Lai-Henderson has published widely in the field of transnational American Studies, where she locates works of American literature in different historic moments of China and in Chinese translation. She is the author of Mark Twain in China (Stanford 2015), and her work has appeared in The Yale Review, MELUS, and Journal of Transnational American Studies, as well as book chapters in Mark Twain in Context (Cambridge 2019) and Langston Hughes in Context (Cambridge 2022). Her essay, "You Are No Darker Than I Am: The Souls of Black Folk in Maoist China" (PMLA, Sep 2023), is the 2023 recipient of the 1921 Prize in American Literature in the tenured category. Her monograph-in-progress, “You Are No Darker Than I Am”: Writers of Transnational Blackness in Twentieth-Century China,” reveals both compelling and competing transracial visions across different historic moments in China and in Chinese translation.

She is the book review editor of the American Quarterly (flagship journal of the American Studies Association), and was the 2024-25 Hutchins Family Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Lai-Henderson served as (co)Chair of American Studies Association’s International Committee (2022-2024). She has also recently served on the judging panel for the ACLS (American Council of Learned Societies)’s Open Access Book Prize in Literary Studies.

Lai-Henderson has a B.A. in English and comparative literature and a Ph.D. in American studies from The University of Hong Kong (HKU). She holds an M.A. in American studies from Heidelberg University, Germany, and was a Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University.