Biography:
My research focuses on Asian American literature, critical race and ethnicity, settler colonialism, and East Asian philosophy. In particular, I study Asian thought’s reception in American literature at large and in Asian American literature specifically, with an emphasis on how Asian American writers reappropriate Asian thought to rework the terms of national belonging and to critique transnational systems of empire and capitalism.
Contemporary American literature, Asian American and diasporic literature, critical race and ethnicity, settler colonial studies, reception of Asian thought, 氣, 無
Publications and Presentations
Du, Bowen, and Varun Rangaswamy, editors. Asian American Racialization and the Circulation of Asian Religio-Philosophy, special forum in the Journal of Transnational American Studies. (in preparation, proposal accepted)
Review of Julia H. Lee, The Racial Railroad, in Western American Literature, vol. 59, no. 3, 2024.
"Onward, Confucian Soldiers: Asian Religio-Philosophy and Asian American Literature." MLA, 7 January 2024, Loews Hotel, Philadelphia, PA. Conference Presentation.
"Full Qi Ahead: Railroad Colonialism, Geomancy, and the Chinese American Western." Western Literature Association Conference (WLA), 22 October 2022, Santa Fe Community Convention Center, Santa Fe, NM. Conference Presentation.
"'That is the nature of Emptiness': Refugee Reconfigurations of the Settler Colonial Narrative." American Association of Australasian Literary Studies Conference (AAALS), 23 April 2022, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. Conference Presentation.
Schuhmacher, Kirsten, et al. “Spenserian Futures.” The Spenser Review, vol. 50, no. 3, 2020. http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/spenseronline/review/item/50.3.4.
Teaching
Associate Instructor
ENL 040: Introductory Topics in Literature (Race and Gender in the Western)
ENL 003: Introduction to Literature
NAS 005: Introduction to Native American Literature
NAS 005A: Writer's Workshop
UWP 001/001Y: Introduction to Academic Literacies
Teaching Assistant/Reader
COM 110: Hong Kong Cinema
COM 100: World Cinema (Special Topic: Chinese Cinema)
ENL 182: Literature of California
ENL 010B: Literatures in English II: 1700–1900
ENL 010A: Literatures in English I: to 1700
Academic Service
Scholar's Symposium Co-Chair, English Graduate Student Association, 2024–2025
MLA Representative, English Graduate Student Association, 2023–2024
Co-Chair, English Graduate Student Association, 2022–2023
Vice Chair, English Graduate Student Association, 2021–2022
Graduate Student Assembly Representative, English Graduate Student Association, 2020–2021
Education
PhD Student, English, University of California, Davis, 2019–present
BA, Narrative Studies, Mathematics, with a minor in Education and Society, University of Southern California, 2019
Awards
Bilinski Dissertation Writing Fellowship, 2024–2025
J. Golden Taylor Award, WLA, October 2022
Wertheim Prize, AAALS, April 2022