Meet Our Scholars
G Yi
University of California, San Diego
Performance Studies
They/Them
BIPOC
G is a crip queerean transDisciplinary artist-activist, scholar-masochist, and Reverend-/doctor-in-training, whose dissertational research explores drag as a decolonial praxis of somatic and psychospiritual healing--in conversation with the gender-bending psychodramatic rituals of Indigenous Korean proto-transgenderal shamans. At Stanford University, where they earned their bachelor's in race and ethnicity studies and master's in communication/media studies, G facilitated the survivor support group; served as a suicide first responder and director of mental health & wellness, through which they successfully initiated a nationally recognized campaign to protect disabled/neurodivergent students from housing exclusion; and published an honors thesis on Korean Comfort Women and queer Asian sex workers. Their experience as a research consultant for Athabasca University's "Trans Mental Health during COVID-19," fellow at the Center for Asian American Media, and mentor-artist for SJSU's Queer & Asian artist residency also informs their praxis of arts for intersectional social justice and trauma-informed/healing-centered care. This spring, G will be ordained as an interfaith spiritual counselor, for which he is completing his practicum as a volunteer chaplain for a trans-/SW-centered Satanic Church. Guided by Disability Justice principles, G dreams of establishing a QTBIPoC mental health respite center that instrumentalizes play, plant medicine, and multimedia (VR, immersive theatre, etc.) for holistic Ancestral healing.