Lu Liu

My research broadly explores the intersections of literary, visual, and media cultures with the transnational production of biological, hygienic, and environmental knowledge. I am completing my book manuscript, Trans-species Revolution: Pests and the Unwanted Nature in Modern China, 1900s–1970s, which examines the critical role of pests (haichong) as material and symbolic agents in shaping political struggles, enlightenment movements, socialist construction, and ecological engineering in Chinese history. The book argues that the dual aspirations of the Chinese revolution—building a new world and eradicating unwanted nature—were so profoundly intertwined that neither can be fully understood without critically examining the other.

My work has appeared or is forthcoming in China Perspectives, the British Journal of the History of Science, and the edited volumes A Global Humanities Approach to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (Routledge, 2023) and Socializing Medicine: Health Humanities and East Asian Media (Hong Kong University Press, 2025).

My teaching interests include Chinese literature, culture, and cinema, Chinese and Asian American foodways, revolutionary art in the Mao era, and sustainability in contemporary Chinese society.