Hi, I am Dr. Mercy An

I am Mengqi (Mercy) An 安梦琪, Assistant Professor of Humanities at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida. My areas are East Asian literature, film, and culture, as well as the environmental humanities, gender, and modernity. I work across the humanities with a cross-cultural, transmedia approach, and I am committed to serving diverse students, supporting student mental health, and promoting community-based learning.

teaching

Current Courses  Santa Fe College · 2026–

• Introduction to the Humanities  — two in-person & two online asynchronous sections
• Chinese Language, Levels II & III

Previous Courses

Colorado College · 2025–2026

• PA 111 Introduction to Asian Studies
• PA 250 Topics: Animals, Plants, and Monsters
• PA 250 Topics: Gender and Feminism in Asia
• PA 250 Topics: Pop Culture in Asia
• PA 250 Topics: Reimagining Asia through China and Russia

Pedagogy

My teaching is student-driven and discussion-based, with the goal to cultivate the three C's — critical thinking, creativity, and care — that students can bring to any profession. In my Chinese language courses, I create an immersive, gamified, and highly interactive classroom where students learn by doing.

Students interested in my courses or seeking guidance are warmly encouraged to reach out by email.

researching

Book Project

Ecologizing Modernism: Writing with the Nonhuman in Manchuria takes Manchuria — a critical borderland of modern East Asia — as a site of dynamic human–nonhuman interactions from the 1910s through the 1940s. Reading Sinophone and Russophone authors side by side, the study uncovers how Chinese xiangtu writers and Russian writer-naturalists engaged in interrelated ecocritical efforts to forge ethical relations with the nonhuman world. The nonhuman Other emerges as a co-author who disrupts conventional colonial-resistance binaries in the transnational literary landscape.

Research Interests

Chinese Language & Literature  ·  Russian Language & Literature  ·  Environmental Humanities  ·  Women & Gender Studies  ·  Comparative Literature  ·  Literary Theory & Criticism  ·  East Asian Ecocriticism  ·  Sino-Russian Comparative Literature  ·  Popular Culture of East Asia

Education

• Ph.D., Comparative Thought and Literature
  Johns Hopkins University  ·  2025
• M.A., Russian Language and Literature
  Peking University, China  ·  2019
• B.A., Russian  &  B.A., Economics
  Peking University, China  ·  2016

connecting

I would love to hear from you. I am open to collaborate on conferences, workshops, research, teaching innovation, and creative projects — across disciplines and institutions.

• Email mengqi.an@sfcollege.edu
• Office Room A007, Northwest Campus  ·  Santa Fe College