Events

Time and Location

Sept. 17, 6pm CT
Room 314, DePaul University Lincoln Park Student Center,
2250 North Sheffield Ave (Chicago, IL)

About

In partnership with DePaul University (Humanities Center) and University of Chicago (Center for East Asian Studies), JFNY is thrilled to present Sound & Voice in Yu Miri’s Work, a literary event featuring acclaimed author Yu Miri, who is currently based in Chicago as a Visiting Research Associate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations through September 2026. 

Exploring the role of sound and voice in her work, this event will feature readings from her new play Obon as well as her acclaimed novel The End of August, followed by a conversation with Professor Michael Bourdaghs and Dr. Scott W. Aalgaard, moderated by Professor Yuki Miyamoto. 

FREE event with no RSVP required. 

We will record and upload the event to our YouTube channel at a later date. Stay tuned! 

About the Participants

Yu Miri is a writer of plays, prose fiction, and essays, with over twenty books to her name. She received Japan’s most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize. After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima, she began to visit the affected area, hosting a radio show to listen to survivors’ stories. She relocated to Fukushima in 2015 and has opened a bookstore and theater space to continue her cultural work in collaboration with those affected by the disaster. Her novel Tokyo Ueno Station won the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature. 

Michael Bourdaghs is the Robert S. Ingersoll Distinguished Service Professor of East Asian Languages & Cultures at the University of Chicago and the author, most recently, of A Fictional Commons: Natsume Sōseki and the Properties of Modern Literature (2020). His previous books include Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop (2012, Japanese translation 2012) and The Dawn That Never Comes: Shimazaki Tōson and Japanese Nationalism (2003). He is also an active translator, including Kojin Karatani’s The Structure of World History: From Modes of Exchange to Modes of Production (2014).  A native of Minnesota, he received his Ph.D. in East Asian Literature from Cornell University in 1996, and before coming to Chicago in 2007 he taught for 11 years at UCLA. He has received, among others, a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities (1989), Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship (1996), Japan Foundation Research Fellowship (2000), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2019). Bourdaghs is currently writing a book on the Cold War cultures of Japan, including the role of Japanese Americans in U.S.-Japan relations.  

Scott W. Aalgaard is Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he also serves as the College’s Chair. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2017. Aalgaard’s research and teaching center on cultural production in modern and contemporary Japan, with a focus on literature and popular music. His work also encompasses theories and histories of fascism, empire, gender, nationalisms and racisms, and more. Aalgaard’s first book, Homesick Blues: Politics, Protest, and Musical Storytelling in Modern Japan, was published by University of Hawai’i Press in 2024. 

Yuki Miyamoto is Vincent de Paul Professor at Department of Religious Studies Director, DePaul Humanities Center.

This event is co-presented by DePaul University (Humanities Center), University of Chicago (Center for East Asian Studies), and the Japan Foundation, New York.