Nancy Wang Yuen

Nancy Wang Yuen is an American sociologist. She is a professor of sociology at Biola University, where she has also been chair of the sociology department. She specializes in race and ethnicity in film, television, and new media, particularly in Asian American representation and bias in Hollywood filmmaking.

Nancy Wang Yuen
Yuen in 2020
Born
Taiwan[1]
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of California, Los Angeles
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsBiola University

Early life

Yuen was born in Taiwan. At the age of 5, she immigrated to the U.S, and grew up in Long Beach, California with her father. Her mother was an undocumented immigrant who overstayed her student visa, and took classes in the U.S to become a computer programmer.[2]

Education and positions

Yuen attended Bret Harte Elementary in Long Beach. After elementary school, she graduated from Whitney High School in Cerritos, California and went on to college in Texas, before transferring to Long Beach City College.[3]

She attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where she completed a B.A. degree in English in 1997.[4] In 2008, Yuen graduated from UCLA with a PhD in sociology.[4]

In 2008, she became a professor in the Department of Sociology at Biola University.[4] In 2016, she began a term as the Chair of that department.[4]

Research

Yuen's research focuses on race and ethnicity in film, television, and new media.[4] In 2016, she published the book Reel inequality: Hollywood actors and racism, on the topic of racial inequality in the film industry, and the implications of the overwhelmingly white and male demographics of the most powerful people in that industry.[5] The book is based on more than a hundred interviews with people involved in the film industry, particularly actors of color, conducted from 2005 to 2015.[6] Yuen examines the mechanisms that produce notoriously limited opportunities for actors of color, and why those few opportunities so often require those actors to portray characters who are defined by racial stereotypes.[6] Yuen identifies several ways that people at many stages of the film production process, from talent agents to casting directors to script writers, contribute to constraining the roles that are available to actors of color.[7] Yuen uses the many interviews with actors that she conducted for Reel inequality to examine these processes from the perspective of actors of color, including the techniques that many of them have developed to make the most of such constrained opportunities, and the emotional cost of regularly performing stereotypes.[7] Reel inequality was noted for addressing a particularly timely topic, since the year it was released, 2016, was the same year that the 88th Academy Awards featured only white nominees for its acting awards, prompting the #OscarsSoWhite controversy.[8] The book was recommended by Michael Eric Dyson in an interview with The New York Times.[9]

In 2017, Yuen was a co-author of the study Tokens on the small screen: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in prime time and streaming television.[10]

Media work

In addition to her academic research, Yuen has been a regular contributor to news outlets, has provided expert commentary and interviews for popular media, and has co-produced documentary films. In 2014, she co-produced Mass Confucian: Language Learning or Communist Propaganda?[11] This 25 minute film premiered at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and the San Diego Asian Film Festival in 2014.[4] She also co-produced Living in Silence: Toraichi Kono, a biographical documentary about Toraichi Kono, who was Charlie Chaplin's valet.[12]

Yuen has been a frequent guest writer for HuffPost.[13] She has also been regularly quoted on topics relating to inclusion in the film industry, and her work on the topic has been cited, in news media such as The New York Times,[14] The Washington Post,[15] Variety,[16] and Time.[17] Yuen was also interviewed in the PBS documentary Asian Americans,[18] and she has been profiled in PRI's The World[19] and Faithfully Magazine.[20]

Selected works
  • Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism (2016)

References
  1. blog.angryasianman.com. "ANGRY READER OF THE WEEK: NANCY WANG YUEN". Retrieved November 21, 2020.
  2. "Nancy Wang Yuen". twitter.com. Retrieved November 21, 2020.
  3. Stephanie Rivera. "'She saved my life': Woman asks Twitter for help in finding former Long Beach elementary teacher". Long Beach Post News. Retrieved November 21, 2020.
  4. "Nancy Yuen". Biola University. November 2017. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  5. Mulac, Carolyn (December 15, 2016). "Review Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism". The Booklist. 113 (8): 13.
  6. Laura Isabel Serna; Samantha Herndon (2020). "Review Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism". JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. 59 (2): 170–174. doi:10.1353/cj.2020.0012.
  7. Erigha, Maryann (July 2018). "Review Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism". Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews. 47 (4): 503–504. doi:10.1177/0094306118779814pp. S2CID 149733241.
  8. Bajpai, Kartikeya (May 2018). "Review Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism". Sociological Inquiry. 88 (2): 370–372. doi:10.1111/soin.12217.
  9. "Why Michael Eric Dyson Would Demote 'Heart of Darkness' From the Canon". The New York Times. June 4, 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  10. Elber, Lynn (September 12, 2017). "Study finds Asian-American characters "tokens" on TV". AP News. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  11. "Mass Confucian: Language Learning or Communist Propaganda?". San Diego Asian Film Festival. 2014. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  12. "Living in Silence: Toraichi Kono". Tribeca Film Institute. 2007. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  13. "Contibutor Nancy Wang Yuen". HuffPost. 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  14. Chen, Brian X. (September 4, 2020). "'Mulan' 1998: A Moment of Joy and Anxiety for Asian-American Viewers". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  15. Liu, Marian (March 12, 2020). "HBO's possible 'Parasite' spinoff with Mark Ruffalo raises whitewashing concerns". The Washington Post. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  16. Lee, Janet W. (October 23, 2020). "Lulu Wang and Adele Lim on Lessons From 'Mulan': Why Hollywood Must Reimagine Asian-Inspired Stories". Variety. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  17. Cady Lang; Anna Purna Kambhampaty (May 1, 2020). "The True Stories Behind Ryan Murphy's New Netflix Series Hollywood". Time. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  18. "Evolution of the Asian Amer. Voice". PBS. May 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  19. Nsiah-Buadi, Christabel (March 15, 2018). "Nancy Wang Yuen has devoted her research to Hollywood's diversity problem". PRI's The World. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  20. "Q&A with Nancy Wang Yuen". Faithfully Magazine (2). July 2017.
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