About:

Li-Ting Chang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests include Chinese literature, print media, affect theory, gender studies, Taiwan studies, Sinophone studies, and popular culture. Her dissertation project, “Dear Darling: Love Letters as a New Cultural Sensation in Early 20th Century China,” explores the interplay between the conception of romantic sentiment and the love letter as both a literary genre and an everyday practice. 

Li-Ting’s side project, “A Club of Laughter: Expanding Notions of Taiwaneseness through Humor,” examines how humor and laughter contributed to more nuanced understandings of Taiwan and Taiwaneseness in the 1930s under Japanese colonial rule. This paper won the Graduate Student Paper Prize from the ASPAC, a regional affiliate of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), in 2023.

She is an advisory member of the Center for Taiwan Studies (CTS), one of the organizers of the Taiwan Studies Workshop (TSW), and a co-convenor of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center’s 2025-2026 Research Focus Group (RFG), “Interdisciplinary Sinophone Studies.” She also currently serves as a Program Director for the North American Taiwan Studies Association (NATSA).

Academic History
M.A., East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2018-2021.
B.A., Philosophy (Chinese Literature Minor), National Taiwan University, 2013-2018.

Advisors
Xiaorong Li (Chair)
Hangping Xu
Thomas Mazanec

Awards
– Winner of the 2023 ASPAC-Mori Graduate Student Paper Prize in Asian Studies
– Chinese Studies Research Accelerator Award, 2025
– Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award in Comparative Literature, 2024
– Center for Taiwan Studies Fellowship, 2021-24
– Mainstreaming Taiwan Studies Research Grant, 2022
– Nominated for the Distinguished Teacher Award, 2019

Publication (Selected)
– “A Club of Laughter: Expanding Notions of Taiwaneseness through Humor (1930-1935)” in Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature (Forthcoming)
– “(Re)Writing Taiwan Studies History” in Taiwan Insight
– “The Spring of the Marginalised: Fostering Conversations between Czech and Taiwanese Literatures,” in Taiwan Insight 

Teaching Experience (Selected)
– Teaching Associate, Modern Chinese Literature
– Teaching Associate, Chinese Popular Culture
– Teaching Assistant, East Asian Traditions: Premodern and East Asian Traditions: Modern
– Teaching Assistant, Masterpieces of Chinese Literature