Re-imagining Encounters: When Eileen Chang “Met” Stella Benson

This keynote address presents Hong Kong as a strategic site to re-examine colonial "encounters," to contribute to a collective "re-imagining of a new set of social relationships grounded in decoloniality, anti-racism, justice, and preservation of the earth." Nicole Huang, Professor of Comparative Literature of the University of Hong Kong, speaks as a comparatist who recently left North American academia, relocated to the oldest tertiary institution in a former British colony, and has been working on a project that would require in-depth research into Hong Kong’s colonial past. The key figure in her presentation is the canonical Chinese writer Eileen Chang (1920-1995), who began her literary journey as a college student at HKU in 1939-1941, majoring in English and History.