CFP: Pandemic Metaphors in Language, Literature and Culture

Conference conveners invite potential participants to look at how pandemics have shaped language through metaphors, what metaphors people have used during pandemics, how they address fears, worries and anxieties, what new mentalities, perspectives and attitudes they produce during the times of pandemic and how they are reflected in language, literature and culture, and how they contribute to the politics of the text. Submissions are due by April 15, 2022.

Some possible topics the conference aims at addressing include:

• Cultural and social constructs in pandemic and post-pandemic times;
• The role of the media in constructing pandemic metaphors;
• The present and future of pandemic discourse;
• Wiredness as a metaphor of our times;
• Past and present pandemic metaphors;
• The concept of space and distance, social and physical, in the COVID era – locked up and/or locked down;
• Suspension, postponement and uncertainty;
• Shifting pandemic paradigms;
• Pandemic(s) in discourse;
• Pandemic representations in literature and culture;
• New perspectives in language, literary and cultural studies.