Dr. Sunny Xiang

Biography

Sunny Xiang is an Associate Professor at Yale University, where she focuses on race, war, and imperialism through various aesthetic, cultural, and documentary materials. Her work critically engages with the perceptual challenges posed by the U.S. military's actions in the Asia-Pacific during the mid-twentieth century. Xiang's research interests include the aesthetics of Asian inscrutability related to U.S. cold war intelligence, evidenced in her book 'Tonal Intelligence: Aesthetics of Asian Inscrutability in the Long Cold War' (Columbia University Press, 2020). Currently, she is working on a project titled 'Chemical Apophenia: Air Conspiracies and Skin Connections in Toxic Tropics,' which examines the consequences of U.S. WWII military science in the Pacific theater. Her scholarly contributions are featured in journals such as ASAP/Journal, Radical History Review, and Verge: Studies in Global Asias. Courses she has taught include 'War and Everyday Life' and 'Readings in Comparative World English Literatures'.

Research Interests