Yibing Huang

Yibing Huang's research and teaching interests cover a broad range, including modern and contemporary Chinese literature, art and culture; comparative studies of modernism and postmodernism in China and in the West; Chinese American literature and art; indigenous poetics and global modernity; and the cultural translations between Chinese and American poetry.

Huang studied at Beijing University from 1983 to 1993, receiving his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in Chinese Literature. He moved to the U.S. in 1993 and received a second Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2001. He has received research fellowships from the Committee on Scholarly Communication with China, Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Professor Huang has an impressive record of publications in both China and the U.S. His book, Contemporary Chinese Literature: From the Cultural Revolution to the Future (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), presents case studies of the generation of writers who spent their formative years during the Cultural Revolution and focuses on this generation's identity shift from "new men," "orphans of history" to "cultural bastards." He has published widely on contemporary Chinese literature and art in English language journals such as Amerasia Journal, World Literature Today, Chinese Literature Today, and Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. In 2009, he served as a juror for the 2010 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and nominated Chinese poet Duo Duo, who became the first Chinese author to win the prestigious prize. In 2011, he edited “The China Issue” for the Hong Kong-based English language online journal Cha, promoting contemporary Chinese poets and artists. 

Huang is Curator of the Chu-Griffis Asian Art Collection and teaches contemporary Chinese art at Connecticut College. He organized a series of exhibitions featuring prominent Chinese artists, including: “Cui Fei: Counter-Monument,” “Four Hundred Miles of the Connecticut River: Celebrating the Centenary of Charles Chu,” “Zhang Hongtu: Van Gogh/Bodhidharma,” “Open Books: A New Dialogue,” “Wang Ai: Flying Over Ancient Landscapes,” “Wang Chi-yuan and His Generation: Chinese Artists in America (1941-2015),” “Space of Emptiness: Paintings by Mao Xiaojian,” and “Off Target: Cai Dongdong.” Most recently, he curated a group exhibition “Chinese Landscape Rethought” (2019) at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum. He also organized “Contemporary Chinese Documentary Film Week” in 2017 and 2018.  

Professor Huang is a highly esteemed poet writing in both Chinese and English under the penname Mai Mang. His poetry has been published in China since the 1980s, and has been featured in numerous magazines and prestigious anthologies. He is the author of two books of poetry, Stone Turtle: Poems 1987-2000 (2005) and Approaching Blindness (2005). He was chosen as the 2006 Phi Beta Kappa poet of Connecticut College. In 2012, he won the 20th Rou Gang Poetry Prize in China. He was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize by World Literature Today in 2016.