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2026 REALC Undergraduate Research Symposium
Students hailing from a number of departments across Emory College came together to present their work in our twelth-annual REALC Undergraduate Student Research Symposium! As in previous years, students were invited to submit abstracts outlining their research on the languages, cultures, societies, or politics of Russian and Eastern Europe, or Central and East Asia.
This year was especially noteworthy for the inclusion of our first-ever recipient of the Juliette Stapanian Apkarian Excellence in Undergraduate Research Award which was presented to Kaylan Faraj! Kaylan is a junior majoring in East Asian Languages and Cultures (Chinese track) and International Studies. Congrations, Kaylan!
This year's program was as follows:
Panel I: Cultural Politics
Sissi Li, Evelyn Rui, Sunny Xie "To Speak the Unspoken and Hear the Unheard: A Discourse Analysis of Implicit Communication in Japanese Drama"
Joseph Wang "The Paradox of Authenticity in Sushi: Culinary Diplomacy and Japan's Soft Power Strategy"
Kaylan Faraj, "Persecution in China’s Periphery: A Novel Theory of Muslim Minority Behavior in China"
Vladyslav Seneko, "Sarcophagus Politics: Chornobyl, Epistemic Injustice, and the Limits of the International Nuclear Order in Ukraine (1953-2025)"
Panel II: Identity and Intimacy across Media
Lianna Levine "Whose Fault: A Feminist Response to Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata"
Zilong Li "From Contingency to Necessity: Time, Monologue, and Intimacy in Wong Kar-wai and Haruki Murakami"
Alexander Kauffman "Transhumanism and Cyborg Imagery of Soviet Avant-Garde Cinema"
Panel III: Imagination and Knowledge
Jonathan Wu "Acupuncture and the Translation of East Asian Medical Knowledge"
Marley Mills & Cira Letteri "The Price of Authenticity"
Camilla Basco, "Evaluating the Role of Imaginative Synthesis in Scientific Inquiry: From Sherlock Holmes to Traditional Chinese Medicine"