Ran Deng is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Comparative Literature. She is also affiliated with the Women & Gender Studies Institute and the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. Born and raised in China and educated in the United States, Ran’s research intersects Asian/Asian American studies, political philosophy, and queer aesthetic theory. Her fellowship research project is titled Beyond the Biopolitics of Consent: A Transpacific Aesthetics of Reproductive Futurity. Ran is a 2025-26 JHI Chancellor Jackman Graduate Fellow.
What are your main research interests?
Broadly speaking, my research looks at how ideas and practices of consent are complicated by the question of birth. I’m interested in how consent rhetoric seems ubiquitous in our time—from sex ed to the many online consent forms we scroll through without reading—while our most fundamental encounter with the world is not a relation we were able to consent into. What excites me most are the literary and artistic works I analyze in my dissertation that challenge ideas of consent around biological reproduction.
What project are you working on at the JHI and why did you choose it?
Currently, I’m researching on contemporary Japanese-language speculative fiction that imagines worlds without normative biological reproduction. For example, one novel I’m analyzing is Confirmation of Intent to Be Born by Li Kotomi, which is about a near-future world where parents must obtain a fetus’s consent before birth.
How has your JHI Fellowship experience been so far?
I’ve been really enjoying being part of the JHI! It’s precious to have dedicated time to write and to share a space with so many amazing scholars whose work has been so inspiring. I especially enjoy the lunch presentations, where I get to learn about a wide range of projects and see how they unfold over the year.
Why do you believe the humanities are important?
As someone who grew up with parents with STEM degrees (my parents met in an undergraduate math class), I’ve often been asked this question as a joke at family dinners. For me, being “in” the humanities feels like a natural part of being in the world, and is most fundamentally about how to live with/as others. I think what’s special about humanistic inquiry is that it’s not always about learning something; oftentimes, the questions humanists ask help us unlearn things that are partial, restraining, or harmful.
Can you share something you read/watched/listened to recently that you enjoyed/were inspired by?
A show I’ve been watching for fun is a Japanese series called Banshaku no Ryūgi (roughly translated into The Art of the Evening Drink). It follows a 36-year-old single real estate agent who takes her time to prepare dinner every day, despite workplace drama and invitations from friends. There’s something admirable about taking care of oneself (in the Foucauldian sense, not as part of the “self-care” industry), especially in a society where women are always expected to care for others.
What's a fun fact about you?
I kept silkworms as pets as a child. And when they reproduced in the spring, I would sell the babies to other kids in my kindergarten.