Song Huang

Spring 2026 Office Hours

Monday and Wednesday, 10:00 AM–12:00 PM
NCH 342

Song Huang is a PhD candidate in French at the University of Virginia. Working at the intersection of Asian Francophone literature, dance and performance studies, comparative literature, and global media, she studies how texts and performances negotiate cultural legibility, embodiment, gender, and transnational aesthetics. Her dissertation, “Born Unsolvable: Refused Indexation and Joyful Unanchoring in Transnational Literature, Ballet, and K-Pop,”examines Asian Francophone fiction, contemporary Chinese ballet, and K-pop performance as aesthetic forms that resist stable cultural classification and produce meaning through multilingualism, choreographic hybridity, and semiotic excess. Her broader research interests include Francophone and Sinophone studies, orientalism and neo-orientalist performance, queer theory, postcolonial theory, ballet and popular dance. 

Publications

1. “Beyond Exoticism: Alonzo King’s Scheherazade, Angelin Preljocaj’s The Nights, and the Transformation of Orientalist Ballet.” Dance Chronicle, online ahead of print, 2026.
   Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/01472526.2025.2604901
2. “Choreographing Commodification: Hybrid Gender and Body Performance in G-Dragon’s MAMA Awards Performances.” European Drama and Performance Studies, no. 26, Iconic Attitudes: Music, Masculinity, and Theatrical Performance (1960s–2020s), Classiques Garnier, 2026.
3. “La chair en cercle, la mémoire en circuit : Incarnation et transmission du traumatisme dans Les Quatre Vies du Saule et Dear Chrysanthemums.” TRANS—Revue de littérature générale et comparée, Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2026.
4. “The Absent Body: Reinventing the Bildungsroman and Structural Misogyny in Gaspard Koenig’s Humus.” French Forum, University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming.
5. “From Jinjiang to the Global Stage: Reimagining Chuānyuè (Time Travel) as a Bridge Between Cultures, Genres, and Times.” Recherche Littéraire / Literary Research, Peter Lang, forthcoming.

Selected presentations and honors

• Best Graduate Paper Prize, International Comparative Literature Association, XXIV Congress, Seoul, 2025, for “From Jinjiang to the Global Stage: Reimagining Chuānyuè (Time Travel) as a Bridge Between Cultures, Genres, and Times.”
• ICLA XXIV Congress, Seoul, 2025: “The Eroticized Chinese Body in Intercultural Works: Articulating Dichotomy and Hybridization in Shan Sa’s Les Conspirateurs and Preljocaj’s The Fresco.”
• Dance Studies Association Conference, Washington, DC, 2025: “Reimagining Heritage: Hybrid Aesthetics and Cultural Disruption in 敦煌 (Dunhuang) and 过年 (The Nutcracker: Chinese Version) by the National Ballet of China.”
• 20th & 21st Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium, 2026: “Dancing Against the Score: Contemporary Rebellions with Swan Lake in France.”
• Brown University Equinoxes Graduate Student Conference, 2026: “La vertu qui punit: austérité néolibérale et misogynie de structure dans Humus de Gaspard Koenig.”
• University of Pennsylvania FIGGS Graduate Student Conference, 2026: “Sparkling in Reserve: Latency, Institutional Life, and the Non-Star Dancer in Jérôme Bel’s Véronique Doisneau.”
• Panel Chair, “Asian Drama and Performance,” RMMLA Annual Convention, 2026.
• Panel Chair, “Writing Asia, Writing Asianness: French and Francophone Perspectives,” PAMLA Annual Conference, 2026.
• Recipient of the Domestic Archival Research and Conference Grant and International Archival Research and Conference Grant, Department of French, University of Virginia.