Fan Yang (楊帆) is Professor of Media and Communication Studies and Director of Asian Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). An interdisciplinary scholar, Yang works at the intersection of cultural studies, transnational media studies, globalization, postcolonialism/postsocialism, urban communication, and contemporary China. She is a faculty affiliate in the Asian Studies program and the Ph.D. program in Language, Literacy, and Culture. She also serves as the key faculty leader for UMBC’s Global Asias Initiative, supported by the Mellon Foundation.
Yang is the author of Disorienting Politics: Chimerican Media and Transpacific Entanglements (2024) and Faked in China: Nation Branding, Counterfeit Culture, and Globalization (2016). She is also at work on a new project, Shenzhen: A Media City of the Global South, which examines the interactions between China’s first Special Economic Zone and technologies such as drones, robotics, and electric vehicles that connect the city to globalizations from “above” and “below.”
Yang’s scholarship on such topics as nation branding, internet censorship, food and media, “fiscal orientalism,” eco-media event, and Shenzhen urbanism has appeared in Cultural Studies, Environmental Humanities, City, Culture & Society, Theory, Culture & Society, China Perspectives, New Media & Society, positions: asia critique, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Journal of Asian American Studies, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, among others. She has also reviewed manuscripts for publishers such as Oxford University Press, Columbia University Press, and Stanford University Press.
Yang obtained her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from George Mason University, where she was the recipient of a High Potential Fellowship. She also holds an MA in Arts Policy and Administration from the Ohio State University and a BA in International Business from Fudan University, Shanghai.