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.
Spring 2026
Friday, March 6, noon to 1pm, EALC Library, 287 Dwinelle Hall:
Jiahe Mei (EALC), "The Blind Cave Fish: Perception, Adaptation, and Ye Shengtao's Pedagogical Poetics"
This presentation foregrounds perceptual alterity as a problematic connecting Ye Shengtao's pedagogical practice and his literary poiesis. Pairing Ye's short story "The Feeble-Minded Child" with his discussion of "the blind cave fish," I situate Ye’s educational fiction within the broader discursive field where evolutionary theory and educational psychology reconceptualized perception as an adaptive interface. While the story stages progressive education as active, directional adaptation, I argue that it simultaneously exposes this adaptationist logic as deterministic and gestures toward a more relational understanding of perceptual differences.
Friday, March 13, noon to 1pm, EALC Library, 287 Dwinelle Hall:
Yongkang Chen (EALC), “Silence of Victimhood: Violence and Counterviolence in Postwar Okinawan Literature”
This presentation examines representations of violence, pain, and hope in postwar Okinawan literature through the works of Medoruma Shun and Sakiyama Tami. Focusing on Medoruma’s full-length novel Niji no Tori (2006) and Sakiyama’s obscure novellas Tsukiya, Aran (2012) and Unjuga, Nasaki (2016), I explore how a homogenized narrative of Okinawan victimhood is challenged while proposing divergent pathways to its decolonization— Medoruma through the allegory of violence and complicity, and Sakiyama through the preservation of linguistic and cultural alterity.
Friday, April 17, noon to 1pm, EALC Library, 287 Dwinelle Hall:
Bonnie McClure (EALC) “In search of comfort: poetic tales of comfortless mourning from Man'yōshū and beyond”
In Kakinomoto no Hitomaro’s set of poems said to be for the death of his own wife, the bereaved speaker describes going on a desperate search for comfort that ultimately cannot be found. “Comfortless” longing for a cold or absent beloved thereafter becomes an enduring trope in love poetry of later Man'yōshū and the early Heian period. Eventually, the theme of ever-comfortless desire sees a Lacanian twist in poetry that declares inability to find comfort (satisfaction?) even when the object of love has been won.
Friday, April 24, noon to 1pm, EALC Library, 287 Dwinelle Hall:
Dan O’Neill (EALC), "3.11 photo image as information, object, and promise"
In the talk I will examine the recent surge of documentary photography as a collective response to the 3.11 disasters and explore the ways in which these photo images are mined for their administrative and critical possibilities.
EALC Talks! Archive
