Susanna Sun

I am a PhD candidate in the joint program of East Asian Languages & Cultures and Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Chicago. My work brings together performance, gender, aesthetics, media, and material culture. More specifically, I seek in the cross-gender performances of classical Chinese theatre a source of new insights into masculinity, embodiment, and agency. My dissertation project advances an actress-centered historiography and offers a new ontology and aesthetics of women-playing-men performance in late-imperial Chinese theatre and its modern afterlives. Having received years of training in the young male lead (xiaosheng) role type in all-female Yue opera and Kun opera, I draw on performer practices, archival research, and theoretical inquiry to elucidate the “atmospheric” conditions of projected gender ethos.

I work across disciplinary and temporal boundaries, with broader interests spanning political philosophy and ethics, ancient philosophy, Honglou meng studies, early Shanghai left-wing and Mao-era cinema, revolutionary culture, East Asian popular culture, posthuman visions, and others. 

I frequently organize events and workshops, working with artists and public venues to promote traditional Chinese performing arts. I am the recipient of the 2024 UChicagoGRAD Furthering Diversity Leadership Award.

Recent Publications: 

Book Review of Casey Schoenberger’s Music, Mind, and Language in Chinese Poetry and Performance: The Voice Extended, Critical Inquiry, 2026. 

“Flowing Like Water: Materiality, the Body in Motion, and Female Subjectivity in Mei Lanfang’s Art of Water Sleeves.” In The Dancing Goddess: Mei Lanfang in America, edited by Cathrine Yeh and Xiaojie Shao. China Institute and Library of Chinese National Academy of Arts, 2026.

“Becoming Awakened: Opera, Gender, and Intertextuality in Xie Jin’s Film Two Stage Sisters (1964)” CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 42, no. 2 (2023): 130-164. 

“100 Years of China’s All-Female Yue Opera” Conference: the landmark conference I organized that marked the first time the all-female Chinese opera genre was commemorated in a concentrated, multimedia manner that connected academic and practitioner perspectives outside China. 

Translation of Judith Zeitlin’s “Operatic Ghosts on Screen: The Case of A Test of Love (1958)” [戏曲电影中的女鬼: 以越剧电影《 情探》 为例] in Xiju Yishu《戏剧艺术》, no.4, 32-46, 2024.