Call for Papers
Special Issue of Wenshan Review: Literature and Culture"Affective Perspectives from East Asia"
Guest Editor: Jonathan Yeh(Assistant Professor of English Department at National CentralUniversity, Taiwan)

Submission deadline: 15 October 2015
Since the turn of the new millennium, affect studies has emerged as one of the mostburgeoning fields within literary and cultural studies, a theoretical trend in the Westwhich  we  now  designate  as  “the  affective  turn.” Over the years a myriad approaches
to affect have appeared one after another, which helped contribute to a discursive
heteroglossia in which its scope of influence and visibility proves increasingly vast.
Some  critics  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  queer  theorist  Eve  Sedgwick’s  psychologicalmodel, a school which had played a key role in the institution of affect studies per se,
whereas  some  insisted  upon  the  an  intervention  into  affect’s  socio-political
implications from the perspectives of cultural criticism or classical psychoanalysis. In
recent years, the Deleuzian anti-humanistic approach propounded by Brian Massumi
and the backward feeling thesis proposed by Heather Love have both come to takecenter stage, with the latter having further provoked controversies in queer theory,
which,  in  its  turn,  gave  rise  to  certain  critics’  proposed  turn  to  optimism  or  other  positive emotions.
The study of affect in Taiwan has taken a direction not entirely the same as that in theWest. Apart from translations of landmark critical works produced therein, we have
yet to see a more global, contextualized reflections on those affect theories. Though
the past few years did witness the publication of important translated works such as
Queer, Affect, Politics (酷兒、情感、政治), The Cultural Politics of Melancholia (憂鬱的文化政治), we have not been able to fully lay bare the problematic status of theuniversalized psychological subjects in those works as something derived from thetotalizing humanistic premises underlying their treatments of sensations and affectiveexpressions. It remains to be seen how relevant these theories are to the readings andcomments we make in the local contexts. A good case in point is the intertextualresonances  between  Sedgwick’s  theorization  of  shame  and  Jenpeng  Liu  and  Naifei  Ding’s  critique  of  the  Confucian  culture  and  aesthetics  of  “reticence,”  whose  subtle  gradations of similarities and differences require further endeavors of excavation.
It is our aim that this special issue could serve as a timely point of departure. That wealways find ourselves caught in the interstices between Western affect theories andEast Asian literary and cultural representations may well be seen as an apt occasion
where we begin to consider a plethora of new theoretical and interpretative
possibilities. As we undertake to analyze local representations of affects, we are alsointerested in the following questions: How do we define a peculiar, East Asian (orTaiwanese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, to name but a few) mode of affect? Is
affectivity’s  affected  or animalistic state subject to different modes of manifestations
in different cultural contexts? Is it possible to read Western affect theories in acompletely different light from our localized vantage point? Do the intricatelyintertwined affective/political/aesthetic/gender-sexuality nodes of local deployment
involve a more profound ontological and ethical premise which is distinctly different
from its Western counterpart?

Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture
CALL FOR PAPERS
Under the direction of the Department of English at National Chengchi University, Wenshan
Review of Literature and Culture is a refereed, biannual publication of original scholarship on
English, American, Chinese, and Taiwanese literatures and cultures. Since 1995 the journal has
distinguished itself for its wide purview, comparative spirit, and two languages of publication. Thejournal is currently indexed in Taiwan Humanities Citation Index Core (THCI Core) and Modern
Language Association (MLA) International Bibliography. It is ranked among the top journals onliterature and culture by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan.
The journal publishes research articles and book reviews.
All queries and manuscript submissions toWenshan Review of Literature and Culture
Department of English
National Chengchi University
64, Sec. 2, ZhiNan Rd.
Wenshan Dist., Taipei City 11605
Taiwan (R.O.C.)
Tel: 886-2-2938-7248

Fax: 886-2-2939-0510

wsreview@nccu.edu.tw
Guidelines for Contributors
1. The languages of publication are English and Chinese. Authors must confirm that
submissions are not under review anywhere else.
2. Manuscripts must be submitted electronically with a title, abstract of 150-250 words, andsix keywords.
3. Manuscripts must be prepared for anonymous refereeing. Name, title, affiliation, andcontact information including e-mail address should be provided on a separate sheet.
Self-identifying references should be removed and previous works by the author cited inthird person.
4. Except in rare cases the review process will be completed within three months.
5. Manuscripts should be prepared according to the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research
Papers (7th edition).
6. Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture reserves the right to make editorial changes toaccepted manuscripts.

7. Contributors must guarantee that their manuscripts do not infringe upon the rights of thirdparties.
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Online and our journal website.
9. Contributors receive publication-ready PDF files and two copies of the journal issue inwhich they are published.