This volume centres exchange as an analytical tool to conceive of Anglo-East Asian entanglements in literature, culture, and media from the eighteenth century until today. In its capacity to host diverse experiences, representations, and mediations, exchange enables the discussion of productive, reciprocal, often contested cross-cultural intersections, transfers, and flows, which may initiate long-term processes of hybridisation and transculturality. At its heart, this volume explores how transcultural exchanges have shaped the formation and self-perception of ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ identities and how these processes have been constructed, complicated, and negotiated in fiction, travel writing, philosophical and economic texts, theatre, film, music, manga, multi-media installations, and exhibitions. In our examination of Anglo-East Asian exchanges, we illustrate that the lines between binary oppositions are blurry at best; the manifold types of exchanges considered here offer inroads into a deeper understanding of the separating as well as uniting factors between East Asia and the anglosphere.
