Afternoon Tea with the Literature Department

Afternoon Tea is hosting a panel on thriving in the PhD program, focusing on the pre-candidacy experience. If you are interested, please RSVP and submit a question(s) so that we can center your interests/concerns and make this as useful to you as possible. You'll hear from PhD Candidates Aimee Jurado, Bianca Negrete Coba, Sam Kim, and Yomira Varela Guadiana. There will be open Q&A time as well.

Friday, May 3rd, 1-2:30pm
Zoom

Afternoon Tea is hosting a writing room this quarter, Thursdays, 12:30-2PM! We'll be in the 3rd floor graduate workroom.

Please come join us to build some community while knocking out our to-do list. Feel free to come for as much or as little of the full time as you can. Hope to see you there!

Afternoon Tea Winter Qtr Writing Room, Wednesdays 2:00-4:00pm PT

Come to a hybrid Afternoon Tea Writing Room this quarter to:

Lesson plan
Answer emails
Schedule all your doctor’s appointments
Write a poem!
Tackle that fun and cool prompt you jotted down in your Notes app ages ago
Read/re-read that assigned text for class
Draft that dissertation chapter
Grade
Knock out your daily paragraph
Edit edit edit  

Come to the Zoom room or the graduate workroom (3rd floor RWAC), Wednesdays 2-4:00pm to work quietly next to other people! Grab tea, coffee, snacks from the graduate lounge next door and buckle down… 

1. Check-in: What are you working on today?
2. 30 minutes of working quietly
3. 10 minute break
4. 30 minutes of working quietly
5. 10 minute break
6. Last push!
7. Check-out: What were you able to accomplish?

Stay for as much or as little as you are able. We’d love to see you!

Afternoon Tea- "Grad Lounge Warming" Wednesday, Dec. 6th, 4-6pm

Afternoon Tea is hosting a "grad lounge warming" to make this space ours and build community. Join us to hang out with other Literature graduate students, take a break from your work, and celebrate the end of the quarter. We hope to see you Wednesday, Dec. 6th, 4-6pm at our 3rd floor lounge and workroom.

Bring food or drinks to share, or donate to the new grad lounge fund. Coffee and tea will be served. To help us coordinate utensils and supplies, please fill out this RSVP form. 

Afternoon Tea Fall Qtr Writing Room, Wednesdays 3:00-4:30pm PT

Come to an in-person Afternoon Tea Writing Room this quarter to:

Lesson plan
Answer emails
Schedule all your doctor’s appointments
Write a poem!
Tackle that fun and cool prompt you jotted down in your Notes app ages ago
Read/re-read that assigned reading for class
Grade
Knock out your daily paragraph
Edit edit edit  

Come to the graduate workroom (3rd floor RWAC), Wednesdays 3-4:30pm, to work quietly next to other people! Grab tea, coffee, snacks from the graduate lounge next door and buckle down… 

1.   Check-in: What are you working on today?
2.   30 minutes of working quietly
3.   10 minute break
4.   25 minutes of working quietly
5.   Check-out: What were you able to accomplish?

Stay for as much or as little as you are able. We’d love to see you!

Are you hoping to get a jump start on your writing projects this summer but the fluidity of your schedule doesn’t easily allow you to create a writing routine? Are you a writer who, despite the need for quiet solitary time, craves having a connection to a creative community? Does summer travel prevent you from making and maintaining a connection to a creative community of writers? Or, on the flip side, do you avoid committing to in-person events because they distract you from focusing on the work you want to get done? Does the prospect of writing alone sometimes drain you of the motivation you need to actually face the page and write?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, the organizers of The Afternoon Tea have an opportunity for you. This summer, starting July 3rd, you are invited to join "A Writing Room" every Monday morning to start your week off right. Come anytime between 9:00-10:30 am. Write on your own or meet a friend in the room. 

From 9:00-10:00am (PDT), the room will be a quiet communal space for writing and research with peers. From 10:00-10:30am writers will be invited to casually work in breakout rooms- swapping small pieces of writing, trading feedback with a peer, or simply talking through whatever aspects of your research are leading to writer's block to brainstorm creative avenues for your next writing session. Of course participants can simply continue to write in the main room, should they so desire. Our host will be flexible to work with participants according to their own needs- all you have to do is show up! 

Our flier is attached. Save it to your desktop, flag it in your email, or screenshot it so that you've always got the Zoom ID at the ready, anytime you feel the need for a Monday morning motivational  pick-me-up. Current Graduate students, UCSD Literature department alumni, and faculty are all invited. 

Afternoon Tea  Tuesday, November 8th 1:30-2:30pm in the deCerteau Room and on Zoom (hybrid)

Queer Asia/ Asian Diaspora

While Queer Theory seeks to trouble the hegemonic mechanisms that construct borders between “normative” and “nonnormative,” the global turn in Asian Studies has also endeavored to unsettle boundaries, especially those that essentialize “Asia.” By bringing the two fields into conversation, what other boundaries may be challenged, exposed, blurred, and/ or transcended? How might Asian or Asian diasporic perspectives complicate U.S.- and Eurocentric theorizations of sexuality and gender that are often privileged in Queer Studies? How might queering Asian Studies further disrupt the dominance of nation-based frameworks and colonialist logics in area studies? What additional creative possibilities and/ or limitations might arise from forming a strategic alliance between Queer Studies and Asian/ Asian Diasporic Studies?

Speakers: Ph.D. candidates, Steven Beardsley, Ningning Huang, Trung Le, and MFA candidate, Emily Yang.

Afternoon Tea  Thursday, October 6th 1:00-3:00pm on the RWAC 5th Floor Terrace

MFA and Lit. Grad. Student Social

We hope to give the new cohorts a chance to meet the returning graduate students in our department and ask them any questions they have about the MFA and Lit. Programs, UCSD, life in San Diego, etc. We will also hear from members of Afternoon Tea, the Literature Graduate Student Committee (LGSC), and the UAW 2865 union to learn more about different ways of getting involved in the department and at UCSD. This will be a grad student-only event—we’ll have the chance to meet faculty at the reception on October 11th.  We will be serving tea and light refreshments, but we kindly request you BYOM (Bring Your Own Mug).

The Weekly Writing Room Wednesdays 5:00-7:00pm PT:

The Afternoon Tea Writing Room will be back this quarter every Wednesday from 5-7pm. Our first meeting will be on Zoom and we'll discuss if we'd like to move to in-person meetings.

The Writing Room is a shared virtual space for writing and reading in the company of friends and colleagues. We hope you can join us!

Here is the Zoom link for the meetings:

https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/92667202342 Meeting ID: 926 6720 2342 One tap mobile +16699006833,,92667202342# US (San Jose) +12133388477,,92667202342# US (Los Angeles) Dial by your location +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) +1 213 338 8477 US (Los Angeles) +1 669 219 2599 US (San Jose) Meeting ID: 926 6720 2342 Find your local number: https://ucsd.zoom.us/u/afIkLkDmx

April 2022: April Afternoon Tea Poetry Reading

We will be celebrating National Poetry month with a poetry reading.

Speakers: MFA graduate students Dana Fidler, Kira Jacobson, and Matthew Ford, Literature PhD student Evelyn Vasquez, and Professor Brandon Som. 

March 2022: Anti-Capitalist Critique at the Intersections of Gender, Sexuality, Race, and Class

This March is both Women’s Herstory Month and the beginning of UAW 2865’s bargaining negotiations with the university over its union contract. We, therefore, wanted to create a space to discuss women’s contributions to anti-capitalist organizing, particularly resistance efforts spearheaded by working-class, trans, or queer women, indigenous, and/ or women of color. How might their insight help us to reflect on our union demands and organizing practices at this critical moment of possibility? What critiques of capitalism have been forwarded from the social margins? What points of caution have women at the intersections of racial, gendered, heteronormative, class, and colonial domination raised with regard to organizing? What concrete practices and communal formations have they engaged in as alternatives to capitalism?

Speakers: MFA graduate student Cheyenne Avila, Literature PhD candidates Celine Khoury and Heather Paulson,and History Professor Wendy Matsumura

February 2022: COVID-19 and Globalization

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on global flows. Since health and government officials identified travel and proximity as determinant factors of the virus’s spread, many countries banned international travel and scaled back on foreign trade, disproportionally affecting migrant communities (refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced, stateless, labor migrants and undocumented migrants). Additionally, the monopolization of the vaccine by a handful of pharmaceutical companies has resulted in its inequitable distribution, creating starker economic divisions between countries across the globe.Yet despite these increases in isolation and separation, the internet has taken on an even more significant role in keeping people and communities in contact with one another. This month’s Afternoon Tea seeks to consider how the pandemic has changed global flows and the mapping of the world. What are the implications of closing the geographical borders and reinforcing economic and healthcare inequities? What can be said about the rise of digitization and the prominence of the virtual world? Is the globe becoming larger (more distant) or smaller? How is this current moment influencing the way in which we conduct research in academia and relate to one another? 

Speakers: Graduate student Dingding Wang and Professors Babak Rahimi and Amy Sara Carroll

August 2020: Police, Prisons, and Abolition

Presenters: Literature graduate student Bianca Negrete Coba and professors Sal Nicolazzo and Dennis Childs

September 2020: Archives, Reading Practices, and Remote Research

Under the current circumstances regarding COVID-19, many of us are experiencing the frustrations and challenges of working remotely, especially with the increased reliance on the digital. How might this situation be affecting archival research and reading practices? In what ways can looking at the history of these practices help us to understand how this historical moment fits into the ongoing transformations within archives and reading?  What might these practices look like in the future after the pandemic?  What possibilities may emerge from increased digitalization? How will this affect the accessibility of resources? Whose voices may be marginalized and what hierarchies may be reinforced by archival knowledge production? How might we engage more ethical archival and reading practices now and post-COVID-19?

Presenters: Literature PhD Candidates Stacie Vos and Hannah Doermann and professor Seth Lerer

October 2020: Indigenous Knowledges and Decolonizing Research Methodologies

In her book Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (2012), Linda Tuhiwai Smith proposes 25 Indigenous Projects that promote Indigenous sovereignty and the well-being of Indigenous communities and belief systems. These projects encompass social justice work, cultural survival, self-determination, healing and restoration, and thrivance—each of which consider the significance of relationships in our personal, political, and academic work. An example of such practices is Trafkin kimün witral or “weaving knowledge barter,” an Indigenous-Mapuche method of building community through a bodily practice. Trafkin kimün witral recuperates traditional weaving as a Mapuche epistemology to heal and restore community while also presenting a critical question about what the function of duality inside our communities is. By exploring how Indigenous knowledges and decolonizing research methodologies expand and intimate our understanding of the variegated ways in which we produce and circulate knowledge, this Afternoon Tea considers: what futurities might emerge from research that requires us to be in community? 

Presenters: Literature graduate students Manuel Carrión-Lira and Joanmarie Bañez and professors Katie Walkiewicz and Kazim Ali

November 2020: “Let There be Light”: Models of Justice in the Ancient World

Since November is the month of the presidential election, questions of democracy, justice, law, power, and agency come to the forefront. How would ancient/ premodern philosophers comment on the 2020 presidential election and current state of the United States? How has our society used and misused myths and models to define and legitimize justice and democracy? How can we work toward a more socially just society when political and legal systems fail to guarantee justice for everyone? How is agency important to the concepts of democracy and justice? 

Presenters: Literature graduate student Makenzie Read, Literature PhD Candidate Meaghan Baril and professors Page duBois and Ted Kelting

January 2021: Resistance, Dissent, and Solidarity

The recent attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of rioters exposed how law enforcement responds differently to protests. The demonstrations organized last year by Black and other communities of color to protest the murders of Black women and men by police officers culminated in egregious violence and an exceedingly large number of arrests. The same did not apply to the mob of rioters this month. While the American political system remains unresponsive to the demands of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the violence against Black people and people of color continues, the movement has had a global impact and garnered international support. People around the world gathered to protest systemic racism and police brutality in front of the respective U.S. embassies. Since BLM has become part of a Global Struggle Against Oppression, this month’s Afternoon Tea seeks to discuss modes/ instances of resistance that inspire transnational solidarity and to investigate the rise of a global community of the oppressed. How do local sentiments of tension and dissent come to have a global impact? How can we understand the connections between the local and global scales of racial, capitalist, and heteropatriarchal domination? How can we understand the historical specificity of the current era shaped by global interactions through social media, while also relating this to historical precedents and global histories of resistance and solidarity?

Presenters: MFA graduate student Neon Mashurov and professors Amanda Batarseh and Amelia Glaser

April 2021: Weekly Morning Teas and National Poetry Month Reading 

April is National Poetry Month, when many poets aim to write 30 poems in 30 days (30x30). In that spirit, Lit. PhD students and writers Phuong T. Vuong and Teo Rivera-Dundas, will host a weekly creative writing room every Friday from 10-11:30am. The sessions will include light check-ins, 60 minutes of writing, and closing reflections.  You can find the zoom links here.

All creative writing genres and experience levels welcomed. These sessions are open to both graduate students (MFAs and PhDs) and department faculty. Come for one, some, or all of the sessions!

In continued celebration of National Poetry Month, we will be hosting MFA and PhD students Maya, Teo, Becca, and Phuong who will share some of their creative work with us. Following the reading, we will open the floor to questions and answers and an open discussion.  

Presenters: MFA and PhD students Maya Beck, Becca Rose, Teo Rivera-dundas, Phuong Vuong

May 2021: Solidarity with Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities

The murder of eight individuals of Asian descent, 6 of whom women, in the Atlanta area on March 16th, along with the sharp rise in anti-Asian hate crimes over the past year, reaffirm the need for reflection and concrete action to address anti-Asian racism on both local and global scales.  Anti-Asian violence, however, is not a new phenomenon, but rather a continuation of the violence bred by deep-rooted and overlapping power structures tied to white supremacy, anti-blackness, cisheteropatriarchy, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism. From coolie laborers, and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to Japanese internment during World War II and continuing rhetoric of yellow peril, in addition to imperial expansion and nuclear detonations in the Asia-Pacific region, the U.S. has a long history of imperialism and militarism built on anti-Asian racism. At this month’s Afternoon Tea, we hope to create a dialogue on current manifestations of anti-Asian racism—alongside anti-blackness and settler colonial violence towards indigenous peoples—that was foundational to the US’s state formation. What do critical voices from the Asian and Pacific Islander communities reveal about the intersecting hegemonic formations in the U.S. and the transpacific? In what ways can we understand the oft-tense ties between Asian and Pacific Islander communities (and with larger concepts of anti-blackness and settler colonialism) through the current moment? How can we address this harm and violence and move toward healing, safety, and relations of care? In what ways can the Literature Department practice care in the time of hate and violence towards marginalized communities?

Presenters: Literature Ph.D. candidate Sang Eun Eunice Lee and professors Andrea Mendoza, Hoang Tan Nguyen, and Erin Suzuki