Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing, 1920-1995) was a major twentieth-century Chinese author who wrote canonical texts as well as a range of minor narratives in both Chinese and English. Chang’s ambition, from the inception of her long writing career, was to become a successful global writer. She found early literary success in wartime Shanghai, but her Shanghai era was only the first phase in a long journey that crossed continents, islands, and seas.

In recent decades, through translation and cinematic and stage adaptation, Chang’s writings have resonated with an increasingly global audience. Despite her growing acclaim, Chang remains a complex and often controversial figure, famously advocating for an “include me out” perspective. She is often still labeled as a “Shanghai writer,” while her literary journey through four decades of living in the United States has not garnered adequate recognition, nor has she been celebrated as a major English-language author. As Chinese scholarship on Chang has expanded in recent decades, scholarly examinations in English remain few and far between. With this proposal, we offer the case of Eileen Chang as a unique lens through which to collectively explore the encounters, contradictions, and mediations between conflicting cultures and academic traditions.

As a pivotal figure in world literature, Eileen Chang embodies the confluence of transpacific, transmedia, and transcultural encounters. We seek papers that examine her engagement with world literature through her readings, translations, fiction, prose, and screenwriting. We also welcome insights from a close examination of her papers and manuscripts recently made available to researchers. Additionally, we seek explorations of the adaptations and appropriations of Chang's works across various artistic and media forms. We particularly encourage scholarship that engages with languages beyond Chinese and English, making this a genuine effort at “worlding” Chang’s work.

Join us in this scholarly endeavor to redefine the place of Eileen Chang in the tapestry of twentieth-century global literature.