Lidong Xiang

  • Assistant Professor

Lidong's Affiliations: Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Global Studies

Lidong Xiang is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh, affiliated with the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program and the Global Studies Center. She holds a Ph.D. in Childhood Studies from Rutgers University and has been a visiting scholar at the International Youth Library in Munich. She also serves on the U.S. Children’s Literature Association’s Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award nomination committee. Her research centers on children’s and young adult literature in both Western and Chinese contexts, global childhood studies, girlhood studies, and children’s geographies. Her recent publications in both Chinese and English address topics including the representation of left-behind children in Chinese film and media, urban girls’ subjectivity, affect studies of children’s periodicals, censorship in publishing, and queer possibilities in young adult literature.

Courses in Development:

Undergraduate Courses

ENGLIT 0562: Childhood’s Books

ENGLIT 1645: Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature

ENGLIT 1910: Senior Seminar on Global Children’s Literature

Graduate Course

ENGLIT 2804: City and the Young

Research Interests:

Girlhood studies, global childhoods, environmental injustices and childhood, violence, trauma, and memory studies.

Representative Publications

“Voices Beyond the Page: Adolescent Authorship and Transnational Negotiation of Girlhood.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures. 2025 (forthcoming)

“True Love or Best Friend? Queer Girlhood in Chinese Young Adult Literature.” Children’s Literature in Education. June 2025 (online first): https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-025-09624-z.

“The Affective Construction of Chinese Child Citizenship in Little Friend, 1945-1949.” Emotion in Texts for Children and Young Adults. Moving stories, eds. Karen Coats and Gretchen Papazian. John Benjamins (2023): pp. 170-192.