Feb
22

Title: “Inside Out: Body, Love, and Nation in Eileen Chang's Lust, Caution

February 22, 2-3:20, HIB 135

Sijia Yao, Soka University

Sijia Yao is Assistant Professor of Chinese Language and Culture at Soka University of America. Her talk draws from her recently published book Cosmopolitan Love (University of Michigan Press, 2023) in which she examines the writings of D. H. Lawrence and Eileen Chang. Rather than a simple comparison between East and West, she uses the works of the two writers to develop a concept of cosmopolitanism that shows how both wrote stories that are influenced by—but sometimes stand in opposition to—their own cultures. Offering alternative understandings of societies dealing with modernism and cultural globalization, their stories deal with emotional pain caused by the restrictions of local politics and economics and address common themes of desire, longing and utopian vision.

For more information, please contact huying@uci.edu

Presented by the Department of East Asian Studies, UC Irvine