Professor E.K. Tan

PhD Candidate, Nayoung Yang

Asian literature is not only reshaping societal norms but also challenging deeply rooted traditions by reconceptualizing what is familiar. Stony Brook University’s Fall 2024 Faculty-Student Colloquium with Professor E.K. Tan and PhD candidate Nayoung Yang provided inspiring research on these themes, focusing on alternative kinships, gender roles, war, and the importance of representation both in media and literature. 

Professor E.K. Tan proposes that the concept of “queer homecoming” intervenes in traditional, heteronormative kinship structures defined by Confucianism. His current book project, Queer Homecoming: Translocal Remapping of Sinophone Kinship, draws upon literature, film, and social and new media to argue that activists and creative artists in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan are challenging traditional family structures by rethinking the familial and the familiar. PhD candidate Nayoung Yang challenges not only heteronormative structures but also the traditional gendered roles assigned to women with her research on the poetics of recipes. Using poems from Jiyun Yun’s 2020 collection, Some Are Always Hungry, Nayoung examines how Yun reconstructs cooking from being the primary domain of women into a powerful form of literary expression. 

Both Professor Tan and Nayoung Yang’s research beautifully integrated Asian literature and historical and cultural events to highlight current struggles and injustices within these Asian communities. Their passion is undoubtedly portrayed through their research, offering a standard everyone should take inspiration from. After attending this Colloquium, I know I certainly will never read a recipe the same again.