The Uncanny in Language, Literature and Culture

Date : 22nd August 2025 to 23rd August 2025

Place : Malta, Valletta

Website :https://uncanny.lcir.co.uk/

Contact Person:Dr Lena Lytovka

Description:

This conference invites scholars to engage with the uncanny in its myriad forms, exploring how it shapes and is shaped by language, literature and culture.

The Uncanny in Language, Literature and Culture will be held in Valletta,Malta on date 2025-08-23

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Deadline for abstracts/proposals : 20th March 2025

Keynote Speakers :

Conference Highlights :"The Uncanny in Language, Literature and Culture" International Conference


"The Uncanny in Language, Literature and Culture" International Conference
The uncanny captures the unsettling and the eerie—a feeling that defies boundaries between the familiar and the strange. Rooted in Freud’s exploration, the uncanny reveals how what is known and intimate can suddenly become alien, evoking dread and unease. Everyday objects, spaces, and experiences that once offered comfort transform into symbols of danger, disrupting not only our external environments but also the landscapes of our inner selves.
Freud identified the uncanny as an uneasiness that arises when the familiar becomes uncomfortably unfamiliar—when the sense of “home” is rendered strange, unsafe, or unrecognizable. This disquiet is not confined to physical spaces; it penetrates the psyche, creating fractures in our sense of identity and belonging. As architecture mirrors psychology, the uncanny embodies a crisis of self-certainty, triggered by trauma, loss, or the collapse of the boundaries we rely on to make sense of the world.
(Post-)Modern literature and art reflect this fractured experience. In response to a rapidly changing world, authors and creators depict characters fragmented by sensation, consciousness, and the half-dreamt workings of the subconscious. Narratives often embrace fragments, ellipses, and disrupted linearity to convey the instability of time, space, and identity. As a cultural and psychological phenomenon, the uncanny becomes a prism for understanding the disintegration and complexity of modernity.
This conference invites scholars to engage with the uncanny in its myriad forms, exploring how it shapes and is shaped by language, literature, and culture. From uncanny geographies to disquieting technologies, and from visual tropes to postcolonial and gendered perspectives, the uncanny provides a rich lens through which to examine the intersections of self, society, and the unfamiliar.

Check the event website for more details.