Princeton-Mellon / Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies / Humanities Council Fellow

Zhiyan Yang is an architectural historian focusing on the symbiotic relationship between architecture and cultural discourse in East Asia throughout the long 20th century. His research draws on architecture’s intersectionality with urbanism, art, and medium culture within non-Western contexts.

His first book, “Inventing Contemporary Architectural Culture in the Age of Globalization, 1979-2006,” draws from a rich array of built, visual  and textual evidence to explores a cultural shift that took place in post-Mao Chinese architecture. This shift saw architects, historians, curators, artists, and critics view contemporary architecture as a new locus for meaning making in a rapidly transforming society.

Yang holds a B.A. in Art History from Sarah Lawrence College and obtained his Ph.D. in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. In Spring 2024, he will teach a course titled, “Chinatown, the Japanese Garden, the Period Room: Case Studies for Diasporic Architecture,” in which students will examine how the built environment and landscape of East Asia is represented, appropriated, modified, and reinvented in diasporic architecture.

Yang’s fellowship is made possible through the support of the Mellon Foundation, the Humanities Council, the Center on Contemporary China, and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.