Sheldon Lu received his BA in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin and his MA and Ph. D. In Comparative Literature from Indiana University in Bloomington.  He joined the University of California at Davis in 2002 and is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature.  He is also affiliated with East Asian Studies, Performance Studies, Cultural Studies, Film and Media Studies, Critical Theory, and Designated Emphasis in Environmental Humanities at UC Davis.  Previously he taught at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Indiana University in Bloomington, University of Pittsburgh (1992-2002), and Beijing Normal University (2000-2001).  He was a Fulbright scholar in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2004-2005.  He has served as the Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature, Director of the Graduate Program in Comparative Literature, and Founding Co-Director of the Film Studies Program at UC Davis.  His research, scholarship, and teaching lie at the intersection of literary studies, visual studies, film studies, China studies, and cultural theory.  He is the author and editor of some 18 books in English and Chinese.  His writings have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. His film scholarship has been very influential in Chinese film studies and world film studies.  His writings on transnational Chinese cinema, Chinese-language cinema, and ecocinema have laid much of the groundwork in related fields of scholarly inquiry.  His relevant book-length publications include:

Contemporary Chinese Cinema and Visual Culture: Envisioning the Nation.  London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.  Honourable Mention for Best Monograph at the British Association of Film, Television, and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) in 2022. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/contemporary-chinese-cinema-and-visual-culture-9781350234192/.  Translated into Chinese by Zhang Qingfang and Gao Jie,《流动的世界想象 : 中国当代电影与视觉文化》，鲁晓鹏著，张清芳、高洁译，Beijing: Sanlian shudian三联书店, 2026.

Chinese Modernity and Global Biopolitics: Studies in Literature and Visual Culture.  University of Hawaii Press, 2007.

China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity.  Stanford University Press, 2001.

From Historicity to Fictionality: The Chinese Poetics of Narrative. Stanford University Press, 1994.  Translated into Korean and Chinese, published in Seoul, South Korea (Ghil, 2001) and Beijing, China (Beijing University Press, 2012).

Image, Literature, Theory: Re-visioning Chinese Modernity 影像、文学、理论：重新审视中国现代性. Beijing: The Publishing House of the China Literary Federation 中国文联出版社, 2016.

Co-editor with Haomin Gong.  Ecology and Chinese-Language Cinema: Reimagining a Field.  London and New York: Routledge, 2020.

Co-editor with Jiayan Mi.  Chinese Ecocinema in the Age of Environmental Challenge. Hong Kong University Press, 2009; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010.

Co-editor with Emilie Y. Y. Yeh.  Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics. University of Hawaii Press, 2005. Choice's Award of "Outstanding Academic Title of 2005."

Editor.  Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender.  University of Hawaii Press, 1997.