Join us for the 2026 UCI Comparative Literature Graduate Conference, a two-day interdisciplinary conference on April 2-3, during which we attempt to interrogate the concept of home as an ambivalent field. Specifically, we seek to consider how tensions that cohere around home manifest across social, political, theoretical, philosophical, linguistic, literary, aesthetic, poetic, cultural and artistic contexts.
Keynote Speakers: Rizvana Bradley (UCB) and Samiha Khalil (UCB)
Location: HIB 135
Schedule
Thursday 4/2
9:30 - 10:00: Breakfast
10:00 - 10:15: Opening Remarks
10:30 - 12:15: Panel 1–Waterways, moderated by Prof. Adriana Johnson
Irene Ross (UCB): “When is Home? Tracing the Anachronisms of Diasporic Place”
Rose Padilla (UT Austin): “Barangay Ethos: Archipelagic Kinship Formation and Homemaking in Precolonial Philippines”
Malenia Friday (UCI): “Swamp Sense-Ability”
12:15 - 1:30: Lunch
1:30 - 3:15: Panel 2–Poetics of Homemaking, moderated by Prof. David Colmenares:
Fer de la Cruz (UCI): “The Mayan House in Literature and Practice”
Angel Carrasco (USC): “Tío Yim: Reimagining Indigenous Representations in Documentary Film”
euridice morris (UCB) & Stephani Rodríguez Perez (UIowa): “TBA”
3:30 - 5:15: Panel 3–Astray and Estranged, moderated by Prof. Gabriele Schwab:
Borui Liu (UCD): “Unhoming the Family: From the Meiji Ie System to Postwar Domestic Space in Sōseki and Ozu”
Hardik Yadav (Fordham): “Lonely Hearts and the Work of Queer Home”
Himika Chakraborty (UCD): “‘A strange feeling’: Indian Street Dogs and the Negotiation of a Stray Sense of Home”
5:30 - 7:30: Reception Dinner
Friday 4/3
9:00 - 9:30: Breakfast
9:30 - 11:15: Panel 4–Envisioning Exile, moderated by Prof. Margaux Fitoussi
Uroosa Khan (USD): “Half the Word That Was My Village: Unhoming, Aftermath, and Lyric Survival in Agha Shahid Ali”
Nicole Prucha (UCLA): “Closer to Home: Safia Elhillo’s (Re)creation of a Lost Sudan”
Bilal Hisam (UCB): “Building Life after a Defeated Revolution: Istiqrar, Mobility, and Making of Home among Egyptian Exiles in Istanbul”
11:30 - 1:15: Panel 5–Objects of Memory, moderator TBA
Arón Montenegro (UCI): “Entre Flor y Fusil: Caribbean and Central American Cultural Memory amidst Perpetual States of War”
Jun Rendich (USC): “‘The Spirit in Things’: Fantasy, Analogy, and the Black Body as Object in Theaster Gates’ Afro Mingei (2024)”
Edil Hassan (UCB): “The Shed as Black Rehearsal”
Lunch: 1:15 - 2:00
2:00 - 3:20: Keynote by Prof. Samiha Khalil, with an introduction by Prof. Catherine Malabou
3:30 - 4:50: Keynote by Prof. Rizvana Bradley, with an introduction by Prof. Sandra Harvey
5:00 - 5:45: Co-Discussion
6:00: Closing Remarks
7:00: Dinner Social
