Shannon Bae

Shannon Doona Bae just recently returned to the U.S. after spending the past ten years in Seoul, South Korea, where she worked in solidarity with adoptee, unwed mother, and birth family groups, studied Korean at Sogang University, and completed her M.A. in Sociocultural Anthropology at Hanyang University, as a recipient of the Korean Government Scholarship Program. She has presented her research at conferences such as ASAK, TISKAS, and CUHK's APGSF, and has been invited as a guest lecturer at workshops for a variety of organizations, such as the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare, Seoul International Women's Film Festival's Migrant Women's Film Academy, The People's House Human Rights Human Library, and the Diasporic Korean Youth Forum, among others. She is honored to have received the Center for Critical Korean Studies Fellowship in order to begin her Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology at UC Irvine this fall.

Monica Wonju Cho

Monica's dissertation project focuses on the topic of madness in post-Korean War to contemporary literature. Her research centers on madness not only as a literary trope for a reflection on and solution for larger socio-political concerns, but also as a way of questioning the possibility of existence outside the existing system. In particular, Monica emphasizes the critical inquiry on the framework of madness from philosophical, psychiatric, and social traditions.

Soojin Jeong

Soojin Jeong comes to UCI from San Francisco State University where she received an M.A. in Asian American Studies, and where she taught as an instructor for its ASPIRE (Asian American and Pacific Islander Retention) program whose mission is to improve the capacity of serving low-income undergraduate students of Asian American and Pacific Islander backgrounds in their degreeseeking endeavors. According to her recommenders who include SFSU’s Assistant Dean of Ethnic Studies, Soojin was selected as an instructor for her academic excellence and the impressive quality of her M.A. thesis on Asian American women’s literature. One of her recommenders rates her among the top 1% among 3,000 students she has taught over 25 years of teaching at SFSU. As a first year student at UCI, she is exploring the canonical texts in Korean women’s literature and feminist theory throughout Humanities disciplines. After completion of the program, Soojin aspires to continue working as an educator in higher education focusing on women’s literature and immigration history.

Hea Sue Kim

My dissertation research examines the unique knowledge economy of South Korea in which there is a coexistence of science & technology with indigenous knowledge forms. I examine shamanism and space science in South Korea not as opposed but complementary knowledge practices being engaged in everyday spaces. My research will provide a broader understanding of what counts and what is at stake in the production of shared cosmos & futures in Korea.

Juwon Lee

Juwon Lee is currently a Ph.D. student in the Anthropology department. He received his B.A. in Comparative Studies (Comparative Ethnic and American Studies specialization) and M.A. in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Ohio State University. As a feminist scholar who engages with queer people of color critique and anti-colonial/Third-World feminisms, he researches race, gender, and sexuality, coloniality, and belonging. His previous research mainly discussed transnational and global politics of queerness in South Korea. He is currently interested in how the concept of ‘race’ travels and develops in South Korean queer spaces. He is also thinking about the relations between public transportation (particularly railways and the metro system), infrastructure, neoliberal economy, cityscape, and urban space-making.

Adam Miller

I am drawn to understanding the formation of identity vis-à-vis its relationship to the nation in the Korean context. Using South Korean literature, film, and visual media, I take a multi-pronged approach toward my examination of identity formation. First, of particular interest to me is the connection between personal identity and socio-cultural influence in the expression of gender and sexuality. In particular, I examine representations of individuals deviating from the standards of heteronormativity and the gender binary, and constructions of marginalized genders and sexualities. Second, I am fascinated by the role of the environment in the formation of identity. Here, I explore the ways in which the environment constructs, changes, and links together both individual and national identity. A final point of interest is the relationship between gender and the environment in identity formation. I probe the impact of the environment on gender construction, which consequently leads to representations of gender and the environment to becoming intertwined. As I move forward with my research, I intend to seek ways to merge these approaches to create new understandings about identity, gender, sexuality, the environment, and the nation in South Korean media. I carry with me my previous research experience, focused primarily on constructions and representations of masculinity and violence in contemporary Korean literature, which indelibly influences my approach toward theory and research.

Alex Wolff

Alex Wolff is a PhD candidate in the department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). They received their M.A. in Anthropology from UCI, and their B.A. in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Their research examines how LGBTQ+ young adults in South Korea are navigating rapidly changing economic, political, and social circumstances. As a result of post-IMF crisis economic changes, it is becoming harder for young adults in participate in a heteronormative life-course of financial stability, housing independence, marriage, and parenting. With a majority of young people indefinitely postponing and delaying these processes, it may be allowing LGBTQ+ young adults new opportunities to subsist, and perhaps even thrive, in the present. This project explores how LGBTQ+ college students and recent graduates deal with this situation, as well as how they organize social relationships and political activism in the face of marginalization and discrimination. Ultimately this project asks what futures these young adults are imagining and pursuing for themselves, individually and collectively.

Research Interests: issues of political participation, governance, citizenship, gender, and sexuality in South Korea.

Alexandra Strudwick Yan

My doctoral research investigates Japanophone literature written by colonized Koreans and Taiwanese authors between 1850 and 1945 under the Japanese empire. I concentrate on subjects such as: multi-ethnic empire, colonial imaginaries and world-building, modernism, social realism, naturalism, literary satire, theories of race and empire, colonial modernity and postcolonialism in East Asia, the relationship between empire and nation-state, colonial and imperial Japanese critiques of liberal democratic modernity, and the influence of German and Austrian literary movements in modern Japanese literature.