Chunjie Zhang

Candidate statement

Chunjie Zhang is Associate Professor of German at the University of California, Davis, where she is also affiliated faculty in East Asian Studies, Religious Studies, Comparative Literature, Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, and the Global Migration Center. Zhang is the author of Transculturality and German Discourse in the Age of European Colonialism(Northwestern UP, 2017). She edited or co-edited journal issues on Aesthetics and Politics in the Wake of the Enlightenment (The Germanic Review), Goethe, Worlds, and Literatures (Seminar), and Asian German Studies (German Quarterly). Zhang also edited or co-edited books on global modernism, gender and German colonialism, and globalism. Her articles appeared in venues such as The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Critical Inquiry, Journal of the History of Ideas among others. Zhang is recipient of fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the NEH. Her scholarship in the eighteenth century reached beyond the academe: she was invited to give a lecture at the German Historical Museum on Herder and colonialism and write on Kant and the Pacific in a popular journal in Australia. She is the founder of the book series Asia, Europe, and Global Connections with Routledge and is a director-at-large of the Goethe Society North America.

Zhang has served ASECS as a past member of the Aravamudan Article Prize committee (2019), chair (2021) and member (2020) of the Program Committee. She is currently serving as ASECS’s delegate (2022-2026) in the Executive Committee of the International Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, a member in the Bylaws and Constitution Committee (2022), and a member of the advisory board of Eighteenth-Century Studies. For the German Studies Association, Zhang chaired the Book Prize Committee for Literature and Cultural Studies and served a member in the Committee of Institutional Transformation and Social Justice.

Zhang is committed to greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in ASECS’s membership and leadership; to supporting non-tenure-track scholars and graduate student body through networking or social events at annual meetings; and to further strengthening the global perspective in eighteenth-century studies through scholarly, pedagogical, and public-facing projects and events.