Call for abstracts
Cha: An Asian Literary Journal Workshop

Hong Kong & Ireland:
Interwoven Histories, Shared Languages, & Connected Futures

Format: Virtual

Dates of workshop: TO BE CONFIRMED (July 2026)

Workshop focus: This symposium invites proposals that place Hong Kong and Ireland in the same analytical frame, with both locations integral to the argument in a single paper. Submissions that treat one site as a brief “comparison point” for the other will not be considered.

Presentation format: 15-minute presentation, followed by 10-15-minute discussion

Description:

We welcome historically grounded, theoretically engaged, and methodologically inventive papers that show how Hong Kong and Ireland illuminate each other within a single analytical frame. Drawing inspiration from scholarship that brings colonial governance, cultural production, and political economy into dialogue across Hong Kong and Irish contexts, the workshop seeks contributions that move beyond surface comparison to develop sustained, reciprocal analysis. We welcome contributions from scholars, writers, artists, translators, and practitioner-researchers across disciplines.

Possible themes include but are not limited to:

· Utopia-to-dystopia narratives and the political uses of futurity in Hong Kong and Irish cultural texts

· Colonial governance and legal architectures, including emergency powers, security frameworks, censorship regimes, and administrative language

· Debt, credit, reparations, indemnities, and extractive political economies, including the afterlives of imperial finance

· Archives and epistolarity, including letters, petitions, bureaucratic paperwork, and translation as a mode of governance

· Language politics and diglossia, including English, Cantonese, Irish, and translation as a contested cultural practice

· Island and port imaginaries, including maritime infrastructures, global trade routes, and forms of city-as-interface thinking

· Education, inequality, and cultural capital across postcolonial, neoliberal, and diasporic contexts

· Literary and visual cultures, including fiction, poetry, film, popular culture, and digital forms that circulate between the two sites

· Diaspora, migration, and transnational belonging, including Irish presences in Asia and Hong Kong presences in Europe

Submission Guidelines

Abstract (250 to 350 words with 5 keywords) and a short biography of no more than 100 words, include affiliation or independent-scholar status, should be sent to both tammyho@asiancha.comand osullivan.mga@gmail.comby 31 March 2026 for consideration. Acceptance notifications will be made by 15 April 2026.