Chunjie Zhang

The core trajectory of my intellectual pursuits has been exploring global perspectives in the study and teaching of literature, culture, and their historical and social context. My research mainly focuses on two areas: 18-century studies and Chinese-German literary and cultural relations. I deem 18-century German culture a unique field with great potentials for researchers to go beyond disciplinary boundaries set by national literature, rethink the issue of German identity, and redefine the richness of German thought within a larger context. Engaging with postcolonial theory, my first book explores representations of non-European cultures in German discourse through the lenses of travel writing, literature, and  philosophy. Furthermore, I am interested in the representations of China in European Enlightenment and Chinese-German comparative cultural relationships in the nineteenth and the twentieth century. My second book project engages with different visions of the global in German and Chinese modernisms. 

Before coming to UC Davis, I was at Columbia University as a postdoctoral fellow and at Montclair State University in New Jersey as an assistant professor.