Rachel C. Lee

Rachel C. Lee, Professor of English, Gender Studies, and the Institute of Genetics; Director of the Center for the Study of Women, specializes in medical humanities and studies of embodiment through a women-of-color feminist and cultural studies approach.  As Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, she heads a multi-year collaborative research project, Chemical Entanglements, involving scientists,community activists, educators, artists, and “canary” storytellers testifying to the health consequences of sub-acute, chronic exposure to toxicants. Lee is the author of The Exquisite Corpse of Asian America: Biopolitics, Biosociality, and Posthuman Ecologies (NYU, 2014) winner of the 2016 Best Book Award in Cultural Studies from the Association of Asian American Studies, editor of The Routledge Companion to Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature (Taylor Francis, 2014), and editor of a 2013 special issue of The Scholar and Feminist on “Life (Un)Ltd,” addressing the impacts of recent developments in the biosciences, biotechnology, and in clinical practice on feminist studies, especially those theorizing the circulation of population data and biomaterials in relation to race and (neo)colonialism. Her scholarship draws on critical methods from race/ethnic studies in conjunction with theories of gender and sexuality, to examine the specific interfaces anchoreographies of stand-up comedy, dance, new media/digital technology, and literature.