Join the Department of English, Asian Studies, GESS, and the Newcomb College Institute in Rogers Memorial Chapel for a talk from Dr. Chris Eng that asks, "What might it mean to camp up the camps that appear throughout Asian American histories?"

Playing in the wreckage of the camps, myriad literary works wield dark humor in the face of circumstances overdetermined by melancholia and trauma. This talk explores Asian American camp as a prevalent yet understudied aesthetic strategy for reveling in the queer excess that frames Asian bodies as inassimilable aliens. Set in a Japanese American incarceration camp, Lonny Kaneko’s “The Shoyu Kid,” Eng shows, furtively models camp as a reading practice that illuminates the possibility and necessity for queer extravagance against political structures of constraint.

Dr. Chris Eng is Assistant Professor of English at Washington University, St. Louis. His research focuses on Asian American literature, queer theory, sexuality studies, critical ethnic studies, and performance theory.