Cheng Li
Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies
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341 Posner Hall
Department of Modern Languages
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Bio
I am a literary scholar and cultural historian of modern China. My main research engages with modern Chinese environmental literature (ecocriticism), film, and history. My research interests also include science fiction, migration studies, and Sino-African relations. My publications have appeared or are forthcoming in Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, Chinese Literature and Thought Today, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Environmental History, and Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism. My dissertation earned the Marston Anderson Prize for the best dissertation in East Asian department at Yale University in 2022. My first manuscript Trees and the Making of Modern China is forthcoming from Stanford University Press in 2025.
Areas of Interest
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Modern Chinese Literature, Film and Culture
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Environmental Humanities (Ecocriticism & Environmental History)
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Science Fiction
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Subaltern Studies
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Migration Studies
Courses Taught
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Environment and Society in Modern Chinese Literature and Visual Culture
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Beyond Earth: Reaching into the Cosmos through Science, Science Fiction and Language
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Elementary Chinese
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Intermediate Chinese
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Advanced Chinese
Selected Awards and Honors
- Falk Research Grant, Carnegie Mellon University, 2023
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Marston Anderson Prize, the best dissertation in East Asian department at Yale, 2022
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East Asian Prize Fellowship, Yale University, 2021-2022
- Environmental Humanities Certificate, Yale University, 2020
Selected Community, University, and Professional Service
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Reviewer for ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 2015-present
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Reviewer for Journal of Poyang Lake (first environmental humanities journal in Chinese), 2017-present
Selected Publications
- Trees and the Making of Modern China (forthcoming from Stanford University Press in 2025)
- “Inventing Climate Change: Nature and Nation in Late Qing Chinese Science Fiction.” Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature (Spring 2024; Forthcoming)
- “The Dim Religious Reverence: Spiritualizing Nature and Ethnic Resilience in Chi Zijian’s The Last Quarter of the Moon.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 31.2 (Summer 2024) (Forthcoming)
- "Migrant Worker Bildungsroman: The Promises and Pitfalls of Coming of Age in Chinese Migrant Workers’ Writings.” Chinese Literature and Thought Today. 54.3-4 (2023): 95-105.
- “Selling Forestry Revolution: The Rhetoric of Afforestation in Socialist China, 1949-61.” Environmental History 25.1 (2020): 62-84. (First Author, co-authored with Yanjun Liu)
- “Sinification by Greening: Politics, Nature, and Ethnic Borderlands in Maoist Ecocinema.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 10.1 (2017): 46-68. Reprinted in Ecology and Chinese-Language Cinema: Reimagining a Field. edited by Sheldon Lu and Haomin Gong. New York: Routledge, 2019, 199-222.
- “Reading Climate Change in the Anthropocene: Material Ecocriticism and Chinese Environmental Literature.” Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism. 21.2 (2017): 138-151 (First Author, co-authored with Yanjun Liu)
- “Red China, Green Amnesia: Locating Environmental Justice in Contemporary Chinese Literature.” in Ecoambiguity, Community, and Development: Toward a Politicized Ecocriticism edited by Scott Slovic, Swarnalatha Rangarajan, and Vidya Sarveswaran. New York: Lexington Books, (2014; First Author, co-authored with Yanjun Liu; 33-58).
- "Echoes from the Opposite Shore: Chinese Ecocritical Studies as a Transpacific Dialogue Delayed.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. 21.4 (2014): 821-43.