DEALL Scholars attend American Folklore Society Annual Meeting
Prof. Mark Bender and DEALL PhD candidates Kaiyu Zhang and Huiyi Zhang pose with some colleagues they met at the conference after presenting in the panel “Embodied Persistence: Collective Practice, Performative Knowledge, and Cultural Heritage in Transnational Perspective,” with Professor Mark Bender serving as the discussant.
Kaiwen Lin, a PhD candidate at Ocean University of China and a visiting scholar at The Ohio State University, presented “Restorying and Its Limits: The Case of Merchant-Ship Disaster Narratives.”
Yuyang Han also presented her research at the conference in the panel “Belief and Narrative.”
Five members of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures participated in the 2026 American Folklore Society (AFS) Annual Meeting, held in Asheville, North Carolina, from October 27 to 31, 2026.
Huiyi Zhang and Kaiyu Zhang presented in the panel “Embodied Persistence: Collective Practice, Performative Knowledge, and Cultural Heritage in Transnational Perspective,” with Professor Mark Bender serving as the discussant.
Huiyi Zhang presented “From Shadow Play to Heritage Spectacle: Recontextualizing Huayin Laoqiang in Contemporary China,” examining the transformation of Huayin Laoqiang from a local performance tradition associated with shadow play into a contemporary heritage spectacle. Kaiyu Zhang presented “From Poetry to Climate Memory: Rethinking ‘Winter Ming, Summer Song’ in Contemporary Hanfu Culture,” which explored how historical climate, surviving garments, and the market shape a popular saying in China’s Hanfu community.
Yuyang Han also presented her research at the conference in the panel “Belief and Narrative.” Her broader research examines vernacular language, local narrative traditions, and storytelling practices, including her work on the Shanghai-dialect novel Fanhua (Blossoms).
Kaiwen Lin, a PhD candidate at Ocean University of China and a visiting scholar at The Ohio State University, presented “Restorying and Its Limits: The Case of Merchant-Ship Disaster Narratives.” Drawing on maritime incidents, her presentation explored how news events are retold and reshaped through digital media, with particular attention to the processes, possibilities, and limitations of restorying in contemporary public narratives.
Kaiyu Zhang also received the AFS Graduate Student Fieldwork Grant in support of her research.
Across their presentations, the DEALL participants brought together work on performance, narrative, cultural heritage, vernacular culture, and digital media, reflecting the range of folklore-related research currently being pursued in and around the department.
