Meet Assistant Professor Dingru Huang

Assistant professor Dingru Huang’s interest in animal research began when she read a case study about a pigeon. 

Her research and teaching “engage with literary modernism, wartime cultural production, and environmental humanities in China and Global East Asia, with particular attention to the roles played by nonhuman animals,” Huang says. 

Joining the Asian and Middle Eastern studies department in fall ‘25, Huang teaches courses exploring the use of animals in East Asian literature and media, as well as how humans function in an age of artificial intelligence and virtual reality. 

How did you become interested in what you study and teach?

A case study that brought me to my current research interest in nonhuman animals is about a pigeon:

In 1932, after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese conflict known as the Shanghai Incident, Japanese biologist Nishimura Makoto rescued an injured pigeon from the city’s war ruins. He brought the pigeon back to Japan, hoping to breed a hybrid pigeon as a living embodiment of Sino-Japanese affinity, only to be met with the ominous death of the Chinese pigeon. Upon learning of this incident, the Chinese literary giant Lu Xun composed a poem for the pigeon’s tombstone. The poem became widely circulated and has been frequently quoted by Chinese national leaders to this day. The corporeal and symbolic body of the pigeon buried within this poem, however, has long faded into oblivion. Archives from China and Japan suggest that the pigeon was possibly a war pigeon, an organic element of the mechanized war mobilized by both sides in the battle.

Following this pigeon, I discovered that Nishimura was also the inventor of Japan’s first robot, which he envisioned to be an “organic” body, not unlike the pigeon, defying racial and species boundaries within and beyond the expanding Japanese empire.

This bizarre juxtaposition of the pigeon and the robot drew my attention to the blurred boundary between organic and mechanical bodies, embedded in the dynamic dialogue between science and literature in wartime contexts. This, in turn, became the central inquiry of my PhD dissertation and current book project.

What courses do you teach? 

I would like to introduce two courses I will be teaching at UMN. One is Animals in East Asian Literature and Media, which explores the perceptions, imaginations and uses of nonhuman animals in East Asian literature and media. We will examine a variety of literary and artistic genres, including realist and fantastic fiction, installation arts, animations, video and mobile games, blockbusters, and independent films. Through these materials, we will reimagine the nonhuman animal as a shifting cultural motif, a recurring puzzle, and a critical method.

The other course is Posthuman East Asia, which will be first offered under Topics in Asian Culture. This class asks what we mean when we call ourselves “humans,” and what makes us less or more “human” in an age of virtual reality, AI, and pressing environmental crises. We will explore creative works ranging from 1990s popular films to recent arthouse cinema, from poetry to science fiction, and from established canon to internet literature.

What projects are you working on right now? 

I am currently working on two projects. One is my book manuscript in English, tentatively titled “Between Animal and Machine: Ecologizing Modernisms in Wartime China.” It explores how wartime cultural creators reposition the human condition in relation to nonhuman actors through literature, film, cartoon and popular science writing. This book interrogates the promises and perils of ecological connection in a time of division and destruction. The other is a short fiction collection in Chinese, with each story featuring a nonhuman animal drawn into human dramas.  

If you could design a course on any topic, what would it be and how would you frame it? 

In my spare time, I consume a large amount of crime and detective shows, verging on an unhealthy addiction. If I had the liberty to design a course on any topic, I would like to create a course on East Asian film noir and crime shows to discuss this personal obsession, which I believe is shared by many others, in larger contexts and in a more critical light. In this class, we can explore stories of justice and the justice of storytelling. It would also be interesting to think about the roles played by nonhuman animals in committing and solving crimes alongside human beings. 

This story was edited by Avery Vrieze, an undergraduate student in CLA.