Qiujie (Kat) Cheng is a PhD student whose research explores how literary representations of migrants’ (non)relational, affective engagements with shared spaces of dwelling challenge the Western gaze on affect and embodiment; and, more broadly, what it means to be human. She investigates felt theories and the affective dimensions of world-making through literature, drawing inspiration from Cherríe L. Moraga’s concept of “theories of the flesh” and from scholar-activists who insist on linking theory to visceral experience.

Her primary research interests include twentieth- and twenty-first-century Global Anglophone literature. She also engages with Black and queer affect studies, WOC feminist theory, diaspora studies, and world literature. Qiujie aims to produce culturally conscious literary scholarship grounded in bodily experience while cultivating a publicly engaged academic career.

Qiujie holds dual MAs in English from University College London and Shanghai International Studies University, where she also earned her BA in Translation and Interpreting.

Peer-Reviewed Article

2024. “‘She Feels Not Half What We Feel’: Oriental Affect Aliens and the Unhappy Queers in Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse.” FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & The Arts. https://doi.org/10.2218/forum.1.10037.

Selected Talks

2025. “‘Such Thick Skins’: Recuperating Home and Proximity in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s The Last Gift (2011).” Presented at the ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) Annual Meeting.

2025. “‘Unconscious Masochism’: Deleuzian Perversion and the Exclusion of Father in Ann Quin’s Berg (1964).” Presented at the 56th NeMLA Convention.

2024. “‘You Don’t Always Obey’: Willful Arms, Trees, and the ‘Unspeakable Taboos’ in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber.” Presented at the Science Fiction Foundation Conference, “Women in the Black Fantastic,” Anglia Ruskin University.