Maile Young is a Ph.D. student in the Department of English at UCSB. Their research focuses on Asian American literature and culture, the spatial politics of disease, and bioecology. Contextualized in the post-1945 rise of global health governance and power, their research examines how Asian/American cultural production recognizes the dissonances between the embodied experience of disease and the spatialization of disease through epidemiology, as well as how race transverses these registers. Maile has co-facilitated a research project on the newly acquired papers of Congressman Dalip Singh Saund and is currently serving as a research assistant for the Literature and the Environment Center. Before beginning graduate study, they received a B.S. in Public Health and Literature from American University in Washington, DC.  

Maile worked as a graduate student researcher with the Global Latinidades Project for Summer 2020. During their time with the project, they assisted with grant writing activities and general administrative duties. The Global Latinidades Project provided insightful experience into the process of grant writing as well as key funding for the summer months.