Mel Y. Chen is Associate Professor of Gender & Women's Studies at U.C. Berkeley and an affiliate of the Center for Race and Gender, the Science and Technology Studies Center, and the Institute for Cognitive and Behavioral Sciences.
Mel's research and teaching interests include queer and gender theory, animal studies, critical race theory and Asian American studies, disability studies, science studies, and critical linguistics. In the Fall of 2009, Mel convened "Species Spectacles", a U.C. Humanities Research Institute Residential Research Group focused on animality, sexuality and race. Mel's short film, Local Grown Corn (2007), explores interweavings of immigration, childhood, illness and friendship; it has played in both asian and queer film festivals.
Mel's book, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect, was released in July 2012 with Duke University Press in the Perverse Modernities series. In 2014, it won the Alan Bray Memorial Book Award, given by the GL/Q Caucus at the MLA.
April 20, 2020: Letting Go of the “Ideal” Classroom (Harvard Magazine)
November 22, 2019: Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence (By the Book) (Pop Matters)
