Research Interest

Cultural Studies, Novels & Narrative, Illness & Disability, Asian Americans, Globalization, Care, Reproductive Labor, Biotechnology, Environmental Humanities, Science and Technology Studies, Performance Studies

Biography

Rachel C. Lee, Professor of Gender Studies, English, and the Institute of Society and Genetics at UCLA, specializes in studies of embodiment and narrative. Her scholarship draws on critical methods from race/ethnic studies in conjunction with theories of gender and sexuality, to examine the specific interfaces and choreographies of stand-up comedy, dance, new media/digital technology, and literature. As the immediate past Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, Lee headed a multi-year collaborative research project, Chemical Entanglements: Gender and Exposure, involving scientists, community activists, educators, artists, and “canary” storytellers testifying to the health consequences of sub-acute, chronic exposure to toxicants. She is the author of The Exquisite Corpse of Asian America: Biopolitics, Biosociality and Posthuman Ecologies (2014) published in NYU Press’ Sexual Cultures series and winner of the Best Book in Culture Studies Award from the Association of Asian American Studies. She is also part of the research collective “How We Make It: Imagining Medical Justice After Covid’s Long Haul” sponsored by the UC Humanities Research Institute; and is Co-PI on the University of California’s multicampus research program initiative, Abolition Medicine and Disability Justice. To download recent and past articles, see https://chavez-ucla.academia.edu/RachelLee.

Publications

• Lee, R. (2022). “Affective Chemistries of Care: Slow Activism and the Limits of the Molecular in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous.” Journal of Transnational American Studies.
• Lee, R. (2019). “Metabolic Aesthetics: On the Feminist Scentscapes of Anicka Yi.” Food, Culture, and Society 22.4
• Lee, R. (2022). “Metaspore Meditations: Anicka Yi at Pirelli Hangar Bicocca.” Anicka Yi Metaspore. Eds. Fiametta Griccioli and Vicente Todoli with Remina Greenfield. Milan: Marsilio Editori.
• Lee, R. (2012). “Haptics, Mobile Handhelds, and other ‘Novel’ Devices: The Tactile Unconscious of Reading across Old and New Media.” Ctheory (Jan 2012)

Education

• Ph.D., 1995, University of California, Los Angeles
• B.A., 1988, Cornell University

Awards

• Co-PI on UC Multicampus Research Project Initiative, “Abolition Medicine and Disability Justice: Remapping the Social” 2023-2026 ($1,287,993)
• Director, Center for the Study of Women (2015-2020)
• UCLA Digital Humanities Research Accelerator Award (2023)
• Chancellor’s Community Engagement Fellow (AY2020-2021)
• Co-Lead, Mellon Foundation Sponsored Seminar on Health Humanities (AY 2018-2019)
• Luskin Endowment for Thought Leadership, “Chemical Entanglements: Gender & Exposure,” 2015
• UCLA Faculty Senate Transdisciplinary Seed Grants, Co-PI Patricia Gowaty (Ecological and Evolutionary Biology), “Gendered Sentinels of Environmental Impacts,” 2016-17
• Founding Editorial Board Member, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience (2013 to present)

Projects

• Principal Investigator on *Chemical Entanglements: Oral Histories of Environmental Illness* an archive of 80+ interviews with those who suffer from disabling reactions to what are considered normal pollutants
• Chemical Entanglements

In the Media

• Radio New Zealand’s Susana Lei’ataua on fragrance-free spaces