Shana Ye

Areas of Interest

• Transnational feminism
• Queer studies
• Post-socialist studies
• Affect and trauma
• China studies

I welcome students in study of Chinese feminism, Sinophone queer studies, and China and colonialism.

Chinese feminism, transnational feminist praxis, queer of color critique, queer and socialism, China and global colonialism, Cold War gender politics and sexuality   

Biography

Dr. Shana Ye is assistant professor of Women and Gender Studies at University of Toronto Scarborough and in the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. Her research lies at the intersection of transnational feminism, queer studies, post/socialist studies and theories of affect and trauma. Shana also writes about death, technology and AIs, and speculative fictions.

Weaving together ethnography, history, memoir, science fiction, graphic arts and cultural critique, Shana’s monograph Queer Chimerica: A Speculative Auto/Ethnography of the Cool Child (2024) examines the intersections of queer theory and the rise of China to reveal how queerness is “produced” through the interdependence of China and the United States since the late Cold War.  Centering on “impossible” subjects such as sodomites in the Cultural Revolution, rural queer migrants, gay men in HIV/AIDS movements, and LGBT activists in the institutionalization of queer Chinese studies and transnational grassroots queer/feminist activism, Queer Chimerica explores the relationship between the discourse of queer fluidity and capital’s demands for labor flexibility, bringing to the forefront questions of representation, queer mode of knowing, and the sexualized, gendered, and racialized power relations in transnational queer praxis. Check out the book here: https://press.umich.edu/Books/Q/Queer-Chimerica3

Shana’s second book project, Silicon Yellow: Sojourner Colonialism and The Aesthetics of Techno-Chimerica explore the racialized construction of Chineseness in relation to technology, the (in)animate body, and the visualization of geopower. Examining the assemblage of the raw (the yellow earth, poverty, desert and deserted land, sandstorms, etc.) and the synthetic (over-photoshopped femininity, silicon sex toys, doll-like women, copycat, cellphone chips wafers, etc.) that characterizes the aestheticization of Chineseness, this book unpacks the power that enables new form of techno-gentrification, heteropatriarchy, and racial-ethnic extractive capitalism.

Shana is also working on a co-edited book volume on queer archive and several side projects such as on COVID-19 affect and memory, Generative AIs and Digital Afterlife, and Queer Quantum Theory.

Shana sees the goal of feminist education and research as to advance social justice. She is committed not only to increasing LGBTQ visibility in the classroom and professional venues, but also to “queering” the academic institution by challenging its systemic sexism, heteronormativity, classism, ableism and meritocracy through experiential pedagogy and creative methods. Shana holds a PhD in Feminist Studies and in Developmental Studies and Social Change from the University of Minnesota (2017). She has served on the governing boards of Society for Queer Asian Studies (SQAS) affiliated with Association for Asian Studies (AAS) and North American Asian Feminist Collaborative (NAAF) caucus at National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA).

Education

Ph.D. in Feminist Studies – 2017 – University of Minnesota, Twin Cities 

Red Father, Pink Son: Queer Socialism and Post-socialist Queer Critiques 

Co-advisers: Jigna Desai, Richa Nagar 

M.A. in Women and Gender Studies  – 2011- University of Cincinnati 

B.A in Women and Gender Studies 2007 University of Cincinnati 

B.A in Political Science – 2006 – Beijing International Studies University  

Selected Works

(Forthcoming 2025). “‘Second Voyage’: Sojourner Colonialism, Chinese SF and US-Sino Empire in Space” in Techno-Orientalism Volume II. Edited by David Roh, Besty Huang, Greta Niu and Christopher Fan. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

2022. “Word of Honor and Brand Homonationalism with ‘Chinese Characteristics’: the Dangai Industry, Queer masculinity and the ‘Opacity’ of the State.” Feminist Media Studies. DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2022.2037007.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14680777.2022.2037007?journalCode=rfms20

2021. “The Drama of Chinese Feminism: Post-socialist Trauma and Decolonization of Affect.” Feminist Studies, 47. Nov 3, 783-812. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/848001/pdf

2021. “‘Paris’ and ‘Scar’: Queer Social Reproduction, Homonormative Division of Labour and HIV/AIDS Economy in Postsocialist China.” Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography. Vol 28, Issue 12: 1778-1798. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0966369X.2021.1873742

2021. “Queering Postsocialist Coloniality: Decolonizing Queer Fluidity through Postsocialist Condition” in Postcolonial and Postsocialist Dialogues: Intersections, Opacities, Challenges in Feminist Theorizing and Practice. Edited by Redi Koobak, Madina Tlostanova and Suruchi Thapar-Björkert. London, UK: Routledge.

2018. “Reparative Return to ‘Queer Socialism’: Agency, Desires and the Socialist Queer Space.” in Power and Pleasure: Writing the History of Sexuality in China. Edited by Howard Chiang. Seattle: University of Washington Press: 142-162.

2016.“Reconstructing the Transgendered Self as a Feminist Subject: Trans/Feminist Praxis in Urban China.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, Vol 3. Numbers 1-2. https://read-dukeupress-edu.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/tsq/article/3/1-2/259/91783/Reconstructing-the-Transgendered-Self-as-a

Teaching

Undergraduate Courses:

WSTA03: Intro to Feminist Thought and Theory

WSTB25: LGBT History, Theory and Activism

WSTC25: Transnational Sexuality (Previously taught as Gender and Sexuality in a Globalized World)

WSTC30: Special Topics in Women’s and Gender Studies: Women and Community-based Entrepreneurship

WST/GASD30: Alien/Asian: Techno-Orientalism and the Global Asian Futurity

Graduate Courses:

WGS5000: Feminist Theories, Histories, Movements I

WGS1013: Intimacy, Empire, Violence

WGS1011: Future-history: Speculative Genealogies of Queer Feminist World-Making