Dingding Wang

Summer Session 2 2026:
LTEA 132 - Later Japanese Literature in Translation

Dingding Wang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Comparative Literature section of UC San Diego’s Literature Department. She holds an M.A. in Critical Asian Humanities from Duke University and a B.A. in English Literature from Wuhan University. She spent a year in Japan from 2022 to 23, receiving intensive language training at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies (IUC) while conducting field research on whales across Japan. With a keen interest in animal studies, eco-criticism, and East Asian literature and visual culture, her dissertation project explores Japanese women's writings on whales and whaling in modern and contemporary Japan.

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Languages: English, Chinese, Japanese

Articles & Book Chapters

• “Coving Whales: The Poetics and Visuality of Japanese Traditional Whaling," a chapter invited by editors Gerhard Wolf, Christine Kleiter, and Lianming Wang, is included in the peer-reviewed volume on “Mapping Global Animals” to be published in 2026.
• "Dreaming Fish, Becoming Fish: Animating Modern Mythology and Zhuangzian Philosophy in the Fantasy Film Big Fish & Begonia" Journal of Chinese Film Studies, 2024 (peer-reviewed).
• “Mapping Chinese Science Fiction and Science Writing as World Literature”, Chinese Literature and Thought Today, 54:3-4, 46-51, 2023, DOI: 10.1080/27683524.2023.2264150
• “To Be Or Not To Be: The Apocalyptic Elegy of Earth in The Wandering Earth and Melancholia”, Literature and Art Newspaper, 2021.
• “When Zhiguai Xiaoshuo Meets Steampunk: Ken Liu‘s ‘Good Hunting’, Chinese Literary History and Posthuman Literature”, Inquiry and Criticism, No. 4, 2021, pp. 61-76.
• “Yugongyishan: The Modern Allegory of Anthropocene”, Science Writing, No. 2, June 2020, pp. 23–26.

Translations

• N. Katherine Hayles, Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious. “Introduction to the Chinese Version” and translation proofread by Dingding Wang (Jiangsu People’s, 2024).
• Nathaniel Isaacson, Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction. Translated by Dingding Wang (Jiangsu People’s, 2024).
• Jason Goodwin, The Gunpowder Gardens: Travels through India and China in Search of Tea. Translated by Dingding Wang (Jiangsu People’s, 2019).

• M.A. in Critical Asian Humanities, Duke University, 2019
• B.A. in English Language and Literature, Wuhan University, 2017
• Non-degree, Inter-University Center, Japan, 2022-23