Shunyuan Zhang became interested in gender/sexuality and its correlations with culture and social structure when she was in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. As a Ph.D. student at Emory University, she focused her studies on the intersection between gender/sexuality, feminist/queer theory, and cultural anthropology. In her dissertation field research, she worked on male-to-female transgendered practices in southwest China from a queer perspective. At Trinity, Professor Zhang teaches courses that bring in a transnational approach to the studies of women, gender and sexuality.

Articles (peer-reviewed):

• "Debris and desire: Negotiating erotic spaces in Southwest China." Transgender Studies Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 3, August 2021, 310-326.

Book chapters:

• “A Butlerian Performative Approach to Three Representations of Transgenderism in Mainland China.” (in Chinese) In Sexualities and Gender Study No. 5, edited by Fang Gang, 477-485. Taiwan: Wan You Publishing House, 2012.

Conference Presentations:

• "Tongzhi culture and its discontents." Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (virtual), Nov. 17-21, 2021
• "The cultural is national: Socialism, memory, and heritage in a south China community." Presented at Socialism, Capitalism, and Childhood (virtual), Georgia State University, Atlanta, Oct. 20-21, 2021
• “Queering Transgenderism in Southwest China.” Presented at 2018 NWSA Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, November 8-11, 2018.
• “Debris and Desire: Negotiating Erotic Spaces in Kunming, China.” Paper presented at Berkeley-Stanford Graduate Conference in Modern Chinese Humanities, Stanford, CA, April 17-18, 2015.
• “Searching for Transgendered Subjects in Southwest China: Rethinking Identity Categories in Ethnographic Encounters.” Paper presented at the 10th Biennial ACS Gender Studies/Women’s Studies Conference, Furman University, Greenville, SC, April 4-5, 2014.
• “Shifting Conceptualizations of Gender in Feminist Anthropology.” Invited talk at Gender and Development meeting, Yunnan Social Science Academy, Kunming, Yunnan Province, P. R. China, 2011.
• “Erasure of Homoeroticism in the Nationalization of Beijing Opera.” Paper presented at the 109th American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, November 17-21, 2010.