Graduate Students - PhD

Catherine Nina Evarkiou

Ying Guo

Ningning Huang

Email Address: nih007@ucsd.edu 
Year of Entry: Fall 2017

Biography:

Ningning is a researcher and educator of Asian American literature /film and Transpacific Asian queer diaspora. Currently a PhD candidate from the Literature Department of UC San Diego, she also holds a master’s degree in Critical Asian Humanities from Duke University and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Lingnan University, Hong Kong. In her dissertation, she explores the paradoxical temporality trapping Asian Americans and Asian diasporic queers, both progressing from pest-like immigrants toward the model minorities and regressing back toward immaturity as emasculated /neutered pets, via the critical lens of animal studies. Revealing that the regression of Asian Americans as ornamental animals is the dark side of their progression as model minorities, she envisions regression as a strategic pathway for Asian Americans to transgress the racial, gender and species boundaries. In addition to animal studies and critical race theories, she also focuses on queer and women of color critique, environmental studies, biopolitics, and film theories. Her paper, “And I Shall Hear, Though Soft You Tread Above Me”: The Racialized Queer Migrations of “Danny Boy” is published by University of California Press in Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture. Another paper entitled as “Don’t F**k with Cats” and the Specter of Racialized Queer Violence is under review by The Journal for Critical Animal Studies. Ningning is also a bilingual creative writer seeking publication opportunities for her novella, Joseph the Violinist.

Research Interests:

Asian American Literature and Film, Pacific Islands Studies, Transpacific Queer Diaspora, Comparative Ethnic Studies, Comparative LGBTQ Literature, Queer and Women of Color Critique, Animal Studies, Race and Science, Biopolitics, Ecocriticism, Critical Race Theories, Film Theories.

Melina Jung

Yui Kasane

Samuel Kim

Jasmine Yueming Li

Email Address: yul282@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2023

Research Interests:

Sinophone science fiction novels and theater, epistemology of science and technology, embodiment and disembodiment, performing and installation arts in contemporary China

Academic Background:

M.A., Bilingual Bicultural Education, Columbia University, 2023
B.A., Chinese Language and Literature, Nankai University, 2021

Caleb Mertz-Vega

Email Address: cmertzvega@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2021

Research Interests:

Latin American Literature, Contemporary American Literature, Queer Theory, Affect Theory, Gender studies, psychology and literature, Northern Amazonian Region of Latin America. I am especially intrigued with both the portrayal and reception of queer characters in Latin American texts and how religious and historical concepts affect literature and society in general.

Biography:

I am now interested in the application of affect theory to reception history of LGBT characters in the literature of the northern Amazon region of Latin America. Are innate responses truly universal or are they shaped by enculturation? Of particular interest is the psychological and political influence of contemporary literature to the social acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community. I am also interested in how rural communities steeped in traditional biblical texts interact with gay and lesbian themes in Spanish and American literature.

Publications:

Mertz-Vega, Caleb A. “Apetito «contra natura»: Celestina and Her Same-Sex Desires.” Celestinesca, vol. 46, Dec. 2022, pp. 97–117. ojs.uv.es, https://doi.org/10.7203/Celestinesca.46.21582.

Fiction:

With Thoughts of Jason. Publish America, 2006.
The Silhouetted Leaves. Publish America, 2009.
The Unexpected. CreateSpace, 2012.

Education:

AA Spanish & English – San Diego City College
BA English and Spanish – University of California, Berkeley

Makenzie Read

Yi Sun

Email Address: yis020@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2019

Research Interests:

Animal studies, the alterity of animal, animal representation in different forms of art, Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature.

Biography:

I was born and grow up in Beijing, China. During 2009-2016, I studied Tourism Management and Chinese Literature in Soochow University, which is in Suzhou, a city famous for its rivers and bridges in southern China. I finished my East Asian Studies MA program in Duke University in 2018.

Yomira Varela Guadiana

Dingding Wang

Email Address: diw004@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2020

Research Interests:

Literature and space; eco-writing; speculative fiction; East Asian literature, visual arts, and culture; posthumanism, nonconscious cognition, cybernetics; architecture.

Academic Background:

M.A in Critical Asian Humanities, Duke University, 2019.
B.A. in English Language and Literature, Wuhan University, 2017.

Selected Publications:

“Yugongyishan: Renleishi de xiandai yuyan” 愚公移山：人類世的現代寓言 [Yugongyishan: The Modern Allegory of Anthropocene], Science Writing 科普創作, No. 2, June 2020, pp. 23–26.
“Dang zhiguai xiaoshuo zaoyu zhengqi pengke: Cong Ai, siwang he jiqiren tanqi” 當誌怪小說遭遇蒸汽朋克：從<愛，死亡和機器人>談起 [When Zhiguai Xiaoshuo Meets Steampunk: Starting from an Episode of Love, Death & Robots], Jiemian Wenhua 界面文化, 20 April 2019.
“Shiyu yuanshengxiang de diting” 始於淵聲巷的諦聽 [The War Siren over Nanjing: The Soundscape of Historical Memory], Xinhua Daily 新華日報, 7 Dec 2018: 18. Print.

Selected Translations:

Jason Goodwin, The Gunpowder Gardens: Travels through India and China in Search of Tea. (Jiangsu People’s, 2019).
Nathaniel Isaacson, Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction. (Jiangsu People’s: in preparation).
N. Katherine Hayles, Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious. (Jiangsu People’s: in preparation).
Carlos Rojas, “The Eye of the Other: Wu Ming-yi’s The Man with the Compound Eyes and the Challenge of Seeing Otherwise” 他者之眼：吳明益《復眼人》和異樣觀看的挑戰. Science Writing 科普創作, No. 2, June 2020, pp. 6-13.

Yuchen Yan

Email Address: y9yan@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2021

Research Interests:

20th century Chinese literature and film; Literature and Cosmopolitanism; Urban literature and cultural history; Cityscape and memoryscape; Gothic Horror and Modernity/Modernism.

Academic Background:

M.A. in Critical Asian Humanities, Duke University, USA, 2021.
B.A. in Chinese Language and Literature (minor in German Language and Literature), Peking University, China, 2019.

Publications and Conferences:

“Bookstore-cafés in Contemporary China: New Concepts, Cultural Capital and the Future of Physical Bookstores.” Presented at the Southeast Conference of Association for Asian Studies 2021 at UNC-Chapel Hill.
“Encounter Holmes and Lupin in Shanghai: Murders, Social Orders and Cosmopolitanism.” Presented at American Comparative Literature Association 2021 Conference.
“Model Citizen (1986): An Outlaw’s Boundary Exploration of Taipei.” Presented at 2020 SPAS Annual Student Conference at University of Hawaii, Mānoa.
“Modern and Diabolism: Spatial Organization and Narrative Techniques in Shi Zhecun’s Haunted House (1933).” Writing (xiezuo写作), 2019 (1). 

Yumin Yang

Email Address: yuy064@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2022

Research Interests:

Modern Japanese literature, Japanese colonialism, the intersection of gender and colonialism, the intimate spheres and domesticity of the Japanese empire, and East Asian cinema.

Biography:

I was born in Shanghai. I finished my undergraduate studies at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, focusing on Chinese literature and languages. However, “unfortunately,” I was more interested in the Japanese language and literature than Chinese literature. Maybe the reason is the large number of Japanese animations I have watched since childhood. Then I began to have contact with some modern Japanese literature. I was obsessed with Tanizaki Junichiro, Nakatsuma Atsushi, and Dazai Osamu in college. I studied East Asian Studies at Duke University in 2016, focusing on the CAH track. Aimee Kwon’s Intimate Empire greatly inspired me regarding its content and writing style. Leo Ching’s class also taught me how to reflect on colonialism, so I decided to write on Japanese colonialism. I went to study Japanese in Yokohama for one year after graduating from Duke. 

Currently, I am interested in Japanese colonial literature, especially female writers’ works. I am also interested in investigating the legacies of Japanese colonialism. I have been reading some works by Abe Kōbō and Tsushima Yūko. Although I use the word “post-colonial,” we can also argue that the war and colonialism in Japan have never ended. It was shocking to see some righteous left-wing Japanese writers not thoroughly reflect on the problem of Japanese colonialism. 

In my spare time, I watch some movies and Japanese TV dramas. I am a huge fan of Sang-soo Hong and Murakami Haruki, although I do not want to write a paper on him. However, I might write a paper on Sang-soo Hong in the future.

Alice Zheng

Email Address: q9zheng@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2023

Biography:

Alice Zheng is a multilingual scholar, poet, and writer. Her current research focuses on transnational women and gender studies, memory, Chinese and/or Sinophone literature and cinemas. Other research interests include the transpacifics, diaspora, literary theory, experimental cinema, archives, poetics and translation. As a poet and writer, she has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and published in journals such as Cutthroat and Santa Ana River Review. Outside of work, she enjoys poetry, music, and traveling.

Bahar Abdi

Ngoc Linh Bui

Manuel Carrion Lira

Email Address: macarrio@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2019

Research Interests:

Materialisms, Post-human Theory, Decoloniality, Contemporary Native American and Indigenous Literature, Indigenous Mapuche Epistemologies, Feminisms, Anticolonial Thought, Two-spirit Theory, New Materialisms, Post-human Theory, Queer Theory, Contemporary Indigenous Art, Contemporary Latin American Art, Film Studies.

Academic Background:

M.A., Arte, Pensamiento y Cultura Latinoamericanos, Instituto de Estudios Avanzados, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, 2017
Professional Practice Certificate, Design, Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile, 2013
B.A., Design, Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile, 2012

Professional Experience:

Artist at Residencia de Arte Colaborativo, Ministerio de las Culturas, las Artes y el Patrimonio, Chilean Government, Chile (2017-2019).
Postgraduate Coordinator at the Faculty of Arts, Universidad Mayor, Chile (2015-2017).
Lecturer at the Faculty of Arts, Universidad Mayor (2014-2017).

Biography:

I come from a small agro industrial town called Quillota, located in Chile, South America. A place that once was an indigenous metropolis where the Inca, Llolleo, Mapuche, Diaguita, Bato and other ancient cultures shared a common space for intellectual and political development. The traces of that ancient history still remain along with our colonial/modern present. It was in this territory where I experienced homophobia, racism and classism for the first time, it is the place that was most important for shaping my multidimensional sensibility.

I am a non-heterosexual indigenous person. We call ourselves epupillan in our mapuche communities, which could be translated as two-spirit for the reality in Turtle Island (North America), since epu means two and pillan is a reference to an ancient spirit.

As a contemporary epupillan artist and thinker, I dedicate my work to analyze remaining colonial continuities in our epistemologies and ontologies rendered as a binary matrix of thought. I am particularly interested in materiality as a critical dimension to understand the paradox of the human/culture divide as well as the active/passive divisions of agency present in our way of organizing our worlds. What does it mean to give form to matter? Does matter participate here or is it just a passive receptacle for the human action? Are non-western practices and epistemologies funded in this same divide?

My work faces these kinds of questions through academic research but also through my artistic collective practice, allowing me to experiment and practice diverse approaches to question the spectator, reader or viewer. The "Catrileo Carrion Community" is our epupillan research-creation platform where we can modulate our questions through editorial, audiovisual, curatorial and contemporary art practices that include diverse techniques and resources such as book publications, political memory workshops, indigenous revitalization talks, video-art exhibitions, video-essays projections, archive exhibitions, collective essay writing, wool knitting, and poster and diagram design.

Our community is currently composed of Constanza Araya Miranda (Journalist and social communicator, epupillan weaver and author of the radio programs Lafken Kürruf and Wente winkul mew), Alejandro Carrion Lira (epupillan healer and creator), Antonio Catrileo Araya (epupillan writer, teacher and weaver) and Manuel Carrion Lira (epupillan artist and thinker).

We have published the following books:

• Poyewün Witral: bitácora de la comunidad de tejedoras de Neltume (Self edited, 2019). https://issuu.com/catrileocarrion/docs/poyewun_witral_para_issu 
• Torcer la palabra: escrituras obrera-feministas (Tiempo Robado Editoras, 2018). https://issuu.com/catrileocarrion/docs/torcer_la_palabra__sinposis_ 
• Yikalay pu zomo Lafkenmapu (Self edited, 2017). https://issuu.com/catrileocarrion/docs/yikalay_pu_zomo_lafkenmapu  

Jing Chen

Bias Collins

Email Address: bcollins@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2018

Biography:

Bias Collins is a queer, neurodivergent, transgender graduate student in the PhD in Literature program, Cultural Studies emphasis. His primary research focus is on analyzing adaptations of fictional dis/abled figures from literary to visual mediums, particularly in the genres of science fiction, horror, & the gothic. He is keenly interested in exploring the hybridity of morality & mortality in figures of the cyborg, zombie, & vampire and their reliance on dis/ability in their dis/configurations of the human body. His wider areas of research interests include Disability, Queer, Feminst, & Film Studies.

Art Credit:
Trein Zuniga
https://www.instagram.com/sparebikes/ 

Sean Compas

Email Address: Contact Department
Year of Entry: Fall 2017

Research Interests:

Disability Studies; Critical Gender Studies; Queer Theory; Television and Film; Critical Race Studies; American Studies; Popular Culture; Futurity and Aesthetics of Collapse

Academic Background:

C.Phil., Literature, University of California San Diego, 2021
A.M., Cultural Studies, Dartmouth College, 2010
B.A., Government, University of California San Diego, 2006
Semester at Sea, University of Virginia, Summer 2006

Teaching Experience:

Teaching Assistant, Culture, Art, and Technology (2022)
CAT 125: Building the Written Self

Lead/Teaching Assistant, Dimensions of Culture (2017-2022)
DOC 1: Diversity
DOC 2: Justice
DOC 3: Imagination

Awards:

Graduate and Professional Student Association (GPSA) Travel Grant Award 2023
Dean of Arts and Humanities Travel Fund Award 2023
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation PATH Integrated Fellowship 2022-2023
Dimensions of Culture Program Professional Development Grant Award 2022
Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) M. Lynne Austin Memorial Scholarship 2021
UC San Diego Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award 2018-2019

Presentations:

Surviving Dystopia: Desiring Disability and the Apocacrip in John Krasinski's 'A Quiet Place'. The Futures of American Studies Institute, Dartmouth College. Hanover, NH. 24 June 2022.

(Re)Designing Women: Prime-Time Feminism and the American Sitcom. The Futures of American Studies Institute, Dartmouth College. Hanover, NH. 18 June 2018.

Dissertation:

Sean's dissertation, "Surviving Dystopia: Desiring Disability and Deliberate Cripping in Apocalyptic Film," explores the ways in which disability is deployed as a narrative device and recentered in dystopian film as a valuable and necessary embodiment for survival. More specifically, his work looks at how various disabilities are reconfigured as a requirement for futurity or the ways in which able-body-mind people must “crip up” their lives as a modality for survival or what he calls the Apocacrip. His dissertation asks how it is advantageous to theorize the body and human experience to desire disability in moments of catastrophe.

Professional Experience:

Population Council, Washington, DC
Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), Washington, DC
Human Rights Campaign (HRC), San Francisco, CA

Biography:

Prior to his doctoral studies, Sean spent several years living in Washington, D.C., where he worked in the field of international development. His professional efforts focused on HIV and AIDS programming to reduce HIV/STI infections, and stigma surrounding HIV, among key populations (e.g., men who have sex with men (MSM), female sex workers (FSW), people who inject drugs (PWID), and adolescent girls and young women (AGYW)) in Western, Eastern, and Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia.

He conducted qualitative data summary and analysis from key informant interviews and provided program management and support on U.S. government-funded, foundation-funded, and multilateral organization-funded projects such as: HIVCore (USAID), LinkUp (International HIV and AIDS Alliance), Project SOAR (USAID), DREAMS Implementation Science (Gates Foundation), Most-at-Risk-Populations Nigeria (DoD), Ghana Strengthening the Care Continuum Project (USAID), and most recently, Breakthrough RESEARCH (USAID), to name a few.

He has traveled extensively in over 25 countries and is fluent in American Sign Language (ASL).

Monique Dixon

Erik Christopher Homenick

Email Address: ehomenic@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2017

Research Interests:

My scholarly interests include representations of monstrosity in literature and films as well as the narrative/semiotic potential of music in films. My doctoral dissertation focuses on the outstanding narrative importance of music, especially by the composer Akira Ifukube, in Godzilla films. Other interests include 17th and 18th century French literature (especially the Marquis de Sade), cinema history, cinema sound, and musicology.

Academic Background:

Bachelor's degree in French (Minor in Linguistics), San Diego State University
Master's degree in French, San Diego State University

Professional Experience:

I have worked as a French and Humanities instructor at San Diego State University. Also, I have been an adjunct French professor at Mesa College, City College, and Southwestern College in the San Diego area. I have also served as a French translator for two video game companies, Sony Online Entertainment and Midway Home Entertainment.

Tatum Howey

Email Address: thowey@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2021

Research Interests:

Visual and Media Studies; History of Technology; Poetics; Hermeneutics; Phonetics; Transgender Studies; Performance Studies; History of Representation; Phenomenology; Surveillance Studies; Materiality of Language; Biopolitics

Biography:

My current focus, on the function of the screen and page as ontological exile for the transgender subject, seeks to examine the failures of representation of its constitutive body and the possible methodologies of self-determination through address, both in narrativization and performance, through which the transgender subject may become legibly constituted. I am currently thinking through both art historical and new media theories of visuality––specifically that from Martin Jay, Hal Foster, and Christian Metz––to research this precarious legibility.

My interests are not limited to transgender representation in the arts, and I am currently engaged in a variety of critical theory, including using Walter Benjamin’s studies on toxicity to complete research on the “profane illumination” of Paul Celan’s late poetics and the artist Hamad Butt’s installation pieces that he made while succumbing to AIDS, which contain toxic chemicals. I am also writing through Johann Winckelmann’s theories of imitation and Jacques Derrida’s analysis of the phantasm to emphasize how mimicry and idolatry proliferate in queer communities. I have written on the liberatory force of the gesture for marginalized bodies in both performance and surveillance, and most recently the poetics of transmasculine vocalization through the additive technology of testosterone.

Nilufar Karimi

Siqi Li

Ziyang Li

Email Address: zil042@ucsd.edu 
Year of Entry: Fall 2020

Research Interests:

Musicology, sound studies, cinema studies (silent and sound films), gender studies, media technological advance and human mindset

Academic Background:

M.A., Critical Asian Humanities, Duke, U.S., 2018
B.A., Chinese Language and Literature, Zhejiang University, China, 2014

Jessica Lizarraga

Email Address: jelizarraga@ucsd.edu 
Year of Entry: Fall 2020

Research Interests:

Hegemonic narratives, Post-colonial theory, border literature, transnational literature, and narco archetypes. 

Academic Background:

B.A. in English from California State University, Fullerton

Wentao Ma

Email Address: w4ma@ucsd.edu 
Year of Entry: Fall 2020

Research Interests:

War and media, East Asian cinema, materiality and materialism, Chinese masculinity and melodrama, celebrity studies, interactive & algorithmic media, senses and media

Academic Background:

M.A. in Film and Media Studies, Columbia University
B.A. in Media and Communication, Swansea University
B.A. in Literature of Theatre, Film and Television, Shandong Normal University

Selected Translation:

(From English to Chinese) 

William Urrichio. “Rethinking Documentary in An Interactive Age” In Documentary and Methods：International Forum on Documentary Film 紀錄與方法: 國際記錄影像論壇. Forthcoming.

Jane M. Gaines. “Radical Documentary: World Connection Before & After the Internet.” In Documentary and Methods：International Forum on Documentary Film 紀錄與方法: 國際記錄影像論壇. Forthcoming.

Joseph Vogel. 2018. “Whitewashing Slave Rebellion: The Confessions of Quentin Tarantino.” 昆汀·塔倫蒂諾的供詞: 《被解放的姜戈》與“洗白”奴隸起義. In Contemporary Cinema 當代電影, May 2019, 86-93. 

Patrick F. Campos. 2011. “The Politics of Naming a Movement: Independent Cinema According to the Cinemalaya Congress.” 電影運動之命名論——依照菲律賓Cinemalaya電影大會所定義的獨立電影（2005—2010）. In Contemporary Cinema 當代電影, July 2018, 101-109. 

(From Chinese to English)

Journal of Beijing Film Academy (ed.) 2019. Beijing Film Yearbook 2017, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2019, 270 pages, ISBN: 9781783209316.

Alick McCallum

Bianca Negrete Coba

Email Address: bnegrete@ucsd.edu 
Year of Entry: Fall 2020

Research Interests:

I am most interested in how displacement, belonging, and identity are impacted by place and space, how stories are told about these things and how we build relationships with places, people, trees, and the more-than-human world. I am concerned with the cyclicity of land administration (an umbrella term I use for urban planning, municipality, property management, and how land is ‘used’) and how gentrification disproportionately impacts low-income communities and people of color, often leading to loss of home/houses and environmental degradation/toxicity. My work is also concerned with the overarching and lingering connections between environmental issues and human rights issues as seen in the prison industrial complex, the building of the border wall, and the continuous disregard and destruction of Native lands, all of which are linked by administrative means and disregard for life; human and more-than-human. I also have a healthy obsession with jacaranda trees, which play a big part in my work. I consider myself interdisciplinary, working between the following fields/disciplines: Chicanx Studies/Literature, Multiethnic Literature, Critical Race Studies, Ethnic Studies, Mixed-Race Studies, Ecocriticism, Environmental Humanities, Environmental Philosophy, (Eco) Phenomenology, (Eco) Feminism, Critical Gender Studies, Place/Space Studies, Gentrification and Urban Studies, and Prison Studies.

Academic Background:

BA English, Writing Minor, UC Merced
MA Interdisciplinary Humanities, UC Merced

Biography:

My research is heavily inspired by my own experiences with place and displacement as a Chicana who is deeply proud of her roots. I come from a mixed-race family from Chula Vista, California, a border town here in San Diego. My dad served in the Army and because of this I have experienced what it’s like to have a regularly disrupted sense of place and belonging. By the time I was eight years old, I moved eleven times, lived in three different states, four different cities, eight different houses, and attended five different schools. To me and my family, Chula Vista was our only home despite all this. I was away from San Diego for quite some time and am excited and humbled to be back home to pursue my PhD here at UCSD and give back to my community in the ways that I can.

Awards:

UCSD Literature Department Shen Fellowship, 2020-2024

Jessica Silbaugh-Cowdin

Email Address: jsilbaug@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2019

Biography:

Jess Silbaugh-Cowdin is a queer nonbinary (she/they) PhD student in Cultural Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She studies theories of affect and emotion through emergent strategies in visionary and radical forms of contemporary speculative fiction and film. She also attended Clarion West Writers' Workshop in 2016, and she writes and edits speculative fiction in her free time.

Academic Background:

BA, Psychology (minor in English), 2011
MA, Literature and Culture (emphasis on film), 2018 

Research Interests:

Affect Theory, Emotion, Speculative Fiction and Film, Visionary Fiction, Octavia Butler, Speculative Imagination, Critical Fabulation, Black Radicalism, Emergent Strategies, Decolonial Methodologies, Environmental and Restorative Justice, Ecotheory, Black Feminist Thought, Queer Feminist Liberatory Practices, Queer & Feminist Theories, Anti-Colonial Pedagogy, Popular Culture

Yichen Tan

Reem Taşyakan

Research Interests:

Anglophone Arab literature; Diaspora studies; Arabic literature in translation; Arab-American cultural studies; Middle East cultural studies; Arab-American ethnic and racial studies; Post-colonial studies; Arabic literary translation and translation theory; Modern Middle East history

Professional Experience:

From 2013-2019, I was a lecturer at San Diego State University and University of San Diego where I taught courses in Arabic literature in translation, Arab-American literature, and Middle East culture while conducting course-related and independent research. From 2011-2015, I worked in the translation industry performing Arabic to English translations and coordinating translation and interpreting projects for individuals, non-profit organizations, and corporations.

Academic Background:

M.A., Middle East and North African Studies (MENAS), University of Arizona, 2011
B.A., Creative Writing, University of Arizona, 2004

Evelyn Vasquez

Email Address: evvasque@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2019

Biography:

I am from East LA, Lincoln Heights (Clifton St., Ave 28, and Ave 26) and worked on Whittier Blvd. and Arizona Ave. throughout my childhood up to an adult. Triqua for life. I rep sopes from King Taco all day every day. Rap is my harmony. Cumbias are my jams. 

Academic Background:

B.A., English (Literature, Criticism, and Theory Emphasis), University of California, Davis, 2016 
Pasadena City College (2008-2013) 

Research Interests: 

I am currently interested in researching depictions of impoverished housing in the American city novel (late 19th and early 20th century). In these depictions, I investigate how authors detail the architecture of housing and the narrative structure in which they design living spaces in the city. Some of my previous research experience includes studying the tenement in American comics and urban documentation (planning for low-income housing and communities). Some of my more specific research has included analyzing comic book panels and tenement architectural drawings in Will Eisner’s A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories (1978).

Professional Experience:

While an undergraduate student, I studied abroad at Oxford, England and Santiago, Chile. After graduating from UC Davis in 2016, I worked at Pasadena City College, where I assisted students with transfer resources and provided personal statement workshops. I worked at Aspires West Pasadena, an after-school program, dedicated to fill in academic gaps. Some of the community work I have done include organizing a low-income housing community meeting to bring awareness of the housing changes occurring in the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood (2018) and the impact on the neighborhood residents. I conducted geography and reading workshops for Lincoln Heights youth in the summers of 2012 and 2013 at the local library and low-income housing center. 

Awards: 

Interdisciplinary Research Award, Graduate & Professional Student Association, UC San Diego (05/2022) 
Jewish Studies Fellowship, UC San Diego (07/2021 & 2020 )
Sawyer Seminar Fellowship, UC San Diego (03/2021) 
Student Training Academy for Research Success (STARS) Fellowship (09/2019)
Fulbright U.S. Student Program, Teaching Assistant (09/2018)
University of California Education Abroad Program Scholarship (UCEAP) (01/2016)    
Mentorship for Undergraduate Research in Agriculture, Letters and Science (MURALS) (2015 & 2013)

Constance Von Igel De Mello

Chenfeng Wang

Email Address: chw058@ucsd.edu 
Year of Entry: Fall 2020

Research Interests:

East Asian film and literature, memory and trauma studies, non-fiction and documentary studies, transcultural and transmedia adaptation studies

Academic Background:

M.A., East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania, 2020
M.A., History, Tsinghua University, 2018
B.A., Chinese Language and Literature (Minor in Journalism), Tsinghua University, 2015

Shiya Zhang

Chengfan Zhou

Laala Al-Jaber

Email Address: Contact Department
Year of Entry: Fall 2016

Research Interests:

The rise of the novel; Victorian literature; Gender Studies; Film Studies; Literatures of migration, passing, and mobility; Psychoanalysis; The Harlem Renaissance; Ethnic Studies; Performativity; Literary representations of The Other; Popular Culture Studies

Professional Experience:

I was the literature and popular fiction librarian at the Qatar National Library for two years. At UCSD, I worked as a graduate student researcher and served as a teaching assistant in the Warren Writing Program. While earning my master’s degree in comparative literature at Dartmouth, I worked on an oral history project and conducted interviews with undergraduates. I served as an intern for the ABA Journal and the CQ Researcher while pursuing my journalism degree at Northwestern. I am fluent in English and Arabic.

Academic Background:

M.A. in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College 2013
B.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University in Qatar 2012

Joanmarie Bañez

Email Address: jbanez@ucsd.edu 
Year of Entry: Fall 2019

Biography:

Joanmarie Bañez is a PhD candidate in the Literatures in English section. She is from Atlanta, Georgia, where she completed her BA and MA in English literary studies at Georgia State University. She studies aesthetics and narratology in multiethnic literature of the U.S. from the 19th-century to the present; kinship and transracial adoption narratives; and Asian American diaspora in the U.S. South. Her work can be found in the South Atlantic Review and The Georgia Review.

Academic Background:

M.A., English (Literary Studies), Georgia State University, 2019
B.A., English (Spanish minor), Georgia State University, 2017
Universidad de Málaga, Spring Semester 2016

Steven Beardsley

Email Address: sbeardsl@ucsd.edu 
Year of Entry: Fall 2018

Research Interests:

Filipino/x American & Filipino/x Spanish American Literature of the 20th to 21st century; 19th and 20th Century American, Latin American, and Spanish Literatures; queer theory, particularly queer people of color critique and queer diasporic studies; Asian American, African American, Indigenous American, and Transpacific Literatures; psychoanalysis; feminist theory and queer masculinities; postcolonial studies and the subaltern; identity construction, subjectivity, and nationalizing projects; ecocriticism; and media and popular culture. I am currently interested in reading the intersections between Filipino and Filipinx American Literature and Indigenous Literature from the Philippines through a Queer Decolonizing framework.

Research Skills:

I am fluent in Spanish, and I conducted an interdepartmental honors project between the English and Modern Languages Departments at Hamline University in Minnesota titled:

“Revolution, Redemption, and Romance: Reading Constructions of Filipino Spanish American Identities and Politics of Knowledge in Rizal’s Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo alongside Filipino American Fiction.” This ninety paged project is published in the Hamline Digital Commons. A section of it is also published through the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) 2016 proceedings.

Professional Experience:

I have two years of experience teaching English as a second language to Spanish and Russian speakers. I taught for the Center for Interamerican Studies (CEDEI) in Cuenca, Ecuador for one year (2016-2017). I then taught for Berlitz in San Luis Potosi, Mexico for one year (2017-2018). I also taught for Skyeng an online school based in Russia for three months (June-September 2018). I also have experience working as an independent contractor for the Center for Global Environmental Education (CGEE) where I helped design and write a blog discussing environmental education topics such as water conservation and alternative energy.

More about me on my Linkedin profile

Mayra Cortes

Email Address: Contact Department
Year of Entry: Fall 2015

Research Interests:

"New World" Travel Writing
English and Spanish Colonialism
Transatlantic Studies
Sound Studies
Literary Histories of Class, Race, and Labor 
Decoloniality
Indigenous Studies
Utopian/dystopian fiction

Nolan Dannels

Hannah Friederike Doermann

Email Address: hdoerman@ucsd.edu 
Year of Entry: Fall 2017

Academic Background:

C.Phil., English Literature, Graduate Specialization in Critical Gender Studies, UCSD, 2020
M.A., Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College, 2017
B.A., English Literature, Spanish & Queer Studies, Denison University, 2016

Research Fields:

Children’s and Young Adult Literature Studies; Youth and Childhood Studies; Girl Studies; Fan Studies; Queer Studies; Critical Whiteness Studies; Ecocriticism

Dissertation:

Hannah Doermann’s dissertation, “Girls Will Be Girls: Reimagining Girlhood in Contemporary Young Adult Literature,” explores the racial politics of models of girlhood in Young Adult literature (YA). Employing theories of temporality from queer studies, postcolonial studies, and youth and childhood studies, this dissertation argues that YA takes girls seriously in the present moment and reimagines girlhood as a state of being rather than a state of becoming in service of the nation. Using different engagements with girlhood in YA as a site to explore the racial politics of this marketing category, she traces its history from its establishment as a marketing category for middle-class white girls to the predominance of neoliberal diversity politics and emphasizing interventions by YA authors of color who explore girlhood as a racialized category. Merging analyses of YA novels and girls’ online discussions of YA, this dissertation bridges of the gap between the study of literature for young people and young people themselves, intervening in the central debate in Childhood Studies about the slippage between the discursive category of childhood and the materiality of actual children by reading YA as a site that discursively constructs girlhood and is simultaneously shaped by the lived experiences of actual girls.

Publications:

“Embracing the ‘Silly Teen Girl’: Intergenerational Feminism, Perpetual Girlhood, and the Twilight Renaissance.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, accepted pending revisions.

“Against Ecocidal Environmentalism: Anti-Capitalist, Queer & Decolonial Critiques of Mainstream Environmentalism in Lilliam Rivera’s Dealing in Dreams.” The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 45, no. 2, April 2021, pp. 137-153.

Teaching Experience:

Instructor of Record, Literature Department, UCSD
Girls in Literature (Summer 2022)
Vampires in Literature (Spring 2022)
Young Adult Literature (Summer 2021)

Instructor of Record, Critical Gender Studies Program, UCSD
Sexuality & Nation (Summer 2022)

Óscar Fernando García

Email Address: o4garcia@ucsd.edu 
Year of Entry: Fall 2021

Research interests:

Latinx/Chicanx Studies; Queer Literatures and Theory; Critical Race Theory; Decoloniality; Media Studies; Vagrancy

Academic background:

B.A. English, Spanish (Literary Journalism minor), University of California, Irvine, 2021

Aimee Jurado

Email Address: ajurado@ucsd.edu 
Year of Entry: Fall 2020

Biography:

Aimee Jurado received her B.A. in English at California State University, Fullerton in December of 2019. Currently, she is a first-year Literature Ph.D. student at UCSD on the English Literature track. Her research interests include 19th-20th century American literature, American identity, and African American and Asian-American narratives. Outside of school and work, Aimee enjoys spending time with her family, friends, and dogs. She is an advocate for equitable education and higher education, and she hopes to weave this personal passion into her professional work.

Research Interests:

19th-20th century American literature, American identity, African American and Asian-American narratives and their role in defining American identity, Victorian literature and its impact on American character, food as symbols in literature, and food fiction.  

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aimee-jurado-22b643117/

Trung T. Le

Email Address: ttl072@ucsd.edu 
Year of Entry: Fall 2017

Research Interests:

Theory and Criticism, with focus on post(-)colonialism; film aesthetics; world literatures, especially Pacific literatures and Vietnamese literatures; cultural studies; linguistics; comparative literature; modernist and postmodernist literature

Current Research Areas:

The intersection of the body, the nation, and gender in the formation of identity; practices of encoding the body: the digital, the tattoo, bio-chemical and social influences on the body and behaviour; interdisciplinary studies: postcolonial theory, post-colonial period, and Vietnamese/Pacific literary zones.

Samuel Lyons

Kellie Miller

Matthew Moore

Barışcan Ozkuzey

Maya Richards

Camille Uglow

Vyxz Vasquez

Email Address: lmvasquez@ucsd.edu
Year of Entry: Fall 2021

Research Interests:

Protest Literature, Translation, Creative Writing, Asian American Studies, Poetry, Philippine Literature, Police Archives, Filipino Diaspora

Academic Background:

MA in Creative Writing, University of the Philippines, 2019
BA in Creative Writing, University of the Philippines, 2012

Phuong T. Vuong

Email Address: pvuong@ucsd.edu 
Year of Entry: Fall 2020

Research Interests:

critical race theory, gender studies, queer theory, constructions of knowledge and the subject, neoliberalism, Asian American studies, and 20^th and 21^st century ethnic American literature.

Biography:

Phuong T. Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet and writer from Oakland. Her critical research explores Asian/American women’s archives and their creative refusal of recognition and hypervisibility. Phuong is the author of two poetry collections including the forthcoming A Plucked Zither (Red Hen Press, 2023), which won the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award 2021. She has publications in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Asian American Writers' Workshop: The Margins, and elsewhere. Her reviews and interviews have been published in journals such as The Rumpus and The Adroit Journal. She often writes to examine language, migration, race, gender and other topics related to her research. You can find out more about her work at phuongthaovuong.com.

Academic Background:

MFA in Creative Writing, University of Colorado- Boulder, 2020
BA in Black Studies, Amherst College, 2009

Jessica Aguilar

Email Address: jea035@ucsd.edu 
Year of Entry: Fall 2017

Academic Background:

Master of Arts in Spanish, New Mexico State University (2016)
Bachelor of Arts with majors in Spanish Literature and Latin American Studies, University of California, San Diego  (2014)
University of California, Education Abroad Program at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (2012)

Research Interests:

!9^th Century Latin American Literature
Contemporary Mexican Literature
Critical Race Theory
Critical Gender Studies
Critical Ethnic Studies
Decoloniality
Narco-Politics
Politics of Death 
Critical Migration and Refugee Studies
Central American Transmigration Studies
Border Studies

Research Skills:

At New Mexico State University, Jessica conducted research on Spanish Language Acquisition and Teaching Methodology for Heritage and Second Language Learners. Through the implementation of Case Studies, Survey Research, and Critical Discourse Analysis, she was able to present a Didactic Unit specifically designed for teaching Spanish to Heritage Learners. In addition, as a UCSD Competitive Edge fellow (2017), Jessica also worked on a project that took from Fredric Jameson’s concept of “National Allegory” to analyze the relationship between the mutilated body and neoliberal economic practices in Salvadoran short stories published between 1990-2000.

Biography:

Jessica Aguilar is originally from the San Ysidro/Tijuana border region and a first-generation, low-income, transfronteriza student. She graduated from UCSD in 2014 with BAs in Latin American Studies and Spanish Literature and received a Master’s Degree in Spanish from New Mexico State University in 2016. While at NMSU, Jessica volunteered for the College Assistant Migrant Program, worked closely with the Center for Latin American and Border Studies, and was a member of literary workshop Pizca a las 6:30. Upon her return to San Diego, Jessica worked closely with unaccompanied migrant children from Central American backgrounds, something she continues to do during the summer time. 

Jessica is a founder and current Co-Chair of the Latina Doctoral Student Collective at UCSD. She also works for the Raza Resource Centro as a Graduate Learning Specialist (GLS), where she assists in the facilitation of high impact learning components of the Raza Research and Conference Program, and coaches undergraduate Latinx/Chicanx students in the creation of pathways to post-baccalaureate opportunities. 

Marisol Cuong

Yingjie Fei

Email Address: yifei@ucsd.edu 
Year of Entry: Fall 2020

Research Interests:

Decolonizing theories
Colombian armed conflict 
Dirty war
State terrorism 
Nadaísmo
Narratives on violence
Chinese community and diaspora in Latin America

Research Skills:

Spanish-Chinese translation and interpretation
Translation work:  [Chinese] Mutis, Álvaro. Relatos De Mar y Tierra.

Veronica Perez Garcia

Carolina Ramirez Moreno

Ana Villalpando

Andrea Zelaya