Visual & Critical Studies 2023

Master’s Project Thesis Directors

Việt Lê is an academic, artist, writer, and curator whose work centers on spiritualities, trauma, representation, and sexualities with a focus on Southeast Asia and its diasporas. Dr. Lê is the author of Return Engagements: Contemporary Art’s Traumas of Modernity and History in Sài Gòn and Phnom Penh (Duke University Press, 2021). The art book White Gaze is a collaboration with Latipa (Sming Sming Books, 2019). Lê has presented his work at the Banff Centre, the Bangkok Art & Culture Centre, the Shanghai Biennale, the Rio Gay Film Festival, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among other venues. Lê curated the exhibitions Charlie Don’t Surf! (Centre A, Vancouver, 2005); transPOP: Korea

Vi ệt Nam Remix with Yong Soon Min (ARKO, Seoul; Galerie Quynh, Sài Gòn; UC Irvine Gallery; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2008–09); and the 2012 Kuandu Biennale (Taipei). He is also a board member of Art Matters and the Queer Cultural Center of San Francisco.

Elizabeth Travelslight is an artist of mixed-race heritage (Filipinx/white) with a research background in feminist-postcolonial histories and futures of math, science, and technology. Her creative practice is an ongoing braid of teaching, community organizing, and studio research through text and textiles. Travelslight earned her BA in Mathematics and MFA in Digital Art–New Media from UC Santa Cruz, and her MA in Media Studies from the European Graduate School. She currently works as an adjunct professor at the California College of the Arts and serves as Political Coordinator for the CCA Union, a chapter of SEIU Local 1021.