CHSS Distinguished Alumni - Cultural Studies

Fan Yang

PhD Cultural Studies '11

Fan Yang is director of Asian studies and professor of media and communication studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where she is affiliated with the PhD program in language, literacy, and culture. She is the author of Disorienting Politics: Chimerican Media and Transpacific Entanglements (2024) and Faked in China: Nation Branding, Counterfeit Culture, and Globalization (2016). An interdisciplinary scholar, Yang works at the intersection of cultural studies, transnational media studies, globalization, urban communication, and contemporary China. Her new project examines the socio-cultural roles played by drones, robots, and electric vehicles in shaping the urban environment in Shenzhen—a site that straddles globalizations from “above” and “below.”  

Yang’s scholarship on science and technology, global media, and Chinese cultural studies and urbanism has appeared in journals such as Made in China, China Perspectives, positions: asia critique, Theory, Culture & Society, New Media & Society, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Cultural Studies, Environmental Humanities, City, Culture & Society, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Journal of Asian American Studies, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, among others.  

From 2025-2026, Yang was the Key Faculty Leader for the Global Asias Initiative at UMBC, supported by a $750,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation.