I am a literary scholar and cultural historian of modern China. I investigate the rise of modern China from cultural and historical perspectives, including the environment, military, and infrastructure. In 2022, after receiving my PhD from Yale University in modern China studies, I became an assistant professor of Chinese studies at Carnegie Mellon University. 

My main research engages with modern Chinese environmental literature (ecocriticism), film, and history. My research interests also include science fiction, infrastructure studies, and military studies. 

My publications have appeared or are forthcoming in Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, Chinese Literature and Thought Today, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Modern Asian Studies, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Environmental History, and Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism. 

My first book Contested Environmentalisms: Trees and the Making of Modern China was published by Stanford University Press in 2025. Its dissertation version earned the Marston Anderson Prize for the best dissertation in the East Asian department at Yale University in 2022.