Wenqi Yang

Professor Yang is a transitional feminist and social scientist who studies gender-based violence in the contexts of law enforcement and reproductive healthcare. She teaches courses on Asian and Asian American feminisms, feminist criminology, reproductive justice, and pop culture.

Wenqi Yang

Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Education

  • Ph.D. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2022)
  • M.A. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2017)
  • B.A. Tsinghua University (2014)

Research

Professor Yang’s research investigates the evident and hidden forms of gender-based violence experienced by Chinese and Chinese immigrant populations, with a focus on domestic violence and obstetric violence. Professor Yang’s upcoming book, When Law Says Little: China’s Morality-based Police Mediation in Domestic Violence Incidents (under contract with Oxford University Press), examines how police officers in China handle non-criminal domestic violence incidents not through legal sanctions, but through gender and family-based moral coercion and informal mediation. Professor Yang’s second book project, tentatively titled No More Iced Coke: Birthing Chinese Immigrants and Radicalized Obstetric Violence, focuses on the birthing and postpartum experiences of first-generation Chinese immigrants in the Bay Area.

Teaching

  • Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (Winter 2026)
  • Reproductive Justice: Beyond Abortion (Winter 2026)
  • Everyday Feminism(s): Technology, Resistance, and Gender in Asian Lives (Fall 2025)
  • Inequalities and Global Pop Culture (Fall 2025)

Publications

  • Yang, Wenqi. (2023). “Coercion with Morality: Chinese Police Officers’ Gendered Policing Strategies in Domestic Violence Cases.” Feminist Criminology 18, no.3 (June): 205-224.

  • Yang, Wenqi. (2022). “Gendered Fieldwork with Chinese Police: The Negotiations between a Researcher, Gatekeeper, and Participants.” Qualitative Research 23, no.6 (December): 1574-1593.

  • Yang, Wenqi, and Yan Fei. (2017). “The Annihilation of Femininity in Mao’s China: Gender Inequality of Sent-Down Youth during the Cultural Revolution.” China Information 31, no.1 (March): 63-83.