Wan-Chuan Kao’s Work Featured by Arizona State University The associate professor of English teaches medieval poetry through the lens of critical whiteness studies.

By Lily Caldwell
September 28, 2026

Wan-Chuan Kao, associate professor of English at Washington and Lee University, was recently featured for his research and teaching by Arizona State University’s Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies as part of its ongoing series Throughlines: Race in the premodern classroom. The center’s free, online pedagogical resource, with additional funding from the Mellon Foundation, offers a variety of teaching materials designed for educators who want to bring conversations about race into their college classrooms.

In a new Throughlines release titled “The lap of whiteness in ‘The Squire’s Tale’,” Kao reads a scene of Chaucer’s work that may not first appear to be about race, but he maintains that upon further analysis it is an example of how whiteness operates in medieval literature, sometimes in unexpected ways. Kao argues that scenes of empathy across race in “The Squire’s Tale” do not erase racial differences but reveal how whiteness operates through affect and racialized bodies.

Kao further explains how constructions of whiteness connect Chaucer to wider medieval theatrical and visual traditions in another recent Throughlines release titled “‘Piers Plowman’ and whiteness in passion plays.” He contextualizes the premodern use of the “whitlether” suit, a piece of garment worn by actors playing Christ, arguing that premodern whiteness was not only about skin color, but a discourse crafted through performance, material culture, Christian symbolism and racialized ideas of precarity.

Kao has been a member of the W&L faculty since 2013. He holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from Hunter College and a Master of Philosophy and a Ph.D. from The CUNY Graduate Center. He is currently conducting research for his upcoming monograph as a Suzy Newhouse Center Fellow at Wellesley College.

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