Kangni Huang is a scholar of premodern Chinese literature specializing in drama and fiction. Her research interests include theater and performance studies, news and information, literary thought, and global early modernity. Kangni received her Ph.D. in Chinese Literature from Harvard University (2024). She has a B.A. in Spanish from Beijing Foreign Studies University, an M.A. in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies from the Erasmus Mundus program Crossways in Cultural Narratives, and a second M.A. in Chinese Studies from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Her current book project studies how 17th- and 18th-century Chinese drama, novels, and anecdotal accounts are keenly interested in depicting the life cycles of literary texts and artistic works. It argues that this pervasive phenomenon stems from the literati’s desire to reflect on their own artistic creation and to move that critical discourse beyond mainstream literary criticism. Kangni has published an article about metafiction in premodern China and is working on another article about self-conscious theater in the 18th century.