Yan Chang

Yan’s research focuses on the translingual literary and media works that have been gaining prominence in East Asia since the 1990s. In these works, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese languages intermingle; Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, and Taipei are juxtaposed; the histories of ancient China, colonial Japan, and the Cold War are revisited; and Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, zainichi (“residents in Japan”), and zanryūkoji (“Japanese orphans left in colonies”) identities are contested. By analyzing these works, Yan’s dissertation traces the contemporary intraregional flows of people, languages, media forms, and cultures capable of changing the parameters of national and linguistic identities. Meanwhile, his analysis examines language not only in its functional meaning but also in its ontological aspect in the East Asian translingual milieu. 

Yan’s academic concerns also include two minor topics: kitsch, visuality, and modernity of Japanese literature in the Taisho period, and Shanghai urbanization and media representations in the 1990s.

Before joining Stanford, Yan received an M.A. in Japanese Culture Studies from Nagoya University and an M.A. in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Minnesota at Twin Cities.