Liang Luo
Liang Luo
Chair
Professor
Chinese: Politics of Performance, Folklore and Mythology, Popular Culture, The International Avant-Garde, Nationalism, Music and Literature
Chair, Department of Modern and Classical Languages
Liang Luo is Professor of Chinese studies and Chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at George Mason University. She holds a Ph.D. in East Asian languages and civilizations from Harvard University and an M.A. in comparative literature and world literature from Beijing Normal University. She has lived and studied in Chongqing, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Stockholm, Seoul, Canberra, Leiden, among other locations. She served on the Program Committee for the Associate for Asian Studies annual conference, as Chair of the Modern and Contemporary China Forum of the Modern Language Association, and as Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tianjin Normal University. She is on the board of the European Foundation Joris Ivens (Nijmegen, The Netherlands), serves as a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of Folklore at East China Normal University, and is the President of the Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature.
Current Research
Profound Propaganda: The International Avant-Garde and the Transformations of Modern China
Polyphonic Storytelling: Animating Heritage for Contemporary Life in the Age of Global Asias
A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in East Asia (Co-edited multiple-volume project, Brill)
Comparative Literature and World Literature (Special issue on Global Asias)
Humanities (Co-edited special issue on “We the People”: Telling the Story of the US 250th in Fairy Tales, Folklore, and Myth)
Selected Publications
Books
The Global White Snake, University of Michigan Press, 2021.
The Avant-Garde and the Popular in Modern China, University of Michigan Press, 2014.
Recent articles and book chapters
“Gender and Sexuality in Anglophone White Snake: The Malaysian and Singaporean Connections,” in Jamie J. Zhao and Hongwei Bao eds., Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender and Sexuality, Routledge, 2024, 115-130.
“The Digital Classicism of the Cantonese Opera Film White Snake,” in Zhiyi Yang and David Der-wei Wang eds., Classicism in Digital Times: Textual Production as Cultural Remembrance in the Sinophone Cyberspace, special issue of PRISM: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, vol. 20, no. 2 (September 2023), 442-461.
“The Experimental and the Popular in Chinese Socialist Theatre of the 1950s,” in Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform: Performance Practice and Debate in the Mao Era, edited by Xiaomei Chen, Siyuan Liu, and Tarryn Chun, University of Michigan Press, 2021, 135-161.
Grants and Fellowships
Fall 2024- Henry Luce Foundation-funded pedagogical workshop on Southeast Asian and Appalachian Studies, with performance from the AppalAsia music group, co-sponsored by the East-West Center (Hawaii), and many more
Summer 2024 Henry Luce Foundation-funded Summer Institute on Modern Southeast Asia, East-West Center, Hawaii
2021-2022 Reapplied and renewed the Korea Foundation grant to support the hiring of a part-time instructor and the continued offering of four Korean language courses at the University of Kentucky
2020-2021 Received a Korea Foundation grant to support the hiring of a part-time instructor and the opening of four Korean language courses at the University of Kentucky, renewable
Spring 2018 Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award, A&S, UKY
Spring 2018 Office of the Vice President for Research, Research and Creative Activities Grant, UKY
Spring 2018 Student Government Association Student Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion, Inclusivity Award, UKY
Summer 2017 Visiting fellowship at the Humanities Research Center, ANU
2016-2017 Teacher Who Made a Difference Award, College of Education, UKY
Summer 2016 Research fellowship at the International Center for the Studies of Chinese Civilization, Fudan University
2014-2015 Full-year research Professorship at the Ewha Institute for the Humanities, National Research Foundation of Korea
Summer 2013 CELT Innovation + Design Lab Fellowship, UKY Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT)
Summer 2010 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar Stipend
Education
Ph.D. Harvard University, 2006
M.A. Beijing Normal University, 1999
B.A. Beijing Normal University, 1997
Recent Presentations
Invited keynote speaker for “Chinese Mythology in the Digital Age,” organized by the Research Institute for Digital Culture and Humanities (RIDCH) at Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong Kong, August 1-2, 2025.
"Imagining a Global Asias Curriculum,” presented at this Verge-sponsored roundtable, the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) annual conference, Columbus, Ohio, March 13-16, 2025.
“Designing an Innovative Curriculum for Global Asias,” presenting at this roundtable for the “Global Asias” Conference, University of California, Irvine, February 20-21, 2025.
Invited keynote address for “Building Bridges Across Cultures,” a student panel for “Global UK: Celebrating Our Campus Mosaic,” a two-day celebration of UK’s rich, international population, co-sponsored by the UK International Center, UK College of Arts and Sciences, UK College of Fine Arts and UK Residence Life, September 26, 2024.
“The Many Languages and Many Genders of ‘The White Snake’ on Contemporary Stage in Malaysia and Singapore,” presented at the roundtable, “Multilingual Research and Gendered Analysis in China Studies in the Age of Global Asias,” Association for Asian Studies in Asia Conference, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, July 9-11, 2024.
“History and Theater, Humanity and War in Tian Han’s 1948 play Storms over Korea,” presented at “‘People’s Literature’ and Its Transformations in the Twentieth Century,” Association for Chinese and Comparative Literature conference, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, May 24, 2024 (in Chinese).
“Chang An: Tang Poetry, Homosociality, and Animating Classics for Contemporary Life,” presented at “Global Sinophone Classicisms: Hybridity, Agency, and Critical Challenges,” a workshop organized by Professors Zhiyi Yang and David Der-wei Wang, Goethe University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany, May 10, 2024.
“Soundtracks of the Everyday in War, Revolution, and the Reform Era,” presented at the panel “Left-Wing Internationalism and China in Transmedia Forms: Theatre, Telecommunication and Documentary Soundtrack,” for the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) annual conference, Seattle, WA, March 14-17, 2024.
In the Media
Invited interview on White Snake: Afloat 白蛇: 浮生 (Light Chaser Animation, release date: August 10, 2024) at China Movie Channel, July 19, 2024 (in Chinese, aired on CCTV6 on July 22, 2024).