The Humanities Research Center is led by two co-directors, Selina Lai-Henderson at Duke Kunshan University, and Carlos Rojas at Duke University. The co-directors work with an advisory board of scholars from both universities. The center welcomes the involvement of all Duke faculty, DKU faculty, and affiliated scholars whose work has a humanistic dimension.
Co-Directors
Selina Lai-Henderson’s research is at the heart of transnational American Studies, where she locates works of American literature in twentieth-century China and in translation. She is the author of Mark Twain in China (Stanford University Press, 2015). In addition to The Yale Review, MELUS, and Journal of Transnational American Studies, her work has appeared in Mark Twain in Context (2019) and Langston Hughes in Context (2022), both published by Cambridge University Press. Her recent essay, “‘You Are No Darker Than I Am:’ The Souls of Black Folk in Maoist China” (PMLA, Sep 2023), is the 2023 winner of the 1921 Prize in American Literature (tenured category).
Lai-Henderson has served as Chair and co-Chair (with Perin Gurel at Notre Dame) of American Studies Association’s International Committee (2022-2024). She is currently a Book Review Editor for the American Quarterly (flagship publication of the ASA). Her editorial roles extend to Global Nineteenth Century Studies, and previously, Journal of Transnational American Studies. In Spring 2025, she will be joining Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research as a Hutchins Family Fellow.
Carlos Rojas is Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies; Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies; and Arts of the Moving Image. His research focuses on issues of gender and visuality, corporeality and infection, and nationalism and diaspora studies, particularly as they relate to the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the global Chinese diaspora. He works primarily in the early modern, modern, and contemporary periods. He is the author of three books: The Naked Gaze: Reflection on Chinese Modernity, The Great Wall: A Cultural History, and Homesickness: Culture, Contagion, and National Transformation.
He is the co-editor of five books: Writing Taiwan: A New Literary History (with David Der-wei Wang), Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon (with Eileen Cheng-yin Chow), The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas (with Eileen Cheng-yin Chow), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures (with Andrea Bachner), and Ghost Protocol: Development and Displacement in Global China (with Ralph Litzinger). He is also the translator of five volumes of literary fiction, including Yu Hua’s Brothers (translated with Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, and shortlisted for the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize), Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses, The Four Books, The Explosion Chronicles, and Marrow (of which The Four Books shortlisted for both the 2016 Man Booker International Prize and the 2016 FT/Oppenheimer Emerging Voices Award), and Malaysian Chinese author Ng Kim Chew’s Slow Boat to China and Other Stories.
Advisory Board
Joseph Giacomelli, PhD
Assistant Professor of History at Duke Kunshan University
Keping Wu, PhD
Associate Professor of Anthropology at Duke Kunshan University
Caio Yurgel, PhD
Assistant Professor of Humanities at Duke Kunshan University
Chris Chia, PhD (ex officio)
Associate Director of the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University
Jingqiu Guan, PhD
Assistant Professor of the Practice of Dance at Duke University
Kimberly Hassel, PhD
Assistant Professor in Asian & Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University
Calvin Cheung-Miaw, PhD
Assistant Professor of History at Duke University
Prasenjit Duara, PhD (ex officio)
Oscar L. Tang Family Distinguished Professor of East Asian Studies at Duke University
Ranjana Khanna, PhD (ex officio)
Professor of English, Women’s Studies, and the Literature Program at Duke University, and Director of the Franklin Humanities Institute
