Rho Chung

Thesis title: Re-Dressing Rape: Sexual Violence in All-Femme Shakespeare

Background

Rho earned their M.S. in Narrative Medicine and B.S. in Applied Mathematics from Columbia University in New York City. While in New York, Rho worked as a director, writer, and designer for student and regional theatre companies, eventually leading them to change career paths from engineering and medicine to the arts and academia. 

At the University of Edinburgh, Rho has served as co-editor in chief  of FORUM: University of Edinburgh’s Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts and a co-convenor of English Literature Work in Progress. Rho has also worked with The Show Must Go Online and Some Kind of Theatre, and they edit the theatre section at The Skinny.

Rho is a co-founder of Strut Safe, a free, volunteer-run service in Edinburgh dedicated to walking people home safely. 

Research summary

Rho studies early modern trans resonances, gendered violence, and marginalisation. Focusing primarily on productions directed by Phyllida Lloyd, they are working to combine the worlds of gender studies and the semiotics of theatre. So far, their primary influences are Judith Butler, Elaine Aston, George Savona, Kier Elam, bell hooks, and Jack Halberstam. Rho is interested in the intersection of queer and gender theories with audience reception theory, particularly in the ways (feminine) bodies acquire and produce meaning onstage.

Past research interests

In the past, Rho has studied queer sexuality in Gothic literature and fanfiction and narratives of suicidality in performance. They have also conducted research in medicine, including the experiences of people with cerebral palsy seeking gynecological care, pain management practices in sub-acute hospital units, depression rates in young women studying for the Collegiate Scholastic Ability Test in South Korea, and iso-volumetric contraction and relaxation times in the left ventricle.

Affiliated research centres

Papers delivered