Yutian Wong

Ph.D. Dance History and Theory, University of California, Riverside
B.A. Art History, University of California, Davis

Yutian Wong is an interdisciplinary dance scholar who has been teaching at SF State since 2009. Her research asks questions about how dance objects are created and valued by methodological approaches and disciplinary limits. Working at the intersection of dance and Asian American studies, Wong has written about Vietnamese American performance art, American modern and postmodern dance, and dance in popular culture. Recently completed projects include Dancing in the Aftermath of Anti-Asian Violence (2023) co-edited in response to the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings and Bangtan Remixed: A Critical BTS Reader (2024) which is an interdisciplinary project that focuses on the South Korean popular music act BTS to explore aesthetics, technology, geopolitics, and social activism. Wong is currently at work on a book titled Dancing in the Archives of Sincerity which examines the cyclical emergence of sincerity as a recurring theme in times of crisis.

Books and Special Issues

• Dancing in the Archives of Sincerity (in preparation)
• Bangtan Remixed: A Critical BTS Reader. (Duke, 2024). Co-edited with Patty Ahn, Michelle Cho, Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, Rani Neutill, and Mimi Thi Nguyen.
• Dancing in the Aftermath of Anti-Asian Violence. (2023). Co-edited with SanSan Kwan.
• Routledge Dance Studies Reader 3^rd Edition (Routledge, 2018). Co-edited with Jens Richard Giersdorf.
• Contemporary Directions in Asian American Dance. (Wisconsin, 2016)
• Choreographing Asian America. Middletown (Wesleyan, 2010)

Articles and Chapters

• “Sincerely Funny or Funny Sincerity: Avatar The Last Airbender and Cosplay Choreography.” In Funny Moves: Dance, Humor, Politics, edited by Marta Savigliano and Hannah Schwadron. London: Oxford University Press, in production.
• “Canonising BTS: FOMO in the Archives of Digital Convenience.” In LO:TECH:POP:CULT: Screeendance Remixed, edited by Alana Thain and Priscilla Guy, 108-127. London: Routledge, 2024.
• “Martha and the Swans: BTS’s “Black Swan” and Cold War Dance History.” In Bangtan Remixed: A Critical BTS Reader, edited by Patty Ahn, Michelle Cho, Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, Rani Neutill, Mimi Thi Nguyen, and Yutian Wong. Durham: Duke University Press, 2024.
• “Asian American Contemporary Dance.” In Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature and Culture, edited by Josephine Lee. London: Oxford University Press, 2020.
• “Dancing with the (Asian American) Stars: Margaret Cho and the Failure to Win.” In The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Competition, edited by Sherril Dodds, 453-471. London: Oxford University Press, 2018.
• “Remobilizing Dance Studies.” Dance Research Journal 48, no. 3 (2016): 70-84. Co-authored with Jens Richard Giersdorf.
• “Discipline and Asian American Dance.” In Choreography and Corporeality: Theories in Motion. Eds. Thomas DeFrantz and Philipa Rothfield, 225-246. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016.
• “Choreography of Confinement in Body Memory.” Journal of Short Film Studies 4, no. 2 (2014): 141-144.
• “Artistic Utopias: Michio Ito and the Trope of the International” In Worlding Dance, edited by Susan L. Foster, 144-162. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009
• “Towards a New Asian American Dance Theory: Locating the Dancing Asian American Body.”  Discourses in Dance 1, no. 1 (2002): 69-99.

 ***On Sabbatical Fall 2023 & Spring 2024