Cassandra X. Guan

Cassandra X. Guan is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies, and Core Critic at Yale School of Art. She holds a PhD from Brown University’s Department of Modern Culture and Media (2021), where she held the Presidential Fellowship and Dean’s Faculty Fellowship. Her research bridges screen media studies, life sciences history, and political economy, focusing on plasticity, animation aesthetics, and attention economies. She currently leads MIT’s Center for Art, Science, and Technology (CAST) postdoctoral fellowship on 'Art, Culture, and Technology — Attention Economies' (2023).

Her academic work critiques the entanglement of biological and technological systems, as seen in Maladaptive Media manuscript and publications in October, Screen, and Oxford University Press. She teaches graduate seminars on attention economies and advises MFA students in Yale’s Painting and Printmaking Program. Guan’s interdisciplinary approach integrates film theory, critical STS, and materialist philosophy.

• Awards: Whitney Independent Study Program Fellowship, Josephine De Karman Dissertation Fellowship
• Current Roles: Faculty at Whitney Museum ISP, MIT CAST postdoc, Yale Core Critic
• Key Research Themes: Vitalism, media ecologies, political economy of animation