Janine Sun Rogers

Janine Sun Rogers (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Theater and Performance Studies at UCLA whose research explores intersections of performance, militarization, and more-than-human entanglements in Asian American and transpacific contexts. Her dissertation uses performance as a heuristic to investigate the phenomena of canned foods as domesticated military technologies and their particular agency and animacy throughout Asian American communities. In all, Janine’s work seeks to explore how paradigms of militarization, imperialism, and racial capitalism are rehearsed and performed across orientations to cultural production, the embodied mundane, and the things that surround us.

Research Interests

Asian American Studies, Pacific Studies, Critical Militarization Studies, Posthumanism, More-than-Human Ontologies, Environmental Humanities

Education

B.A., Theater and Performance Studies, Bard College

Publications

“This Place is the Bomb: Pacific Theaters of Virtual Militourism from Pearl Harbor to Call of Duty,” in Staging Visitation: Tourism as Geographic Performance, edited by Bryan Schmidt and Weston Twardowski. University of Michigan Press [Forthcoming]
“The Headlands by Christopher Chen. Directed by Pam McKinnon. American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco. March 4, 2023. (Review)” Theater Journal, [Forthcoming 2024]
“Theatrical Labor in the Wake of COVID-19: Creating New Audiences through New Media Platforms” with Sean Metzger. AAPI Nexus 20.1 (2023)
“‘A Period of Extreme Uncertainty’: A Conversation on Pandemic Theatre by AAPI Companies in California” with Sean Metzger. Theatre Journal 74.4 (2022)
“Theatrical Labor in the Wake of COVID-19: Creating New Audiences through New Media Platforms” with Sean Metzger. UCLA AASC Policy Report (2022)

Presentations

“Touring Duty: Pacific Theaters of Virtual Militourism,” Working Group, American Society for Theatre Research, 2023
“State of the Art: Perspectives from California’s AAPI Theater Companies in the Face of COVID-19,” Association for Asian American Studies, 2023
“Theatrical Labor in the Wake of COVID-19: Creating New Audiences through New Media Platforms,” UCLA AAPI Policy Summit, 2023
“This Place Is The Bomb: Virtual Militourism and The Pacific Theater Of Call Of Duty: Warzone Pacific” Working Group, American Society for Theatre Research, 2022
“Our Little Brown Sister: Militarism and Colonial Desire in Bella Poarch’s TikTok Performances,” Performance Studies International, 2022

Awards

Graduate Predoctoral Fellowship, UCLA Institute for American Cultures, 2024
Edna and Yu-Shan Han Endowed Award, UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television, 2022- 2023
Rose Eng Chin & Helen Wong Eng Fellowship, UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 2023 Rose Eng Chin & Helen Wong Eng Best Paper Scholarship, UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 2022
Thomas Marshall Award, American Society for Theatre Research, 2021
Carter Tobin Prize for Theater and Performance, Bard College, 2018, 2019