Sabrina Teng-io Chung

Sabrina Teng-io Chung

First Name: 
Sabrina Teng-io
Last Name: 
Chung
Title: 
PhD Candidate
Biography : 

Sabrina Teng-io Chung is a Ph.D. candidate in East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. She received her M.A. in Foreign Languages and Literatures from National Taiwan University (2017) and B.A. in English from National Chengchi University (2012). Her Ph.D. dissertation examines the U.S. and Japanese governance of Okinawa through the lens of postwar urban reconstruction, drawing on the conceptual frameworks of biopolitics, liberal governmentality, and infrastructure politics. Her publication has appeared in Society and Space (online edition), and she has translated investigative reports from independent Chinese-language media outlets such as The Reporter and Initium Media. From 2020 to 2022, she served as co-editor of The Taiwan Gazette, a student-led online platform supported by the Global Taiwan Studies Initiative at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. She is also the co-founder of the working group “Thinking Infrastructures in Global Asia: New Perspectives and Approaches” (2023–24), supported by the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto. Her teaching has been recognized with a Teaching Assistant Award from the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. Her research has been supported by awards and fellowships including the MOFA Taiwan Fellowship and the Japan Foundation Japanese Studies Fellowship from external funding agencies, as well as the Dr. David Chu Scholarship in Asia-Pacific Studies, Reverend Doctor James Scarth Gale Scholarship in East Asian Studies, School of Cities Graduate Fellowship, and Graduate Research Grant for the Study of the United States from the University of Toronto.

Education: 
M.A., Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Taiwan University (Taiwan)
B.A., English, National Chengchi University (Taiwan)

People Type:

Areas of Interest: 

  • Transpacific Asian/American Studies

  • Global Cold War Studies

  • Critical Infrastructure Studies

Dissertation Title: 
Grounds for Occupation: Okinawa’s Postwar Urban Reconstruction under U.S. and Japanese Governance
Dissertation Supervisors: 
Professor Lisa Yoneyama
Dissertation Description: 

My dissertation project examines U.S. and Japanese governance in Okinawa through the lens of postwar urban reconstruction, drawing on the conceptual frameworks of biopolitics, liberal governmentality, and infrastructure politics. It explores how urban reconstruction in Okinawa became a vehicle through which the United States sought to rehabilitate Japan as a Cold War ally, while Japan, in turn, used development aid to sustain the U.S. military presence on the islands. Positioning Okinawa as a critical site in the formation of a militarized Asia-Pacific shaped by postwar U.S.–Japan relations, the project rethinks the entanglements of empire, development, and modernity, as well as their gendered and racialized dimensions.

Presentations: 
“Contested Circulations: The Counter-sovereign Politics of Urban Master Planning in 1960s U.S.-Occupied Okinawa.” 2024 AAS-in-Asia Conference, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, July 9, 2024.
“From Housing Construction to Permanent Base Installation: The Case of the ‘Levittown on the Pacific.’” Graduate Fellowship Symposium, School of Cities, University of Toronto, April 19, 2023.
“Transnational Asian/American Critique and the Recent Historiography of Cold War Militarization in Taiwan.” 2023 Annual Conference of the Association for Asian American Studies, Long Beach, CA, USA, April 8, 2023
“The Infrastructural Temporality of Military Construction in U.S.-Occupied Okinawa.” Center for the Study of the United States Graduate Workshop, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, March 9, 2023
“Pacific Islanders Seen and Unseen: The Construction of Asian/American Victimized Subjectivity Under COVID-19” [不／可視之太平洋島民：從 COVID-19 下亞／美受害主體建構談起]. 2021 Annual Conference of the Association for Taiwan Social Studies, October 31, 2021 (virtual, Mandarin)
“Remembering/Forgetting Taiwan’s Cold War Media Infrastructures: Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Daughter of the Nile and Its Digital Afterlives.” 2020 Annual Conference of the North American Taiwan Studies Association, May 20, 2021 (virtual).
Administrative Service: 
Co-lead of the “Thinking Infrastructures in Global Asia: New Approaches and Perspectives” Working Group, sponsored by the Jackman Humanities Institute (2023-2024)
Administrative assistant of the Dr. David Chu Program in Asia-Pacific Studies at the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy (Fall 2023)
Editor-in-Chief of The Taiwan Gazette, an online translation platform sponsored by the Global Taiwan Studies Initiative (2020-2022)

Campus: