Ethan Fukuto is a writer and scholar working at the intersections of Asian American studies, performance studies, and queer of color critique. His work places queer of color/Asian American cultural production in conversation with psychoanalysis, critical theory, and queer theory to explore the worldmaking possibilities of queer of color sexuality, subjectivity, and desire.
Ethan is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at Williams College, where he also teaches in the program in Asian American Studies.
His current book project, Holding Patterns: Sex, Loss, and Asian American Aesthetics in the Time of AIDS, examines Asian North American art produced in the wake of AIDS. Holding Patterns considers how artists, writers, and filmmakers document and devise practices of intimacy, survival, and remembrance amid the devastations of the crisis. Dialoguing with discourses on loss and melancholia across Asian American studies and queer studies, it turns to a key selection of film, performance, writing, painting, and photography to study how artists enact a range of “holding performances” (i.e., holding still, holding off, withholding) that refuse to let go of or move on from the losses of AIDS.
Ethan holds a BA in Media Studies from Pomona College and an MA and PhD in Performance Studies with certificates in Critical Theory and Gender & Sexuality Studies from Northwestern University. He is from Los Angeles, CA.
