Hentyle Yapp

Biography

Hentyle Yapp is associate professor of Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre + Dance at UC San Diego. Yapp previously taught at New York University, Pomona College, and San Francisco State University. He received his PhD from UC Berkeley, JD from UCLA Law, and BA from Brown University. His research broadly engages the theoretical and methodological implications of queer, feminist, disability, and critical race studies for questions regarding the state and the transnational.

He is the author of Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic (Duke University Press). The book traces how contemporary China circulates in transnational discourse. In particular, Yapp attends to cross-medial art practices and the global art market in order to produce more nuanced understandings of history, state power, and notions of the subject.

He is the co-editor with C. Riley Snorton of Saturation: Race, Art, and the Circulation of Value (MIT Press), which is on race and the art world. His essays have appeared in American Quarterly, South Atlantic Quarterly, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Verge: Studies in Global Asia, Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, and Journal of Visual Culture, amongst other venues.

He is an associate editor with GLQ, where he curates a new section on Queer Aesthetics. He is also a member of the Social Text editorial collective. 

His next book project analyzes how disability has been understood not only within the law, but also across the arts and humanities. He teaches courses in areas like gender and queer theory, disability, critical race theory, performance/dance studies, Marxism, law and aesthetics, and Asian American and transnational Asian studies. 

In addition to his academic work, Yapp is an artist. Having danced professionally for experimental and contemporary companies in New York, San Francisco, and Taipei, he continues to choreograph and perform. He was in a reperformance of THEM, a collaborative work by Dennis Cooper, Chris Cochrane, and Ishmael Houston-Jones. 

Education

- BA, Brown University, French Literature

- JD, UCLA School of Law, specializations in Critical Race Theory and Public Interest Law

- PhD, UC Berkeley, Performance Studies with a designated emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality. 

Research Areas

Office

Galbraith Hall #328

Office Hours

 Please contact the professor to schedule an appointment.