April 22nd – 24th, 2012

Call for Papers

GELL is GUST's first international conference, organized by the English Department. In a globalized world where the English language is the most used language of communication, new forms of the language, new ways of expression, new meaning, new metaphors have gradually evolved, over the past decades, to embrace, embody and express new themes and concerns not only for newcomers to the language, but also even native speakers. How does this evolution in language and expression affect the language and its literature(s)? Has this evolution enriched or impoverished the language and its literature(s)? Do we now have one global English language/literature, or many different Englishes and English literatures? Where does English tend? And, finally, what are the challenges this evolution poses for scholars and teachers of the language and its literature(s)? GELL's first international conference seeks to address these questions, and many more, under the overarching theme, Englishes: English Languages and Literatures in a Globalized World. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Should linguistics, language pedagogy, and literature be housed together?
Why isn't poetry popular anymore?
Canonical literature
English literature or literatures in English?
Why are we still teaching English and American literature?
Creative writing in a globalized world
Does translation impoverish language?
Untranslatability
The power of language and translation
Language pedagogy: what English are we teaching?
Colonizing the language of the colonizer
Language acquisition and multilingualism
the OTHER and hegemonic discourse
Syntactic variation in the dialects of English
The effect of globalization on standard English
English phonetics in an era of multiple Englishes

Submissions:

Scholars, practitioners and students in the fields of linguistics, literature and language teaching are invited to participate. Participants are requested to submit a short autobiographical note (no more than 200 words) along with proposals for 20-minute presentations which should be a maximum of 250 words and include at least a working title. . These will be arranged into panel groups. All proposals should be submitted online (conferences.gust.edu.kw) by Tuesday, 31st January, 2012. Participants will be notified of the acceptance of their proposals two weeks after the submission deadline.

Publication:

The academic publisher, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, is interested in publishing a volume based on the proceedings of the GELL Conference. The volume will be in book form, edited and with an introduction, for which will be selected a number of the papers presented. Participants who wish for their papers to be considered for publication in this volume should submit their final completed drafts within a month after the conference. The authors of the selected papers will be contacted by Dr. Ikram Elsherif and/or Dr. Piers Michael Smith.