An interdisciplinary scholar and educator trained in Ethnic Studies, Digital and Media Studies, and American studies, Dr. Wendy Sung joined the faculty of UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance in 2021. Her work sits at the intersection of comparative histories of racialization in the U.S., media and digital culture, and the dynamics of visuality and cultural memory. Her research and teaching are animated by two questions: how do media and digital technology instantiate new relationships of racialization, visuality, and knowledge? And conversely, how do racialized subjects innovate, concretize, or challenge paradigms of the technological? She asks these questions to not only reconstruct racial histories of digital technologies in the longue durée, but also to critically examine historical claims about the distinctiveness of modern digital practices and epistemologies. Informed by feminist and critical race studies, Sung has examined varied visual media such as street art, reality television, Twitter, and biometrics, to name a few.
Prior to joining the World Arts and Cultures/Dance faculty, Wendy was an assistant professor of Critical Media Studies at UT Dallas and a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in UC Riverside’s Media and Cultural Studies department. She received her Ph.D. from University of Michigan’s Department of American Culture.
Dr. Sung joined the department in 2021 and began teaching in September 2022.