Menglu Gao
Assistant Professor
What I do
Assistant Professor of Victorian LiteratureProfessional Biography
Menglu Gao specializes in nineteenth-century British and Anglophone literature, with research interests in medical humanities, empire studies, comparative literature, environmental humanities, and critical theory. Her current book project, Addictive Forms: Opium, Physiology, and the Stimulable Empire in the Nineteenth Century, examines how medical theories relevant to opium use and addiction provided new ways for nineteenth-century authors to imagine imperial forms in a global society, especially in the context of Britain’s clash with the declining Sinocentric system.
Degree(s)
- Ph.D., Comparative Literary Studies (Home Department: English), Northwestern University, 2021
Featured Publications
Gao, Menglu. “Materializing The Flow Of Emotion: The Interface Between Sound And Body In The Lifted Veil, Romola, And Daniel Deronda.” George Eliot--George Henry Lewes Studies 75, no. 1, (2023).
Gao, Menglu. “"Founding Its Empire On Spells Of Pleasure": : Brunonian Excitability, The Invigorated English Opium-Eater, And De Quincey's "China Question".” Literature and Medicine 38, no. 1, (2020): 1–25.
Awards
- Outstanding PhD Thesis Award, Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies
- Walter L. Arnstein Prize for Dissertation Research in Victorian Studies
