[csaa-forum] Todd Henry talk: Visualizing Queer Korea

[Fran Martin]

Dear all,

This talk may be of interest; please circulate widely:

Visualizing Queer Korea:
Toward an Archive and History of
the Contemporary, 1945-1995

Dr Todd A. Henry
University of California-San Diego, USA
Thursday March 20 2014, 1:00 - 2:15pm
John Medley Building, West Tower, rm 106
The University of Melbourne



All welcome!

Abstract: This paper will provide a conceptual and empirical overview of my new research project, Visualizing Queer Korea: Media Culture, Sex Industry, and Underground Politics, 1945-1995. In this book, I will demonstrate that, despite urban and academic myths to the contrary (i.e., that Korean society is quintessentially conservative), queerness was, in fact, a central and recurring theme of contemporary popular culture and medical debate, if not legal controversy. The talk will present a sampling of my archival findings which illuminate the discursive and visual modalities of queer culture that solidified during the authoritarian regimes of Park Chung-hee (1961-79) and Chun Doo-hwan (1980-88). In assessing these representations and their “subjugated knowledges,” I will consider both local configurations of gender and sexuality as well as regional and global flows of counter culture that, together, explain the increasing visibility of non-normative sexualities and gender variance. The final part of the lecture will use two short films made after the period in question (1945-1995) to show how current cultural productions have also begun to capture queer formations of gender and sexuality that proceeded but have not necessarily been subsumed by the current era of human rights, sexual identity, and even more intensive visualizations of Korean queerness in the popular media.


Todd A. Henry (Ph.D., History; University of California-Los Angeles, 2006) is a specialist on modern Korea with a focus on the period of Japanese rule (1910-45). He is also interested in social and cultural formations linking post-Asia-Pacific War South Korea, North Korea, and Japan (1945-present) within the geopolitical contexts of American militarism and the Cold War. Dr. Henry has completed a book on public spaces and colonial power in Seoul and is currently working on a comparative and transnational study of contemporary queer Korea (1945-1995) with a focus on sexualized labor, colonial/military occupation, and the entertainment industry. Dr. Henry has received two Fulbright grants (Kyoto University, 2004-5; Hanyang and Ewha Women’s Universities, 2013) and two fellowships from the Korea Foundation (Seoul National University, 2003-4; Harvard University, 2008-9).


Sponsored by the Cultural Studies Network, Faculty of Arts



_______________________________
Dr Fran Martin
Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies
School of Culture and Communication
University of Melbourne
Victoria 3010
Australia

+613 8344 5486

f.martin at unimelb.edu.au
http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/about/people/academic/fran-martin

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