Elvin Meng is a joint PhD student in Comparative Literature and East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Before coming to the University of Chicago, he received his degrees in English and Mathematics from the Johns Hopkins University.
Broadly speaking, his research deals with the technologies and politics of subjectivation-in-language across space and time. Engaging with disciplines such as literary theory, media studies, intellectual history, and translation studies, he has written about a range of authors, genres, and topics such as Joyce, Nabokov, social media, Chinese grammatology, language education, and the history of reading.
His current dissertation project is a sustained study of the conceptual (and practical) history of language learning in the multilingual Daicing empire, with particular attention to how the specific technologies of Sino-Manchu translator education (including syllabaries, grammars, “recorded speech,” translation theories, etc.) enrich, supplement, or undermine our understanding of the early modern “Sinographic Sphere,” from the points of view of vernacularization and political sovereignty.
Additionally, he is a student (and sometimes translator) of the indigenous languages and literatures of North Asia, especially those of the Tungusic, Mongolic, and Ainu peoples.
Teaching Experience
Instructor of Record (University of Chicago):
EALC 19850 (CMLT 29850/39850) Shamanic Literature
Teaching Assistant (University of Chicago):
EALC 29980/39980 Books in Japan from the Earliest Times to the 1890s
EALC 27512/37512 Dream of the Red Chamber: Forgetting About the Author
EALC 21855/31855 Exile and Chinese Poetry
Teaching Assistant (Johns Hopkins):
AS.110.212 Honors Linear Algebra
AS.110.202 Calculus III
AS.110.109 Calculus II
Publications
Review of Codes of Modernity: Chinese Scripts in the Global Information Age by Uluğ Kuzuoğlu. Pacific Affairs: An International Review of Asia and the Pacific 98, no. 2 (2025): 356–358.
“Three Manchu Manuscripts in the East Asian Collection of the University of Chicago Library.” East Asian Publishing and Society 15, no. 2 (2025): 193–212.
“Ioi Cung’s Manchu Lessons, 1913–1919.” Research note. Saksaha: A Journal of Manchu Studies 20 (2024): 43–63.
“4’’ x 6’’ Time Machines: Nabokovian Mnemotechnics and Interwar Psychical Research.” Modernism/modernity32, no. 2 (April 2024): 213–233.
“Zheng Qiao’s Grammatology.” In Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century. Proceedings, edited by Yannis Haralambous, 689–737. Grapholinguistics and Its Applications, Vol. 10. Brest: Fluxus Éditions, 2024.
“Viral Text: Translation, Censorship, Community.” In Digital China: Creativity and Community in the Sinocybersphere, edited by Jessica Imbach, 249–268. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024.
“Reintroducing the Sirens’ Fugue.” James Joyce Quarterly 60, no. 4 (Summer 2023): 527–548.