EALC Talks!
EALC Talks! is our series of afternoon talks on Fridays through which all of us can share our work with each other. Each talk will consist of a 20-30 minute presentation, followed by questions and conversation.
Fall 2025
Friday, October 17, 12:00 to 1:00pm, 287 Dwinelle Hall
Kevin Shadel (EALC), “Evolutionary Suicide: Sexual Violence and Gastronomical Abstinence in 301, 302 and The Vegetarian”
By simultaneously targeting patriarchy – the intrafamilial violence of foster parents, in-laws, and blood relations alike – and the unsustainable gastro-economic depletion of natural resources generally and harm to non-human animals specifically, this paper proposes that two Korean-language narrative works – Park Chul-soo’s 1995 cult classic film 301, 302 and Han Kang's bestselling novel The Vegetarian (Ch’esikjuŭija, 2007) – together constitute a formidable indictment of the culinary and leisurely habits of an androcentric Homo economicus in whose image the immediate pre- and post IMF South Korea fashioned its upwardly mobile middle class in pursuit of an"imperial mode of living."
Friday, October 24, 12:30pm to 1:30pm, 287 Dwinelle Hall
Alan Tansman (EALC), “The Suffering of Others: Creating at the
Limits of Empathy” This presentation discusses the genesis and progress of a book I am writing on artistic responses to suffering. I have been working with a variety of cases across genres, places, and moments in history. I pay special attention to figuration and non-figuration in the communication of experiences of physical, emotional and psychic pain, and to calls for, and limits to, empathy. The book is also an exploration of the pedagogy of teaching responses to suffering, and incorporates undergraduate student responses to classes in which I expose them to this kind of material.
Friday, November 7, noon to 1pm, 287 Dwinelle Hall
Wei Lin Tan (EALC), “Expansions of Men: Manga in the Masculinizing Media Ecology of 1960s Japan”
This presentation examines the significance of manga as a medium that facilitated the realization of a form of masculinity in 1960s Japan which was circulated across the culture of the New Left and associated student movements. By paying attention to the unit of the line in depictions of muscularity in Shirato Sanpei's manga, this presentation demonstrates how manga can be read as a response to the sense of de-masculinization brought about by the proliferation of television in postwar Japanese society by reconnecting and rebinding the distanced polarities of production and consumption. Crucial to this analysis of manga is a framing of it as a medium that not only operates extensively but intensively - that is, to think manga not just as material extensions of man as per the media theorist Marshall McLuhan, but as affective and generative expansions of men.
Friday November 21, noon to 1pm, 287 Dwinelle Hall
Yisheng Tang (EALC), "Friendship — A Prism of Literature"
Through a reading of Muro Kyūsō (1658–1734)’s essay "The Moon, Memento of the Ages" (Tsuki wa yoyo no katami), this presentation explores the potential of friendship to serve as a paradigm for the production, circulation, and interpretation of literary texts.
EALC Talks! Archive
