Aimee Bahng

Aimee Bahng is Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at Pomona College, where she has been a faculty member since 2017. She is on leave during Fall 2025. Her work is deeply interdisciplinary, engaging with feminist, queer, decolonial, and transpacific frameworks across literature, pedagogy, and environmental thought.

Education:

• Ph.D., University of California, San Diego
• CPhil, University of California, San Diego
• M.A., Middlebury College, Bread Loaf School of English
• A.B., Princeton University (cum laude)
• Certificate in Women’s Studies; Concentration in African-American Studies

Her research centers on speculative fiction, financialization, environmental justice, and the intersections of race, gender, disability, and futurity. She brings feminist and decolonial critique to bear on transpacific cultural production, science fiction, and pedagogical practices. Her work often explores how marginalized communities imagine alternative futures through narrative and activism.

Her recent publications reflect a strong trajectory in transpacific and feminist science studies, focusing on authors like Octavia Butler and Karen Tei Yamashita. Themes across her articles include speculative futurity, biopolitical securitization, queer ecology, and the hauntings of nuclear and colonial histories in the Pacific. Her scholarship bridges literary analysis with critical theory, emphasizing reparative and decolonial reading practices.

Scientific Awards and Fellowships:

• Mellon New Directions Fellowship
• Pomona's Wig Distinguished Professor Award (2020)
• Five College Women’s Studies Research Center Fellowship
• EnviroLab Asia Fellowship
• Dartmouth College Fellowship
• University of California Humanities Research Institute Fellowship

Bahng is deeply committed to collaborative intellectual work and innovative teaching. She has received multiple fellowships supporting both research and pedagogy. While no formal advisees are listed, her engagement with feminist pedagogy and social movements like #BlackLivesMatter underscores her dedication to mentoring and activist scholarship. She is currently developing her second book, Transpacific Ecologies, which promises to further expand the intersections of environmental thought, dis/ability, and decolonial knowledge production.

Labs and Research Initiatives: She has been affiliated with EnviroLab Asia, an interdisciplinary research collective focused on environmental issues in Asia and the Pacific, indicating her active participation in collaborative, cross-institutional research teams.