RAS LECTURE
‘Factory’ Building 4 No. 29 Shajing Road HongKou (opposite 1933)
上海市虹口区沙泾路29号4号楼
Dr. Karen Kingsbury
Eileen Chang's Shanghainese Life and Writing
Eileen Chang is a towering figure in modern Chinese literature—and a continuing cultural celebrity. As an icon, she rides high on a stream of desire that bubbles up, again and again, in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Beijing, and of course Shanghai itself. Her fame is one sense a carefully managed product, staged and promoted by publishers and devotees, but the persistence of her “brand” reminds us that there must also be deeper, more intrinsic reasons for her appeal.
To understand Chang's popularity, and her staying power, we need first to examine the formative effects of her original literary and political context, that hybrid swirl of Chinese and Western cultural influences, in a society deeply but ambiguously divided by partisan ideologies. Next, we should consider her family's exemplary, if troubled history—males in aristocratic decline and “New Woman” females seeking Western-style autonomy—a topic on which her recently released memoir-novel, A Little Reunion, sheds new light. Last of all, we turn to Chang's own claim of a specifically Shanghainese identity. What did she mean by that? What does that claim mean now, for today's Shanghainese?
Karen S. Kingsbury completed her doctorate in Comparative Literature at Columbia University, then taught English language and literature at Tunghai University in Taiwan, from 1992-2006. She now teaches women's and world literature, including modern Chinese film and fiction, at Presbyterian College, a liberal arts college in Clinton, South Carolina. In 2006, NYRB published her translated collection of Eileen Chang's stories and novellas from the 1940's, Love in a Fallen City. She is currently translating Chang's 1968 novel, Half a Lifelong Love.
ENTRANCE: RMB 30 (RAS members) and RMB 80 (non-members)
Membership applications and membership renewals will be available this evening.
DIRECTIONS FOR UNDERGROUND
From Line No. 4
Get off at Hailun Lu station
Come out of Exit No. 2; as you leave the station exit you will be facing Tongjia Lu
Turn right and go along Tongjia lu until you reach a T Junction and you will be facing Hailun Lu,
Turn left on Hailun Lu until you reach Liaoning Lu (next to the creek)
Turn right into Liaoning Lu and walk along the creek until you reach the 2nd bridge (its black where as the previous ones are blue)
Turn left across the bridge and 1933 is in front to left hand side and Factory is on the right hand side.