Chancellor Jackman Graduate Fellow
Hairong Huang’s interests lie in modern Chinese history, animal and environmental history, body and affect, and science and technology studies. Intrigued by the intersections of animal agriculture and political economy, she is working on a dissertation about the history of pigs in Maoist China, exploring how radical policies, scientific experiments, and everyday practices shaped human-animal relationships during the socialist era.
Fellowship Project: Swine Revolution: A Sentient History of Untamed Pigs in Maoist China
Hairong’s project elucidates a utopian “swine revolution” and its dystopian betrayal in Maoist China. She examines how the Maoist regime maximized pig productivity with radical policies and technological fantasies to squeeze from pigs a ceaseless supply of capital and resources to accumulate state wealth. However, the socio-ecological burdens of feeding overpopulated pigs brought dystopian outcomes, betraying the regime's socialist goal of ending oppression and scarcity. Her research explores how the “swine revolution” was a speciesist revolution, mirroring capitalist exploitation of animal life rather than promoting a radically different egalitarian program inclusive of animals.