Claire Cao is a PhD candidate in Cinema and Media Studies in the Department of Theatre and Film at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on film theory and philosophy, aesthetics, and sexuality studies. Drawing from the phenomenology of the body, Lacanain psychoanalysis, critical race theory, and post-humanist philosophy, her doctoral thesis engages with the cinematic aesthetics of body and flesh as a methodology to explore humanity, animality, and the division between the human and non-human. She received her MA in Cinema and Media studies from the University of Chicago, where she focused her research on Ingmar Bergman, Susan Sontag and film hermeneutics.