Xin Yang

Xin Yang specializes in modern and contemporary Chinese literature, culture and film, with a special focus on gender politics and Internet studies. She studies Chinese female writers and writing in a post-feminist environment, a global context marked by neo-liberalism and ever-increasing consumerism. She also does research on the politics of digital technologies in post-socialist China, and the impact of the Internet on literary writing.

Xin is currently working on the role literature, poetry, and media culture plays in the era divided by national, ideological and racial conflicts. She writes on migrant workers’ writing and video-making, and the social engagement of Chinese science fiction. Her most recent research paper, “ ‘Workers without Borders:’ Envisioning Sociality in Xiao Hai’s Poems” (The Journal of Working Class Studies, 2025, forthcoming), examines migrant workers’ poetry.

Xin has also authored a number of journal essays and book chapters. The journals in which her articles have appeared include Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, China information, Southeast Review of Asian Studies, Frontier of Literary Studies in China and Chinese Literature and Thought Today.

Her book, Re-configuring Class, Gender, Ethnicity and Ethics in Chinese Internet Culture (co-author with Haomin Gong, London & New York: Routledge, 2017) addresses how Chinese Internet culture has provided a means to intervene in the otherwise monolithic narratives of identity and community. Her monograph From Beauty Fear to Beauty Fever: A Critical Study of Contemporary Chinese Female Writers discusses women’s writings in post-socialist China.

Xin received her B.A. at Beijing Foreign Studies University, and Ph.D. at University of Oregon. Courses taught at Macalester include: China on Screen, Gender and Sexuality in China, Translating Chinese, Revolution and Love in Chinese fiction and film, Cyber China, Goddesses and Ghosts in Chinese literature, and Chinese language at all levels.