JELLiC: Journal of English Language, Literature, and Culture
Volume: Special
Issue
Guest Editor: Professor
Blossom N. Fondo
THEME: Infectious Imaginations: Literature, Language and Discourses of Disease and Death
The world has witnessed a steady rise in COVID-19 infections and this surge has been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the number of deaths related to the pandemic. The announcement by amazon.com a few months ago that it has run short of copies of Albert Camus’s La Peste/The Plague is a clear indication of humanity’s reliance on literature and language not only in solitary times but also for inspirational consciousness of what the literary imagination evokes in the context of disease, and death – real or imaginary. JELLiC intends to publish a Special Issue on the dynamics of linguistic appraisals, literary sensibilities, and cultural perceptions of disease and death.
This volume seeks to collect and publish highly critical and engaging discourses on the role of literature, language and culture in the perception and understanding of bodily and psychiatric illnesses and death. Contributions should examine how language, literature and cultural forms are used to portray infection, illness and death. The volume also welcomes theoretical and ethical explorations of textual and linguistic elements: how they (dis)function in the context of disease and death; how they evoke or (re)create a sensation of empathy within the reader; and how they convey beauty or “music in the midst of desolation” (Laurence Binyon). Contributions can also examine literary and linguistic perspectives of how art, medicine, domestic arrangements, and technology contribute to and/or facilitate the understanding of and reaction to disease and death.
We invite scholars and researchers to submit articles of 3000 to 5000 words that examine various perspectives of disease and death as conveyed in literature, languages, education, music, film etc. Complete articles with Abstracts of 250-300 words should be submitted to info@cella-cameroon.org on or before December 31, 2020.