Faculty

Profile

I’m a scholar of early modern Iberian and colonial Latin American literature, with a focus on how race, gender, and power were constructed across the transpacific world. My research often explores the racialization of Asian diasporas, Afro-Asian intimacies, and the afterlives of slavery and indenture, drawing on archives from Mexico, the Philippines, Macao and beyond. At Parsons, I teach First-Year Integrative Seminar, where I encourage students to see writing as both a way of thinking and a form of making—connecting historical archives to contemporary questions through interdisciplinary, inclusive, and hands-on approaches. I also bring my experience teaching writing, literature, and languages to help students develop their own voices and creative practices.

You can read more about my research and teaching on my personal website.

Degrees Held

PhD in Comparative Literature, University of Chicago (2025)

MPhil in Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford (2019)

BA in Hispanic Philology, Peking University (2017)

Recent Publications

Zhang, Yunning. 2025. “Chinos before the Yellow Race: Catarina de San Juan, the Achinada Mystic of New Spain.” Colonial Latin American Review 34 (2): 135–55. doi:10.1080/10609164.2025.2504292.

Research Interests

critical race studies, queer theory, archive, mysticism, violence, colonial Latin America and Southeast Asia, Asian diasporas