Penn Arts & Sciences Logo

Chi-ming Yang

Professor of English

Fisher-Bennett Hall 314
215-746-3527

Office Hours

spring 2024

Tues. & Thurs. 12:30-1:30 pm in-person (FBH 314), or by appointment for in-person or zoom (in either case, please email beforehand) 

Chi-ming Yang received her Ph.D. in English from Cornell University and her B.A. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University with emphases in Spanish, Chinese, and English. She specializes in the literary and visual culture of race and empire, with a focus on East-West cultural exchanges stretching from the early modern period to the 18th century, and up to the contemporary moment. Her scholarship is interdisciplinary and comparative in approach, crossing the bounds of British, American, Asian, and Latin American studies.  Primary fields of research include: transatlantic/transpacific exchanges; science and race; material culture and globalism; contemporary/postcolonial art, film, and visual culture. Articles on race and visual culture include: "Haptic Blackness: The double Life of an 18th-century Bust" and "Silver, Blackness, and Fugitive Value, 'from China to Peru.'" Her book, Performing China: Virtue, Commerce, and Orientalism in Eighteenth-century England, 1660-1760 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), is a study of the European fascination with Asia. It examines how China became an intensely debated example of virtue amidst England’s new consumer culture. Publications related to the theme of early modern orientalism have appeared in Comparative Literature Studies, Eighteenth-Century Studies, and Humans and Other Animals in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Representation, Hybridity, Ethics. Her new work concerns the science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler and ongoing reflections on the environment, race, chinoiserie, transatlantic slavery, and popular visual culture. 

Publications

Articles and Book Chapters

News & Events

Doctoral Dissertations Chaired

2023

Cassidy Holahan "Dramatizing the Novel: Transmedial Exchange in the Long Eighteenth Century"

Courses Taught

fall 2024

ENGL 4097.301 Honors Thesis Seminar  
ENGL 5415.401 Orientalisms  

spring 2024

fall 2023

ENGL 1820.301 18th-Century British Poetry  

spring 2023

fall 2022

spring 2022

fall 2021

ENGL 041.001 Animals and Human Rights  
ENGL 311.301 English Honors Program  

spring 2021

fall 2019

ENGL 800.301 Pedagogy  

spring 2019

ENGL 040.301 British Poetry 1660-1914  
ENGL 748.301 Racial Enlightenment  

fall 2018

ENGL 800.301 Pedagogy  

fall 2017

ENGL 748.301 Racial Enlightenment canceled  

spring 2017

ENGL 040.301 British Poetry 1660–1914  
ENGL 800.301 Pedagogy  

spring 2016

ENGL 241.401 Beast Culture  
ENGL 748.401 Theorizing Orientalism  

fall 2015

ENGL 040.301 British Poetry  
ENGL 748.401 Theorizing Orientalism canceled  

spring 2015

fall 2014

ENGL 748.401 Racial Enlightenment  

spring 2014

ENGL 040.301 British Poetry 1660-1914  

fall 2013

ENGL 800.301 Pedagogy  

spring 2012

ENGL 040.301 British Poetry 1660-1914  
ENGL 748.401 Theorizing Orientalism  

fall 2011

spring 2011

ENGL 040.301 British Poetry 1660-1914  
ENGL 593.401 Racial Enlightenment  

fall 2010

ENGL 311.301 The Honors Program  

summer 2009

ENGL 040.950 British Poetry, 1660-1914  
ENGL 061.950 London in Fiction and Film  

spring 2009

ENGL 040.001 British Poetry 1660-1914  

fall 2008

spring 2008

spring 2007

ENGL 748.301 Theorizing Orientalism  

fall 2006