about me
I am a researcher, new media artist, and advocate for inclusive student success.
I am currently a Postdoctoral Fellow of East Asian Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Idaho. I earned my Ph.D. in 2024 at UC Santa Cruz’s Film and Digital Media Department with a designated emphasis in Computational Media under the direction of Soraya Murray, Yiman Wang, Noriko Aso, Nathan Altice, and Michael M. Chemers.
My research stands at the intersection of visual studies, transmedia studies, and cultural studies with a focus on gender and racial discourse. My current project posits that public memories of turbulent historical events give culturally recognizable texture to (post)apocalyptic imaginations, making them allegorical. In turn, the (post)apocalyptic setting becomes a productive site for working through precarious social realities. Monsters are compelling agents that can speak to historical memories without direct utterance.
In my practice, I think about how mediums organize and persuade us. For example: my Tarot design. I leverage the symmetry between East Asian mythologies and Tarot’s mysticism to think about how we relate to stories and how stories shape our identity.
a woman flies to the moon after taking the medicine of immortality intended for her and her husband
Examining the Interplay between Roleplay and Hybridity through Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game.
Journal Article – [Forthcoming]
Authors: Laijana Braun, Mirek Stolee, Yasheng She, and Devi Acharya.
Transnational Galatea: Racializing Anime-Esque Character Design in Genshin Impact
Book Chapter – [Forthcoming]
Author: Yasheng She
Editors: TreaAndrea M. Russworm and Soraya Murray
She, Yasheng. Designing the Global Body: Japan’s Postwar Modernity in Death Stranding
Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) about Us
Book Chapter – 2024
Author: Yasheng She
Editors: Christopher B. Patterson and Tara Fickle
once there were ten suns until an archer brought down nine
By the Lighthouse
(Working Prototype)
My creative intervention brings the giant woman and her beholder together inside a digital landscape to contemplate her metaphoric function. What does it mean to share a space with the harbinger of the end? How does one feel about a feminine metaphor of absolute power? Does femininity render annihilation comforting?
Composite
(Early Development)
“Composite” thinks through my own queer identity as a collection of defense mechanisms created through navigating the world as a non-binary person. A rogue-lite game that interrogates the process of identity formation.
Argument Box
(Completed)
Argument Box (AB) is an experimental prototype created by Rehaf Aljammaz , a social argument simulator where the player argues with clients visiting the shop. Arguments in AB center around the moral virtues and vices of simulated characters in the social simulation Talk Of the Town. I helped to create early versions of the project through writing, modeling, and data collection.
a nine-tailed fox is an entity some where between divine and wicked
The Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS)
Seattle, WS, US, April 25 – 27
“GAMES AND ASIA/AMERICA: A ROUNDTABLE”
Pre-constituted panel with Edmond Y. Chang, Matthew Jungsuk Howard, Miyoko Conley, Takeo Rivera, and Christopher B. Patterson.
2024 Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS)
Boston, MA, US, March 14 – 17
“Understanding Post-postwar Japan through the Giant Woman at the End of the World”
Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA)
Albuquerque, NM, US, February 21 – 24
“Destruction, Rebirth, and Ambivalence: Nuclear Power in Japanese Video Games”
Pre-constituted panel with Rachael Hutchinson, Ryan Scheiding, and Keita Moore.
a monkey tries to reach the moon by looking for it in the water
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