10/27/2026
Join literary scholar Elisa Tamarkin (University of California, Berkeley) for the talk “Terms of Art: Defeat,” Thursday, October 29, 4–5:30 pm on campus.
The term “defeat” suggests a variety of stakes and ramifications across the fields of military history, gaming studies, and more. In this talk, literary scholar Elisa Tamarkin (University of California, Berkeley) considers “defeat” in the context of her recent book, “Done in a Day: Telex from the Fall of Saigon” (University of Chicago Press, 2026).
“Done in a Day” is a reflection on the end of the Vietnam War and the departure of the last helicopter evacuating civilians from the rooftop of the U.S. embassy in Saigon. In her talk, Tamarkin will discuss her book on the 1970s and its psychologies of defeat, on “limited” wars that are also endless wars, and on the problem of raising consciousness of world events despite having access to all the facts and information we should ever need to know. The book is a social and cultural autopsy of all that ended in a day — and about what it means to recognize and to write about endings even as we live through them.
Following the talk, Tamarkin will be joined in conversation by Samuel Zipp (American Studies, Urban Studies).
More about the speaker and the “Terms of Art” series: https://buff.ly/buLhKfm
