Frances Tran

Frances Tran is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Florida State University’s College of Arts and Sciences. She identifies as an undisciplined Asian Americanist, teacher, artist, and scholar whose work bridges academic, creative, and activist practices. Her position reflects a commitment to reimagining the university as a transformative site for justice, equity, and radical knowledge production.

Her research centers on Asian American and multiethnic cultural studies, particularly through feminist and queer of color critique. She is deeply influenced by speculative and science fiction writers from underrepresented communities, including Octavia Butler, Ruth Ozeki, and C. Pam Zhang. These aesthetics inform her current book project, Sensory Acts: On Asian Racialization and the Politics of Futurism, which explores how sensory experiences shape racial subjectivity and futurity.

Frances Tran views teaching as integral to her scholarship. Her pedagogy is rooted in antiracist, feminist, and Asian Americanist traditions that prioritize care, critical engagement, and the amplification of marginalized voices. She resists the artificial divide between academic and creative writing, asserting that scholarly work can and should be both critical and creatively expressive. The form of knowledge production, she argues, shapes its reach and impact.

While no specific publications, awards, or advisees are listed in the provided text, her intellectual orientation reveals a strong interdisciplinary trajectory that connects literature, race, gender, sexuality, and speculative thought. She draws inspiration from figures like Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown, particularly the idea that all organizing is science fiction—a principle that undergirds her vision for enacting more just futures through aesthetic and educational practices.

As an artist and self-proclaimed nerd, she embraces drawing, writing, gaming, and graphic novels not merely as hobbies but as essential components of her intellectual identity. These practices inform her approach to scholarship, encouraging experimentation with form, language, and narrative structure. She values meandering, recursive thinking and resists the pressure to produce concise, consumable content, preferring instead to trace the contours of evolving ideas.