Professor Lu teaches classes on Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Asian American histories. His first scholarly monograph, Appearance Politics: Legitimacy Building in Late Imperial and Modern China (Cornell University Press, November 2024), explores the role that physical appearance has played in Chinese political culture.
Professor Lu is also a registered General Contractor in the state of Rhode Island. While taking courses at trade school, he is interested in construction of all sorts, in particular, residential construction. This inspired his second book project on the growth of affordable housing and the formation of modern building codes in the city of Shanghai, a place absorbing a vast number of migrants and immigrants since the late nineteenth century and constantly weathering climate challenges. He received a Ph.D. from Syracuse University and has been at Clark since 2016.