G Yi

G Yi (they/he) is a transdisciplinary artist-activist, healer, and second-year student of the UC San Diego-UC Irvine Joint PhD Program in Theatre & Drama. Pre-UCSD, they spent 6+ years on Muwekma-Ohlone land (at Stanford University)--where they earned their BAH in Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity and MA in Communication/Media Studies; co-instructed experiential seminars on trauma-informed holistic healing and “Transforming Self and Systems”; and served as Director of Mental Health & Wellness. Prior to pursuing the art praxis of academic writing, they dabbled in filmmaking and drag/performance art, installed public art interventions, and served as a fellow at the Center for Asian American Media and as a Mentor-Artist for SJSU’s Queer & Asian Artist Residency.

G’s doctoral research explores the potentiality of contemporary trans/gendered performance (i.e. drag artistry, BDSM roleplay, trans avatars in immersive virtual environments, etc.) as a decolonial praxis of somatic and psychospiritual healing--in conversation with the histories, aesthetics, semiotics, and embodiments of Indigenous Korean proto-transgenderal shamans and their gender-bending psychodramatic initiation rituals. Hoping to continue riding on the trains of thought set in motion by their honors thesis on Korean Comfort Women and modern-day Asian sex workers, G is also interested in more deeply studying: Disability and its overlap with sex work communities, nonlinear temporalities and post-survivorship futurities, and intergenerational narratives of queer resilience and intimacies as well as authenticity under the Panopticon and magical realist renderings of neurodiversity. Furthermore, as G wraps up his ministerial training, he is excited to integrate conceptualizations of the Divine, interlives, and multiplicity into his research from a performance studies approach.

Research 

Performance Studies, Queer/Transgender Studies, Disability [Justice] Studies, Indigenous and diasporic Korean cultures and traditions, critical theory and decolonial thought, the pedagogy and practice of community-based embodied healing, survivorship in countercultures, theory in the flesh, spiritual performance and transformation

Education  

BAH in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (specialization: Racial Representation in Media), Stanford University 

MA in Communication (specialization: Media Studies), Stanford University