities has also become a burgeoning
field around the world, seeking a deeper understanding of the evolving intersection of the print and the digital.
This conference seeks to trace the connection and contestation between technē and technology in English and American literature across different genres and literary periods. We invite proposals that examine how artistic techniques and technological innovation inform one another, how literature reflects on the tools and media of its own production, and how writers, past and present, have responded to the pressures and
possibilities of their technological environments. We especially welcome interdisciplinary approaches that bridge literary studies with philosophy, media studies, and the digital humanities.
Topics may include but are not limited to:
● Techniques of form and style in literary expression
● Material and media histories of literary production
● Technē and technology in the Anthropocene
● Ecologies of technē and technology
● Techno-poetics in cross-cultural encounters
● Archival research and digitalisation
● Surveillance, control, and modes of artistic resistance
● Literary representations of craft, machinery, and mechanization
● AI, authorship, and the redefinition of creativity
● Poetics of digital literature and multimedia storytelling
● Pedagogies of literature and technology in the age of digitalisation and AI
● Future and challenges of digital humanities
Proposals for papers in English or Mandarin Chinese are accepted. Proposals for preformed (3-person) panels are also welcome.
Please submit abstracts of 300-500 words (with a title and five keywords, for individual papers and pre-formed panels) and brief bios (which include name, title, affiliations, selected publications, contacts of each presenter) to 2026eala@gmail.com by 31 January 2026. For group submissions, please also include a group abstract.
Notification of acceptance: 10 March 2026
Full paper submission deadline: 5 October 2026
※Submissions are limited to one proposal per person. For pre-formed panel submissions, please submit as a group; individual submissions will not be accepted.
※The full text of the paper is for the reference of the panel moderator only and will not be made publicly available.
※Before participating in the conference and publishing your paper, you must have or obtain an EALA membership.
※EALA encourages contributors to submit a revised version of their paper to Review of English and American Literature, which is a THCI Core tier-one journal, after the conference.
