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 2026 SCHEDULE
Christopher Rea (University of British Columbia), "What GoogleTranslate Can and Can’t Do for Asian Literary Translators"
Wednesday, September 16th, noon to 1pm, EALC Library, 287 Dwinelle Hall
On page 1 of Zhang Guixing’s The Crossing of the Boars, Google gets utterly lost in the lalang grass. A few more steps into the jungle, and it slips up with a Suzuki 16-hole diatonic blues harmonica, whiffs Ma Popo’s mushroom-gill neck wattle, punts on Three Flowers Brilliantine Pomade, and generally garbles the grammar of architectonicsentences. This talk will discuss the power and peril of translation software as aids to literary translation from Asian languages, drawing examples from Christopher Rea and Julie M. Wang’s recent co-translation of The Crossing of the Boars (Ye zhu du he, 2018, rev. 2024; Columbia, 2026). Set in wartime Borneo, this magnum opus of the celebrated Malaysian-Taiwanese novelist dazzles with a wartime mystery enmeshed in a jungle of magical ecorealism. When faced with a challenging text, how can a translator get out alive? While acknowledging the convenience of current software tools, this talk illustrates that, for translators, quick reference is no substitute for research and deliberate style.
Yoyo Yu (Asian Studies MA), “Shared Meals and Colonial Intimacy”
Wednesday, October 7th, noon to 1pm, EALC Library, 287 Dwinelle Hall
How is intimacy between colonizer and colonized possible under structural inequality? Focusing on Yang Shuangzi’s novel Taiwan Travelogue (2020), I examine how a contemporary writer reimagines the affective possibilities of colonial relations in Japanese-ruled Taiwan. I explore how shared meals and shared experiences of gendered constraints enable two women—a Japanese writer and a Taiwanese interpreter and guide — to form a fleeting intimacy. Yet colonial asymmetry means that even acts of care and protection can reproduce the hierarchies they seek to overcome. Rather than offering resolution, the novel leaves open the possibility that sustained practices of care might reshape the wounds of colonial history across generations, even if they never fully heal.
Hong Jang (Japanese PhD), “Banalizing Defeat: One-Page 'Streetcorner Stories' in the Declining Japanese Empire, 1943”
Wednesday, November 4th, 12:30–1:30pm, EALC Library, 287 Dwinelle Hall
By early 1943, the Japanese Empire was undeniably losing the Asia-Pacific War. As the initial “triumphs” at Pearl Harbor and Singapore faded, the state's grand promises to its subjects began to ring hollow. The Empire desperately needed stronger support from its populace to sustain the current battlefront, yet it was no longer possible to conceal its failures. Consequently, the Empire’s propaganda required new strategies to persuade citizens to support a war that was unlikely to be won regardless of their sacrifices. This presentation focuses on this critical inflection point in the Japanese Empire through the lens of one-page propaganda stories, “streetcorner stories” or tsuji shōsetsu. Initiated by the Patriotic Association for Japanese Literature in early 1943, this unprecedented literary projectprompted more than two hundred professional writers and dozens of magazines and newspapers to offer varied responses to the current adversity. By examining this genre and select narratives, I show how the unconcealable defeat was banalized into the mundane and insignificant, and how participation in a losing war was imagined, and sometimes realized, as a purposeful choice.
Andrew Park (Comparative Literature BA), “Eye of the Monster: Reading against Korean Premodernity through Literary Monstrosity”
Wednesday, November 18th, noon to 1pm, EALC Library, 287 Dwinelle Hall
This paper seeks to answer two fundamental questions: how is the monster depicted in premodern Korean literature, and how can we construct counter - hegemon potentialities out of the figure of the monster? Focusing on the fluidity of the monstrous figure in the anonymous Joseon-era narrative Kim Wŏn Chŏn through the lens of consumption, I aim to conceptualize how internal contradictions in the logic used to define humanity push against the social boundaries set forth by Confucianism. By reading the monster as capable of transcending hierarchy and destabilizing traditional gender roles, my paper will identify ways in which the figure of the monster is able to serve a socially resistive role rather than a strictly pedagogical one.
EALC Talks! Archive
