Chad Shomura

I was born and raised in an Okinawan Japanese family in occupied Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. Graduate studies took me to Baltimore, Maryland. I joined CU Denver in 2017 and the Department of Ethnic Studies in 2021. I received tenure in 2026.

My research and teaching focus on uneven conditions of living and dying at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, coloniality, and species. I am working on two major research projects. A Life Otherwise explores how the good life, in addition to establishing how life ought to be lived, determines what counts as life. The book retrieves minor forms of life that do not comport with key aspects of the good life: ownership, order, optimized bodily capacity, longevity, reproductive intimacy, and a promissory nature. The second project, The Yellow Commons, envisions Asian America as an ecology of humans and nonhumans in the wake of anti-Asian racism.

I am interested in bringing my research into the art world. In 2021-2022, I co-curated inVISIBLE | hyperVISIBLE: A Public Humanities Project on Asian America, hosted by RedLine Contemporary Art Center and the Dairy Arts Center. Two of my art projects—“The Corner of Heart-to-Hearts” and “Message in a Plastic Bottle”—were commissioned by the Smithsonian Pacific American Center.

I am a recipient of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Excellence in Research and Creative Work Award and the University of Colorado Denver’s Rosa Parks Diversity Award. I was an assistant editor of Political Theory: An International Journal of Political Philosophy. I serve on the editorial boards of Capacious: Journal of Emerging Affect Inquiry and Journal of Posthumanism.

Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University

B.A., M.A., University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

• “Yellow Matter: Asian/America beyond Man.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience Vol. 12, No. 1. 2026.

• “Speculative Meditation: Not So Distant.” Transdisciplinary Engagements with Speculative/Science Fiction. Bloomsbury. 2026.

• “Collecting Capacities (and Incapacities) To Be Up Against Fascism.” With Gregory J. Seigworth. Capacities To: Affect Up Against Fascism, edited by Gregory J. Seigworth, Mathew Arthur, Wendy J. Truran, and Chad Shomura. Imbricate! Press. 2025.

• “Decolonial Mood Work.” Theory & Event Vol. 27, No. 3. 2024.

• “Imperial Debris, Vibrant Matter: Asian American and Native Hawaiian Artistic Engagements with Plastic.” Empire and Environment: Confronting Ecological Ruin in the Transpacific, edited by Rina Garcia Chua, Heidi Hong, Jeffrey Santa Ana, and Xiaojing Zhou. University of Michigan Press. 2022.

• “Vital Impasse: Animacy Hierarchies, Irredeemability, and a Life Otherwise.” American Quarterly Vol. 73, No. 4. 2021.

• “Theory in Survival Time.” Critical exchange on “Politics in the Time of COVID,” Contemporary Political Theory. 2021.

• “Cultivating the Weeds.” Social Text Online. 2021.

• “Object Theory and Asian American Literature.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture. 2020.

• “The Dehuman Condition.” Forum on Julietta Singh, Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements. Syndicate. 2020.

• "Exploring the Promise of New Materialisms." Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association Vol. 5, No. 1. 2017.

• Fascism, American Style

• Race and Environment

• Social History of Asian Americans

• Contemporary Asian American Experience

• Introduction to Ethnic Studies

• Capstone in Ethnic Studies

• Culture, Racism, and Alienation

• American Political Thought

• Modern Political Thought

• Queer Political Thought

• Gender and Politics

• Theories of Social and Political Change

• The Politics of Life and Death

• The Politics of Objects