| Office Location: | 321 Allen Building |
| Office Phone: | (919) 684-3132 |
| Email Address: |   |
| Web Page: |
| Office Location: | 321 Allen Building |
| Office Phone: | (919) 684-3132 |
| Email Address: | |
| Web Page: |
Sean Metzger works at the intersections of Asian American, Chinese, film, performance, and sexuality studies. His book, Looks Chinese: Fashioning Asian/American Spectatorship (forthcoming), investigates the continually shifting US-China interface during the long twentieth century: from the Opium Wars in the mid-1800s to the recent Beijing Olympics. The analysis focuses on articles of clothing in theatrical and cinematic performance (the “looks” of the title) that shift emphasis from skin to the skein of race. He argues that particular forms of dress help us think anew about gender and modernity in pivotal historical moments when American views of China change. The book’s span covers a vast terrain from early yellowface performance to contemporary theater, Westerns to Chinese art house cinema, Anna May Wong to Jackie Chan. Metzger has also co-edited three collections of essays: with Gina Masequesmay, Embodying Asian/American Sexualities (Lexington, 2009); with Olivia Khoo, Futures of Chinese Cinema: Technologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures (Intellect, 2009); with Michaeline Crichlow, Race, Space, Place: the Making and Unmaking of Freedoms in the Atlantic World (a special issue of Cultural Dynamics, Nov 2009). At Duke, Metzger holds a primary appointment in English with secondary appointments in Theater Studies and Asian & Middle Eastern Studies. He is also affiliated with Arts of the Moving Image, the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Sexualities Studies, and Women’s Studies. Recently the inaugural Fulbright Research Chair in North American Society and Culture at Concordia University in Montreal, he has also been adjunct faculty at Antioch University, Loyola Marymount University and the USC School of Theatre. In addition to his academic work, he spent three years in social services at the LA Gay & Lesbian Center and as an independent consultant to school districts and other non-profit institutions. A closeted actor and director, Metzger occasionally creeps on or behind stage.
| PhD | University of California at Davis | 2005 |
| MA | University of Southern California | 1998 |
| BA Summa Cum Laude | University of Colorado at Boulder | 1995 |