Speaker: Prof. Jessica Tsui-yan Li, York University

Moderator: Prof. Xiaolu Ma, HKUST

Eileen Chang: The Performativity of Self-Translation by Dr. Jessica Tsui-yan Li focuses on the self-translation of Zhang Ailing 張愛玲 (Eileen Chang, 1920–1995), one of the most important Chinese writers of the twentieth century. Although self-translation is overlooked in most studies of her work, Chang’s literary achievements are attributed in part to her lifelong self-translation of her lived experiences and family sagas, as well as her bilingualism. This book enriches current studies of self-translation by proposing a new hypothesis of theorizing self-translation as a performative act, characterized by its in-betweenness and the aesthetic freedom that the self-translator enjoys, contextualized within larger debates about translation and the specific practice of self-translation in Chinese history in comparison to its Western counterpart.

Speaker: Prof. Jessica Tsui-yan Li

Prof. Jessica Tsui-yan Li is Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics at York University. She is Past President of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association. Her research and teaching focus on modern and contemporary Chinese literature and film, Chinese Canadian literature, and comparative literature. She is the author of Eileen Chang: The Performativity of Self Translation (Brill, 2025), the chief editor of The Transcultural Streams of Chinese Canadian Identities (McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2019), and the guest editor of special issues of the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature: “Engaging Communities in Comparative Literature” (June 2017, 44.2) and “Garnering Diversities in Comparative Literature” (June 2018, 45.2). Her work has also appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes.