UCO Will Host a Memorial for Dr.Shun Kiang

The University of Central Oklahoma English Department will host a memorial for Dr. Shun Kiang on Friday, Feb 20, at 1 p.m. in the Liberal Arts Lecture Hall (LAS L01), after his passing on Jan 25 from complications due to pancreatic cancer.

Kiang’s family is collaborating with the Emerald Necklace Conservancy to raise funds through a GoFundMe campaign to “adopt” a 200-year-old heritage tree in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. For five years, the tree would be fitted with a plaque with Shun’s name and a quote.

According to Megan McDonald, the GoFundMe organizer, the goal of $5 thousand was reached on Feb 15 and is making headway to the next goal of $10 thousand to keep Kiang’s plaque for 10 years.

“After being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September 2024, Shun committed to walking the pond’s 1.5-mile loop several times a week to keep his body and mind strong. Even as his mobility got more limited, he turned to the pond for rest and reflection,” said Kiang’s family.

Dr. Kiang was an English Professor at the UCO Department of English, Director of Central’s Asian Studies, and Assistant Director of The Center, which includes the Women’s Research and LGBTQ+ Student Center, for almost 8 years.

According to Dr. Lindsey Churchill, Professor of History, Director of the Women’s Research Center, LGBTQ+ Student Center, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program (WGSS), Dr. Kiang was on the conference committee for the International Gender and Sexuality Studies Conference at UCO from 2019 to 2022.

Dr. Churchill says that Kiang did amazing work for the Center and had a love for education and for supporting students. She continued to say that he was devoted to the conference and very committed to making sure that international participants had a space to present their research.

In addition to teaching LGBTQ+ Literature, Dr. Kiang was actively involved in mentoring students working on the Herland Digitization Project, archives provided by the Herland Sisters that held a collection of more than 40,000 pages of rare, lesbian-feminist materials, which pertain to LGBTQ+ history and activism. This effort was funded by the $360,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) that UCO received in 2022 to advance diversity initiatives on campus.

“I had the pleasure of working closely with Shun for the Women’s gender and sexuality program, the Center, and the international gender and sexuality studies conference. We also had a very beautiful friendship that developed alongside working together professionally as well,” said Churchill.

In 2020, Dr. Kiang won UCO’s New Faculty Member of the Year Award and was nominated by his peers.

Dr. Kiang also had three publicized works since 2016:

• “Friendship; or, Representing More-Than-Human Subjectivities and Spaces in J. R. Ackerley’s ‘My Dog Tulip'”
• “Failures That Connect; or, Colonial Friendships in E. M. Forster’s ‘A Passage to India'”
• “Prostitution, Pawnshop, and Property: the Life of a Colonized Woman in Shih Shu-Ching’s ‘City of the Queen: A Novel of Colonial Hong Kong'”

He received his Ph.D. in English from Northeastern University in 2015, his Master of Arts in English from Stetson University in 2017, and his Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Florida in 2003.

To learn more about Dr. Shun Kiang and his work, attend the celebration of his life on Friday, Feb 20 at 1 p.m in the University of Central Oklahoma Liberal Arts Lecture Hall (LAS L01).