Contact Info
Qianxiong Yang
Ph.D. Candidate, Theater and Performance Studies
Qianxiong Yang is a Ph.D. candidate and a Mitchell Fellow in Theater & Performance Studies at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. His research interests revolve around the ongoing transformations within the relationship between politics and technology in times of unprecedented global connectedness, drawing from fields such as performance studies, media theory, science and technology studies, philosophy, political theory, and queer theory. Using the lens of exhaustion, his dissertation theorizes how techno-human encounters in contemporary China, particularly with digital technologies and biotechnologies in the so-called digital-bioeconomy, are rewiring consciousness and reshaping embodiment and consequently transforming debates around the meanings of (anti)work, political subjectivities, political organization, and critique. He was previously Assistant Editor of Theatre Journal, and has designed original syllabuses that he taught at UCLA, including “Theatricality of Globalization: Reading Across China and the West,” and “Media, and Mediums.” He also collaborated on a dozen theater and film projects as an actor, playwright, director and makeup artist, and has additional interests in fashion studies, architecture, and the history of medicine. He grew up in Shanghai.
Research Interests
Global China Studies, Media Theory, Digital Media, Biotechnology, Political Theory, Queer Theory, Continental Philosophy, Chinese Philosophy
Education
PhD, Theater and Performance Studies, UCLA (in progress)
MA, Theatre, Performance and Critical Culture, King’s College London
BA, English, Tongji University, Shanghai
Selected accomplishments and professional work
Helen Krich Chinoy Dissertation Research Fellowship, American Society for Theatre Research (2024)
Minderoo Initiative on Technology and Power Fellowship, Minderoo Foundation/UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (2024)
“Book Review: Hongwei Bao’s Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance.” Theatre Research International, vol.49, no.2.
“From Lying-flat to Letting-rot: Underperforming Contemporary China.” Invited Talk at Transnational Turns and the Future of China Studies Conference. The Humanities Institute, University of California, Santa Cruz (May 2023)
“Political Subject and Technological Media in Neoliberal Governance.” Invited Lecture at Exploring the Media and Politics Landscape of Europe, East Asia and the US Winter School. University of Bologna, Italy (March 2023)
