Gao Yunxiang

Gao Yunxiang is a Professor of History at Ryerson University in Toronto. Her research focuses primarily on trans-Pacific cultural history in the 20th century through a multilingual approach. She has written two books. Arise, Africa! Roar, China!: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2021. It unpacks the close relationships between a trio of the most famous 20th-century African Americans, W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Langston Hughes, and their little-known Chinese allies, journalist, musician, and Christian activist Liu Liangmo and Sino-Caribbean dancer-choreographer Sylvia Si-lan Chen, during World War II and the Cold War. Sporting Gender: Women Athletes and Celebrity-Making during China’s National Crisis, 1931-1945, was published by the University of British Columbia Press in 2013. Gao has published articles in The Du Bois Review, Gender and History, The Journal of American East-Asian Relations, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Socialism and Democracy, and Sport in Society. Several of her articles have been translated into Chinese. Currently, she is finishing two biographies, modeling a trans-nationalized Asian and Asian American history. They are tentatively entitled “Soo Yong (ca.1903-1984): A Hollywood Actress and Cosmopolitan of the Asian Diasporas”; and “Wang Yung (ca.1913-1974): From Child Bride, Shanghai’s ‘Literary Star,’ to the Trans-Pacific ‘Drama Queen.’”