Rae X. Yan is an Assistant Professor of British Literature from 1830-1900 at the University of Florida where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Victorian literature, the nineteenth-century British novel, nineteenth-century literature and science studies, Golden Age children's literature, and video game studies.

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She is currently at work on a monograph project about anatomizing as a joint literary and scientific practice during the Victorian era, tentatively titled The Human Frame:  Anatomy, Literature, and Form in the Victorian Era. Her articles have appeared in Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, and Dickens Studies Annual. She has given talks on subjects as wide-ranging as the study of human tissue in George Eliot’s Middlemarch to the artistic representation of pugs as symbol of empire during the eighteenth century. Her interest in digital humanities focuses on empathy games and digital literacy. You can download and read her CV here.

 

Students who want to learn more about Dr. Yan's course offerings and her guidelines for directing honors theses, providing letters of reference, and mentoring should turn to the menu under "Teaching."

 

Dr. Yan pursued her PhD in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she also received a certificate in digital humanities. During her time at UNC-CH, she was a fellow of the Royster Society of Fellows of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for her interdisciplinary work and her dissertation was awarded the Fred and Joan Thomson Award for Outstanding Dissertation Work. She completed her BA at Wellesley College where she majored in both English and Chinese Literature and Culture. Her larger interdisciplinary research lies at the intersections of the Victorian novel, literature and science studies, Sino-British relations, and digital humanities.

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As the proud daughter of immigrant parents, Dr. Yan is a first generation / New American. She was the first to attend American institutions of education in her family, and the second to receive a BA and, later, Ph.D. Her experiences learning how to navigate higher educational institutions is the impetus for her investment in mentoring first generation university and college students. She grew up in the Boston area and has lived in the southeast for the past several years.