Yangyou Fang

Position
Graduate Student
Bio/Description

Profile

Yangyou Fang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University. She studies the Spanish Pacific (1521–1815), the cross-cultural engagement between Iberia, Latin America, the Philippines and East Asia. She analyzes unknown and underexposed multilingual documents against the grain, especially primary sources that shed light on voices from diverse communities —Spaniards, Filipinos, Chinese, Japanese and many others. Her research illuminates the transcultural encounters in Spanish colonialism in the Pacific, and reveals a more nuanced and richer image of the early modern Spanish Empire. Furthermore, She has worked on other projects that examine cross-cultural literature and connected histories in Spain, Latin America, and Asia. For example, she examined enslaved African and Chinese individuals in Cuba (1847-1874) who employed writing as their tactics of resistance. She is interested in engaging in intellectual dialogues across disciplines and regions and has ​​presented her research on international conferences and interdisciplinary venues (such as the annual meetings of Renaissance Society of America, Latin American Studies Association and American Comparative Literature Association). She was also invited to present at Princeton’s East Asian Studies Department and Program in Latin American Studies.

Yangyou was born and raised in China, and received her B.A. (with distinction) from the University of Virginia (with degrees in Spanish and Computer Science), and worked as a Technology Analyst at JPMorgan in Glasgow, Scotland, before pursuing doctoral studies. She received her M.A. in Spanish and Portuguese in 2021. At Princeton, she is a passionate teacher and has taught language, literature and culture courses of all levels. She is the recipient of the 2021 Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones Prize in recognition for her contributions and dedication to undergraduate teaching.

In addition to her scholarly activities, Yangyou has also been actively involved with creating intellectual communities within and beyond the university communities. As Graduate Teaching Fellow, at McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, she utilizes research-based resources to mentor graduate teachers across all disciplines and leads AI orientation bi-annually. As instructor in the Prison Teaching Initiative (2022), she taught the world literature course in collaboration with Raritan Valley Community College and instructors of diverse disciplines. She has also served as mentor to first-generation, low-income and formerly incarcerated students for their transition to college through the Emma Bloomberg Center for Access & Opportunity. In 2021 and 2022, she served as the Professional Development Associate for Humanities at Princeton Graduate School, where she connected and built professional development initiatives for more than 2,700 graduate students on diverse and global paths.

Selected Publications

  • “La China del Don Quijote, el Don Quijote de la China.” (with Christina Lee) Cervantes Global, edited by Francisco Ramírez Santacruz and Antonio Sánchez Jiménez, Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert, 2022, pp. 83–104. 
  • “‘Indescribable Misery’ (Mis)Translated: A Letter from Manila’s Chinese Merchants to the Spanish King (1598).” Spanish Pacific, 1521–1815, A Reader of Primary Sources, vol. 2, edited by Ricardo Padrón and Christina Lee, Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming. Yangyou also served as Assistant Editor for the first volume of the reader.