Jessie Taieun Yoon

Jessie Taieun Yoon (they/them) is a non-binary East Asian femme who ponders upon all things feminine and feminized. They are a PhD candidate in Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University, passionate teacher, tenaciously detailed translator, queer activist, and a pretentious critic.

Yoon researches performative construction of Asianness as queerly feminine, inquiring into Asia as transnational racial geography and its cultural, sexual, queer, trans, and feminist politics. Their dissertation “Pretense: Performing Asia as Queerly Feminine in Transnational Artworlds” delves into contemporary performances, exhibitions, and media of various genres that incorporate distinctly Asian aesthetics in its bliss and biases.

Broadly, they are interested in the intersection between aesthetics and politics of racialized sexuality as manifested through artworks, sensibilities, and cultural phenomena. They have taught and love to teach feminism, gender, and sexuality studies, queer and trans of color theory, and performance, media, film, and cultural studies. Yoon holds a graduate minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Asian American Studies.

They are a member of Diacritics journal’s graduate student editorial board (2025-26), and are a visiting research fellow at the division of Gender Studies in Lund University, Sweden (Fall 2025). In Spring 2026, Yoon is a proud recipient of the Diverse Knowledge East Asia fellowship from Cornell’s East Asia program, and will spend this semester working on their dissertation while holding a visiting appointment in the Centre for East and Southeast Asian Studies (ACE) at Lund University.

They graduated Summa cum Laude for their Bachelors in Arts in Aesthetics from Seoul National University, having minored Sociology. They also completed their Masters of Science in Gender, Media, and Culture at LSE (London School of Economics) with Distinction. Their written works can be found at Theatre Journal and Feral Feminisms. For more recent updates, please see the “Recent Works” tab on this website.