Yingjin Zhang, Incomparable Comparatist

Abstract

This article is a personal sketch of the career of Yingjin Zhang, from his arrival in the United States to study Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa to his apogee as head of the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. He took up Chinese cinema almost immediately at Iowa as a support for his literary studies and soon became an unrivaled encyclopedist of cinema in all periods, from the mainland to Hong Kong and Taiwan. Relying on the most up-to-date ideas for studying cinema in its global context, he invented his own concepts, such as “polylocality,” when needed. Terms and categories, however, served to triangulate and approximate the rather amorphous cultural phenomena that films and novels represent. Maintaining an “in-between” stance, he looked at all sides of every issue. As a result, he was naturally attracted to the writings of Eileen Chang, whose own itinerary began in Shanghai and moved to the United States and who remained “in between” countries, languages, and genres. His article on her rapport with cinema demonstrates his mastery and range while accounting for hers.

Notes

1 Dudley Andrew, “An Atlas of World Cinema,” Framework 45, no. 2 (Fall 2004), reprinted in Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, eds., Mapping World Cinema (London: Wallflower, 2006).

2 Yingjin Zhang, The City in Modern Chinese Literature and Film: Configurations of Space, Time, and Gender (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).

3 Yingjin Zhang, “Gender, Genre, and Performance in Eileen Chang’s Films,” in Lingzhen Wang, ed. Chinese Women Filmmakers (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 255–73.

4 Zhang, “Gender, Genre,” 260. Cites an article by Leo Lee, “Zhang Ailing, Laiya Bulaxiete (Eileen Chang, Reyher, Bretch),” enumerating her reviews, 215.

5 Leo Ou-fan Lee, “Eileen Chang and Cinema,” Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 2, no. 2 (1999): 40–41.

6 Eileen Chang, “Writing of One’s Own,” in Written on Water, translated by Andrew F. Jones (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 18–27.

7 Reading only what has been translated or what Eileen Chang produced in English, I have depended for my sense of her aesthetics on conversations I have had with Carrie Wang, Xinyu Guan, and Jiwei Xiao.

8 Zhang describes June Bride, a late screenplay by Eileen Chang, in which the heroine takes control. See “Gender, Genre,” 268.

9 See Jiwei Xiao, Telling Details: Chinese Fiction, World Literature (Routledge, 2022), 117–19.

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Notes on contributors

Dudley Andrew

Dudley Andrew is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and Film Studies at Yale, where he moved in 2000 after thirty years at the University of Iowa. He has directed the dissertations of many leaders in the Film Studies field. Biographer and translator of André Bazin, he has authored What Cinema Is! and edited Opening Bazin. His French Film: A Very Short Introduction is a culmination of many articles and several books on that national cinema. He is preparing Encounters with World Cinema, which collects his writings that reflect on approaches to European, African, and especially East Asian films. Andrew has been named Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was awarded Lifetime Membership in the Society of Cinema and Media Studies.