Contact
Email

Bio

I am a Ph.D. Candidate (ABD) in Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Ph.D. fellow of CRC Media of Cooperation at the University of Siegen.

My research revolves around a broad spectrum of mediatic technologies that shape the interaction between humans and the external world, thereby sustaining social reality. I am currently working on my dissertation project, “Vessels: An Archaeology of Electronic Media,” based on three years of archival research conducted at the National Museum of American History, the Library of Congress, the National Archives at Boston, the AT&T Archives and History Center, the Hagley Museum & Library, and History San Jose, among others. I examine the history of electronic media, with an emphasis on a feminist technology—the container—in the formation of media reality between humans and hardware. This research has earned support from the CRC Media of Cooperation at the University of Siegen, the Hagley Museum & Library, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

My other projects include how human bodies were positioned within the physical and biological modalities of media designs during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In a paper I published in Cultural Critique, I explored the positioning of human bodies within the optical dynamics of nineteenth-century architectural spaces, examining the interplay between surveillance, spectatorship, and the fusion of subject-object roles within the operation of communities.

I hold an MA in Communication and a BA in Communication and History from Beijing Normal University.

Interests

Media studies, science and technology studies, cultural studies

Courses Taught

  • Writing as Communication (COMM 375), 
  • Introduction to Media Industries & Institutions (COMM 122)
  • Public Speaking (COMM 260)
  • Program Progress in TV (COMM 331)
  • Interpersonal Communication (COMM 250)
  • Social Impact of Mass Media (COMM 226)
  • First Year Seminar (COMM 191)

Publications

  • Forth.   Yijun Sun and Bernard Geoghegan. “Carried Away: The Carrier Bag Theory of Media.” In Technē, Technique, and Technology, “The Key Debates” series, edited by Nicholas Baer and Annie van den Oever. Amsterdam University Press, under review. Forthcoming April 2024 (Peer-reviewed).
  • 2023   Yijun Sun. “From Glows to Graphics: The Invention of Visuality in Early Electronic Media Systems.” Convergence: The Internal Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (OnlineFirst 2023-08-15). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565231193954.
  • 2023   Yijun Sun. “The Desire to See: Binary Systems, Architectural Space, and the Ontology of Being-with.” Cultural Critique, issue 118, pp. 1-22. DOI: 10.1353/cul.2023.0007.
  • 2022   Yijun Sun. “Through the Looking Glass: Optical Operations of the Anthropotechnique.” Special issue “The Literature and Art in the Anthropocene”, edited by Li Lu. Culture and Poetics (文化与诗学), volume 34, pp. 49-64 (Chinese).