The Asian Studies Program at Vanderbilt University, with the generous support of The Korea Foundation, is accepting applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Korean Studies.

Field of specialization as a scholar of Korea is open to any discipline within the arts, humanities, and social sciences.  Candidates who integrate their research and teaching of Korean Studies with multidisciplinary and interregional expertise are preferred.  The successful candidate will possess a clear research trajectory and will have completed the PhD by August 16, 2018.  Proficiency in both English and Korean is required for teaching and research in the program.

Please submit a letter of application, curriculum vitae, research statement, evidence of teaching effectiveness, a research sample, and three letters of recommendation through Interfolio:  http://apply.interfolio.com/43493 .  Review of applications will begin on November 15, 2017 and will continue until the position is filled.

Vanderbilt University has a strong institutional commitment to recruiting and retaining an academically and culturally diverse community of faculty. Minorities, women, individuals with disabilities, and members of other underrepresented groups, in particular, are encouraged to apply. Vanderbilt is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer.

[Information forwarded from the Korean Studies list]

“Archives, Archival Practice, and the Writing of History in Premodern Korea”

Journal of Korean Studies Premodern Korea Workshop

Columbia University, May 17, 2018

We invite proposals for “Archives, Archival Practice, and the Writing of History in Premodern Korea,” a one-day workshop organized by the Center for Korea Research (CKR) with generous support from the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS). The workshop is conceived as a platform that brings together a small number of scholars interested in rethinking the roles of archives in writing the history of premodern Korea.

Papers presented at the conference will be developed and then considered for publication in a special issue of The Journal of Korean Studies, scheduled for print in the Fall 2019 issue volume 24, number 2.

For any scholar interested in the human past in all its complexity, archives and archival sources have long been considered primary repositories of information essential to a given people’s history. In premodern Korea, they were gathered and housed in official or state storerooms, as well as in unofficial sites such as the libraries of lineage associations and local academies. The use of underutilized and rare materials—from unofficial sites in particular—has cast invaluable light on what and who were left out of the conventional historiography of premodern Korea. At the same time, the exclusion of documents pertaining to the lives of marginalized people as legitimate subjects of history raises the question of the diverse possible approaches to archival collection itself, which involves a series of decisions as to what to archive, what to discard, and why. Archives are thus not only products of recordkeeping and sites for the production and circulation of knowledge but rich subjects for historical and cultural studies, precisely because they are embedded in the structures of power that historically produced them. With its focus on archiving and archival practice in various premodern Korean contexts, this workshop takes the archive beyond its usual definition as a static collection of historical documents of the past. By addressing topics such as the formation and use of archives, the role of archives in shaping knowledge culture, and the archival dilemmas scholars encounter, the workshop invites a vital conversation about how histories of the archive might reshape stories written from the archives in premodern Korea.

Accommodations, all meals, and, under special circumstances, the cost of transportation will be covered for workshop participants. Please submit a 300-word abstract and a brief biographical note by December 31, 2017 to the workshop organizer, Jungwon Kim (jk3638@columbia.edu).

Another Korean Studies position!

Assistant Professor of Korea Studies

Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison seeks a scholar of the humanities or qualitative social sciences with expertise in Korea Studies. Candidates should have professional-level fluency in Korean and English. Preference will be given to applicants who demonstrate eagerness to extend our multidisciplinary conversation about culture in the transasian context, and who have the vision and skills to contribute to building new academic programs. PhD or equivalent is required prior to start of the appointment. The appointment, at the rank of tenure-track Assistant Professor, is scheduled to begin in August 2018. Salary is negotiable.

Applications must be submitted online at jobs.wisc.edu. Candidates are asked to submit a single PDF document consisting of a letter of application, curriculum vitae, and writing sample (dissertation chapter, journal article, or book chapter). Candidates are also asked to provide names and contact information for three references who will be asked to provide a letter of recommendation. To ensure full consideration, applications must be received by November 15, 2017; applications will be accepted until position is filled. For further details, please see:

http://jobs.hr.wisc.edu/cw/en-us/job/496391/assistant-professor-of-korea-studies

The Nam Center for Korean Studies at the University of Michigan has organized that their 7th annual Perspectives on Contemporary Korea Conference with live streaming available on November 17-18, 2017. I’ll be on a panel with Jennifer Chun (Associate Professor in Sociology, University of Toronto) and Myoungjoon Kim (Director, MediACT in Seoul) to discuss spaces of citizenship.

The Future is Now: Mapping Social Change in Contemporary South Korea Conference

Dr. Tat-siong Benny Liew and the McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at the College of the Holy Cross has convened a great conference on “Religion, Protest and Social Upheaval” this week (November 15-17, 2017). I appear to be the exception in a group of well-known theologians and phenomenal religious studies scholars. I’ll be presenting work in progress from my book project on queer activist politics in South Korea and the Korean diaspora. The paper is titled “Between Dissent and Heresy: Queer Politics in Korea,” discussing events that have led up to the preposterous recent charge by a major Korean Presbyterian denomination that affirming queer sexualities and nonconforming gender identities constitute heresy. See full schedule here. (My first time in Worcestor, MA!)

임보라 목사 이단 기자회견 2017-07-08

See job posting: https://indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/4923

Position Summary

The College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University (IU) Bloomington invites applications for tenure/tenure-track positions in Race, Migration, and Indigeneity (RMI), to begin Fall 2018. RMI is a pioneering multi-disciplinary unit that investigates the complex social dynamics of race, ethnicity, human movement, and power relationships. The primary geographical focus is the United States, but extends to transnational and diasporic scholarship as well. This new program is intended to build closer ties among existing ethnic studies programs (African-American, Asian American, Latino, and Native American studies) as well as reach out to other interdisciplinary units and to core disciplines in the arts, humanities and sciences.

The successful candidate will help to establish an internationally recognized academic research program, have a strong interest in graduate and undergraduate instruction including mentoring of graduate student research, and a commitment to program, department, college, and university service appropriate with rank. The College of Arts and Sciences is committed to building and supporting a diverse, inclusive, and equitable community of students and scholars.

The College of Arts & Sciences is conducting a cluster hire of tenure/tenure-track faculty to help establish the program, with the goal of hiring 2-3 positions this year. Each of the faculty hired under this program will have tenure homes in a department or program within the College of Arts and Sciences, and each will be expected to teach one or two courses a year for the RMI program. Positions are open-rank, but at least some hires will be at the junior level. Full professors who would like to help build this innovative program are encouraged to apply.

RMI brings together faculty and students who study the relational nature of racial formations in the U.S. Candidates should be innovative scholar-teachers who conceptualize race/ethnicity, migration, and indigeneity in intersectional ways and who work to cross-pollinate ideas among various fields of inquiry. Candidates working on topics such as social movements; intersectional feminism(s); border politics (US-Mexican and US-Canadian); citizenship; Latino/a, Asian American, and Afro-Indigenous communities; Asian American and/or Pacific Islander literature, religion, and media representations are particularly urged to apply.

Since RMI serves as a hub for multi-disciplinary, cross-ethnic, and/or cross-racial studies, scholar-teachers trained in any of the disciplines in the arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, or technology may apply. We welcome applications from anyone working in disciplines that do not normally consider ethnicity as a major topic of concern, but whose own research and teaching interests could make unique contributions to the RMI program. Potential examples include scholar-teachers who specialize in psychology, cognitive science, human biology, ecology, environmental racism, or the human dimensions of climate change.

Basic Qualifications

Applicants must have a Ph.D. prior to employment. Candidates must submit a cover letter detailing their research and teaching interests, current CV, teaching evaluations, a writing sample, and three letters of recommendation for tenure-track offers and six letter for tenure offers. Applicants must also submit a brief statement of their understanding of the importance of diversity in a university setting. The statement should identify the types of diversity-related research, teaching, and service activities in which the candidate would anticipate adopting a leadership role.

To ensure full consideration, applications should be submitted by December 8, but they will be considered until the position is filled. Interested candidates should submit application materials online until the search is complete. Applications should be submitted to https://indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/4923. Questions about the position should be directed to: Dean Michael McGinnis, Search Committee Chair (RMI@indiana.edu). Indiana University is an equal employment and affirmative action employer and a provider of ADA services. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ethnicity, color, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation or identity, national origin, disability status, or protected veteran status.”

Contact

Questions about the position should be directed to: Dean Michael McGinnis, Search Committee Chair (RMI@indiana.edu).

Call for Applications

2018 Penn State Asian Studies Summer Institute

“Infrastructure”

Penn State University invites applicants for its annual Asian Studies Summer Institute, to be held June 10-16, 2018. This year’s Institute, co-directed by Leo Coleman (Hunter College/CUNY) and Jessamyn Abel (Penn State), focuses on the topic of “Infrastructure.”

Institute participants spend a week reading and thinking about the annual theme, as well as significant time workshopping their work in progress. Particularly strong work will be considered for publication in an upcoming special issue of Verge: Studies in Global Asias (https://www.upress.umn.edu/journal-division/journals/verge-studies-in-global-asias).

Penn State will cover housing and meals, and offer an honorarium to help defray travel costs (USD 400 from the East Coast, 600 from the Midwest, 800 from the West Coast; USD 1000 from Europe; USD 1350 from Asia). Applicants must have completed their PhDs no earlier than June 2013, or be advanced graduate students who are completing their dissertations.

On the theme:

We invite applications from the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences for projects that examine “infrastructure” as both concept and material reality in Asia, Asian America, and Asian diasporic communities around the world.

The infrastructures of the modern world shape everyday life, popular perceptions of space and movement, and prominent images of the individual, corporation, nation, region, and world. This includes not only physical infrastructures, such as sewer systems, communications networks, roads, and airports, but also the virtual systems that define spaces, control movement, and mediate interactions: computer operating systems and platform designs; the international system of passports and visas; and legal definitions of borders, territoriality, and citizenship. Attention to infrastructure, which has recently emerged as a key site of study across the social sciences and humanities, brings together disparate concerns with space, mobility, and circulations (of images, commodities, resources, people, and ideas). It enables a focus across scales and boundaries (whether political boundaries or those that run between rural and urban), highlighting political ecologies, physical processes, and material connections that link places and people while illuminating the often-hidden categorizations and mediations that inform local aspirations and political understandings.

In this workshop, we will explore the relationships between real and conceptual infrastructures, concrete materials and codes of practice, and means and motivations, both in particular parts of Asia and as Asian people, goods, and ideas circulate globally. We will examine how the study of infrastructures, broadly conceived, can help us better understand urban spaces and rural landscapes, development projects, technological changes, and emergent political and social realities. Key questions will include how infrastructure studies might renew classic approaches to Asian societies and their national or global histories, provide new insights into Asian and Asian diasporic literatures or arts, or help focus attention on current ecological and political concerns—for example, by mobilizing new concepts such as redundancy, resilience, and repair. We will also consider how the study of infrastructure impacts our understanding of Global Asias—itself a nebulously defined, contested, and generative concept. A close examination of the evolution of the infrastructures that are fundamental to economic and political relations, and to the daily lives of billions of people, reveals the ways in which material technologies, sociotechnical processes, legal forms, popular culture, and the natural environment interact to produce the physical and imagined spaces of city, nation, region, and empire.

To apply, please send the following documents in a single PDF file to verge@psu.edu by March 15, 2018.

1. An abstract of 1500 words outlining research project and clarifying its connection to the Institute theme.
2. A sample of current work.
3. A current c.v. (no longer than 2 pp).
4. A letter from a principal advisor about the advanced status of work (in the case of graduate students).

Decisions will be made by the first week of April 2018. Other inquiries regarding the Summer Institute may be directed to Jessamyn Abel (jua14 AT psu.edu).

For more information and to apply: https://recruit.apo.ucla.edu/apply/JPF03362

The Department of Asian Languages & Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), invites applications for a position in premodern Korean studies, at the rank of tenure-track assistant professor or tenured associate professor.

This position will begin on July 1, 2018. Priority will be given to those candidates who have research expertise in history or literature of the premodern period and who have a broad knowledge of premodern primary sources and archival materials. Training in comparative, interdisciplinary, and transnational methodologies as well as an ability to work inter-regionally within East and/or South/Southeast Asia are also strongly desirable. The successful candidate will be expected to sustain an active research and publication schedule, teach both undergraduate and graduate courses, provide service to the department and campus, and demonstrate a strong commitment to diversity-related teaching, research, and/or service. Women and minority candidates are especially encouraged to apply.

Applicants are expected to have a PhD in hand by the time of appointment. Salary is commensurate with experience. Applicants should submit cover letter; CV; sample course evaluations; statements of research, teaching, and diversity; a recent writing sample or publication; two sample syllabi (one undergraduate, one graduate); and the name of three references online to UC Recruit.

As part of my recent move from Geography at the University of Toronto to Gender Studies at UCLA, I was able to change up my usual roster of courses to accommodate different disciplinarity, different foci, and different student body. One of the things I’m most excited about in my new position is precisely the new range of teaching possibilities like these at the intersection between Korean studies and gender studies. The syllabi for the following are still in flux, but here are the courses I have proposed to teach in the Winter and Spring quarters at UCLA. Looking forward, a little nervously!

Gender 185. Religion, and Social Movements in Korea (Winter 2018)

This course takes an interdisciplinary feminist and critical area studies approach to examine gender, religion, and social movements in Korea and the Korean diaspora. We will closely examine several contemporary political issues, focusing not only on the salient political theologies and oppositional social movements mobilized by religious groups, but also the wide range of ideas, institutions, and practices that are animated by a complex politics of gender, sexuality, and religion. Topics include Korean and transnational diasporic activism concerning war, imperialism, and militarism; anticommunism and xenophobia; pro-democracy movements and labor organizing; Catholic and Buddhist solidarity and sanctuary geographies; heteropatriarchy and urban megachurches; faith-based pacifism and conscientious objection to military conscription; disciplinary structures against dissent and heterodoxy/heresy; and emergent LGBTQ/sexual minority politics and the conservative Protestant backlash.

We will engage postcolonial, anti-racist, and intersectional feminist lens to discuss Korea and the Korean diaspora both as a site of inquiry and a field of knowledge. Basic competency in gender and area studies would be helpful, but previous familiarity with Korea or religion is not required. Comparative perspectives from other area and diaspora studies and activist experience are welcome.

Gender 102. POWER – Gender, Travel, and Mobilities (Spring 2018)

Source unknown …

Travel is conventionally associated with power, agency, and mobility that together produce generally positive spaces of leisure, adventure, and self-discovery. But what about the full range of travel that includes all kinds of movements, crossings, and traversing across space and time? How are package tours for elderly and limited English-speaking immigrants both similar and different from treacherous itineraries of displaced families walking for days to reach a safe distance from their besieged home? What implicit power relations undergird concepts like being “out of place” or “knowing one’s place”? How can we critique and complicate mobilities with a critical feminist lens? We begin with the premise that there are no innocent or neutral itineraries unaffected by power and privilege. Since all travels take place in geographies of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation—to name just a few registers of difference—spaces of travel are also always fraught with inequality and contradictions. This course examines spaces of travel produced through migration, tourism, and everyday mobilities across time and space. Topics include migrant detention and deportation, cross-border journeys and refugee itineraries, humanitarian cosmopolitanism and volunteer tourism, disability and the body, package tour buses and beach resorts, protest roadblocks and occupation, etc. (subject to change).

Gender 187. Geographic Narratives: Comics and Graphic Novels (Spring 2018)

What do cartoons, comic books, and graphic novels have in common? What historical geographies and artistic traditions help explain the similarities and differences among Korean manhwa, Japanese manga, U.S. underground comics, and Franco-Belgian comics? How do countercultural comics and subversive comics journalism challenge dominant narratives of war, violence, and trauma? How do long-form comics (graphic narratives) grapple with the fraught complexities of gender, racial, and religious difference in the contemporary world? How do heteropatriarchy and heteronormativity take place in comics? This seminar will approach comics as geographic narratives—illustrated stories that not only depict a world of power and difference but also animate a distinct sense of place. Engaging with conversations in cultural geography and transnational feminist studies, we will pay careful attention to the geographic narratives of mobility, inequality, and community. The tentative reading list includes Maus, Barefoot Gen, Dykes to Watch Out For, Fun Home, Persepolis, Love and Rockets, Palestine, Monstress, and The Best We Could Do.

“Between the Sacred and the Secular:
Christianity as Lived Experience in Modern Korea”

For a special issue of the Journal of Korean Studies

A One-day Workshop at Columbia University, November 6, 2018

We invite proposals for a workshop on the theme, “Between the Sacred and the Secular: Christianity as Lived Experience in Modern Korea.”

Modern Korea has been characterized as a “secular” country, but since its introduction to Korea in the late nineteenth century Protestant Christianity (hereafter Christianity) has long been a critical force in shaping virtually every aspect of modern Korean life. Christianity in Korea has been intertwined with shifting political conditions, such as Western imperialism, Japanese colonialism, modern nation-state building, democracy movements and neoliberalism. It has also had a significant impact upon class formation, gender relations and everyday life practices. Furthermore, South Korea has become a prominent player in global Christianity, a leader in sending missionaries overseas. How should we understand the ubiquitous presence of Christianity in “secular” modern Korea? Recent scholarship suggests that the boundary between the sacred/religious and the secular/material has never been clear-cut; rather, it has been and remains fluid and constitutive.

We invite proposals that shed new light on the dynamic, sometimes conflicting and sometimes synergistic relationships that exist between the sacred and the secular in Korea. We are particularly interested in analyses that tease out the subtle but pervasive influence of Christianity within the sociopolitical, economic, cultural and affective domains. Taking Korea as a case study, we aim to offer significant insights into the intersection of the religious with the secular, material and social.

The workshop is being organized by the Center for Korean Research (CKR) of Columbia University with generous support from the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2016-OLU-2250006). The cost of accommodation, meals, and transportation will be covered for workshop participants, contingent upon budget availability. Please send a 300-word abstract and a brief biographical sketch that includes a list of representative publications by March 31, 2018 to the workshop organizer, Hyaeweol Choi (hyaeweol.choi@anu.edu.au).

According to the DNA test results, Koga is half Miniature Schnauzer and half “East Asian Village Dog.” I am trying to make sense of this world of canine DNA and “Village Dog”? Really?

Oh and hi. I didn’t mean for this website to be all about work. Since I’m spending far less time on Facebook these days, maybe I’ll try to start blogging again. Here we go.

I admit Koga is a bit wild looking. That was my very first impression of him, actually. I first met Koga by chance when I went to meet adorable little dachshund-mix puppies who had just turned old enough for adoption. They were no doubt going to find new loving homes in a snap. I met them, played with them, but didn’t feel the need to get on a wait list and compete. And besides, I thought maybe it wasn’t time for a new pup yet. (My sweet Puca had died less than a year ago at the young age of 14 years.)

Koga at his favorite hipster store on Ossington in Toronto.

Then there was Koga. On the way in to see the puppies, I had to walk up a winding staircase to the second floor of the veterinary co-op in Seoul, and I remember seeing this strange looking little dog who would later become Koga. He was barking his head off at me but no sound was coming out. Before we learned the whole story behind his rescue, Koga left an impression on me as a voiceless, wild looking little guy. (More about this another time.)

For months and months after he joined our family, Koga surprised us by continuing to change his appearance. His soft hair grew longer and turned black at the tip, contrasting against his face and bright white underside. He has a bright white apron and a butt-skirt that I like to keep short. His ears are always perky and his eyes inquisitive and attentive. WHAT IS HE? Everywhere we went, people asked, WHAT BREED IS HE? Miniature husky? Pomeranian husky or Pomsky? Some other exotic breed?

It happened everywhere. Once, in a tiny elevator to Level 7 underground parking in Seoul, a couple of middle-aged women—ok fine, they were probably my age—saw Koga and commented that he “looked expensive” like that was a compliment. WHAT IS HE?

Even the actress Fran Drescher recently asked me, WHAT IS HE? We ran into each other while walking our dogs on a beach in Malibu, and to be honest, I’m not 100% sure that she was Fran Drescher of The Nanny fame, but I do remember she was with a Pomeranian. To kids, I often answer that Koga must be part red snow fox. Or part red panda, which usually gets a giggle. I told Fran Drescher that Koga was a mysterious hybrid and she laughed. He looks wild, she said.

Lo and behold, a friend’s generous and thoughtful birthday gift recently got us some real answers — sort of. Embark. Canine DNA ancestry. I swabbed inside Koga’s cheek and mailed it in, and after weeks of sleek and detailed updates, the final result came in. Koga is not a fox. He is not part husky. Most shockingly, he is not even Pomeranian.

According to Embark DNA test results, Koga is half Miniature Schnauzer and half East Asian Village Dog. You can take a look at the public results. [What the hell does that mean? To be continued.]

[Reposted with a heavy heart from Facebook. April 27, 2018.]

I understand that lots of people are happy about the South-North Korea summit but my heart isn’t there. Not even close.

My head is spinning with the knowledge that an infamous misogynist advisor Tak Hyun-min 탁현민 was likely the mastermind event producer behind the fanfare, that he is probably gleeful that President Moon protected him from so many angry feminists who organized for so long to try to get him removed, that he can count on Presidential immunity from the #MeToo movement — you know, he’s doing important work for the nation, not occupied with frivolous stuff like the rest of us. Every handshake, every camera angle, I know there’s a script, and somebody wrote it.

From what I can tell, the colorful ceremony of “royal guards” was a tradition invented entirely for summits like this, reenacted imagination of a unified premodern past still structured by the military — just in prettier clothing. I know the whole thing is about symbols and scripts, but what can I say. It looked like a cheesy historical k-drama, and I’m not into kings.

In the meantime, workers are still fighting for their lives, the poor are dying, dying alone, and dying in excruciating pain. Queer and trans folks are grieving their dead comrades on the 15th anniversary of Yook Woo Dang’s death, disability protesters are throwing their bodies into the street to demand policy change (and a meeting with the president), and people of Seongju and Soseong-ri are being violently dragged out and shut out of ongoing military build-up in their villages. Human rights ordinances all over South Korea are under attack and right-wing homophobes are winning in overturning what little human rights protections there are. President Moon might be getting accolades for his foreign policy maneuvers but his track record on gender and queer/trans issues have been nothing but abysmal. Obviously, I know that none of this can change overnight with a peace declaration. I’m not asking for the moon (ha ha). But could we please pause and sit with these contradictions even in joyous moments?

In spite of all this talk of peace and denuclearization, there is no commitment to demilitarization or anti-militarism, and dead silence when it comes to comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation. My heart weeps with queer feminist friends who resent this political agenda that so clearly separates peace and justice, that so clearly prioritizes military peace over social justice and human rights. On this important historic occasion, I can only sigh with frustration. There’s gotta be more than this. We can do better than this.

2018 미투운동 연속강연회: 미투 운동의 현황과 과제

5월 3일(목) 16시 30분
김예지(사)부산성폭력상담소 상담활동가)
“상담 현장에서 본 미투 운동”
장소 사회관 208호

5월 18일(금) 14시
이진옥(젠더정치연구소 여.세.연. 대표)
“미투운동과 민주주의: 젠더 정치의 새로운 모색”
장소 사회관 208호

5월 31일(목) 16시 30분
백혜랑 (법무법인 한올 소속 변호사)
“미투운동의 약진과 사법적 제한: 무고와 명예훼손을 중심으로”
장소 사회관 208호

주관: 사회학과
주최: 여성연구소, 사회학과, 부산대민교협

I made this for everyone who insists that they don’t have anything against gay people but that they’re “opposed” to homosexuality. It’s what a lot of South Korean politicians have said, including the current President. The hashtag goes something like “How many times do I have to tell you that to oppose homosexuality is itself an act of discrimination against queer people,” with implicit muttering under your breath: “you freaking morons.”

#동성애반대한다가동성애자차별이라고몇번말해야알아듣니

See below for two informative news video clips on the feminist protests.

And an article after the June 9 rally: “My Life Isn’t Your Porn: Why South Korean Women Protest” (Korea Exposé, June 9, 2018)

I did a radio interview last week for KPCC, a station in Southern California. As always with these things, there is a lot I didn’t get to say but I am glad I got to intervene and resist interpreting the phenomenon as somehow a “cultural” thing. It sounded like the interviewer wanted to hear that South Korean men are so sexually repressed or depraved (like Japanese men?!?) that they resort to spycam. This is way off the mark and typical of how Korea and Koreans get exoticized.

These ongoing protests are part of a diverse and vibrant feminist mobilizations that include not only LGBTQ rights, #MeToo, and efforts to decriminalize abortion, but also the growing public outrage against widespread misogyny and violence against women.

Have a listen online. It’s only 13 minutes long. https://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2018/07/09/63312/as-south-korean-women-protest-spycam-porn-we-look/

[caption] As South Korean women protest ‘spycam porn,’ we look at what is driving the phenomenon. Photo description: Large crowd of women protesters. One is holding up a sign reading, “My life is not your porn.”

The Korean Association of Women’s Studies (KAWS) has organized the 7th summer camp (2 days) in Seoul on August 16-17, 2018 with the provocative title of “Killing Women’s Studies: Counterattack by Anti-feminism and the Present Address of Women’s Studies” (my own rough, word-for-word translation). The six sessions include queering gender, studying women outside women’s studies, gender and labor, politics of feminist waves, queer pride parade and homophobia, and feminism and the political party, concluding with a feminist networking session. It’s geared towards students both undergraduate and graduate, and the cost of participation is only KRW 10,000 that includes meals and overnight lodging. Register here: http://hoy.kr/pOsm

최근 성소수자 길벗들과 동행하는 여러 그리스도인들이 어려움을 당하고 있습니다. 지금 바로 그들을 위한 기도 릴레이에 동참해 주세요. 그 고난이 정의와 기쁨의 노래로 변하도록 함께 해 주세요. 우리는 서로 이어져 있으므로 강합니다.

I was tagged to participate in a relay campaign on Facebook so I wrote the following and added one of my favorite poems by June Jordan, “I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies.” The accompanying image below is of Koga from last year who’s wearing the tongue-in-cheek protest sticker, “Homo who will change the country” or put differently, “Queers for social change.” I should make him a sticker that says “Doggies for queer liberation.”

For this blog post version, I have made a few edits and added hyperlinks to news sources for further reading. (All are in Korean, mostly from the wonderfully critical Christian news source, News N Joy.) If you’d like to participate in this relay campaign on Facebook:

1. Choose a poem, prayer, Bible verse, or write your own message in solidarity.
2. Feel free to copy and paste the description below for background information.
3. IMPORTANT: use the hashtags (#) so the organizers can see your posts.
4. Tag your friends by typing their names (they’ll appear as clickable links)
5. Post and share with friends!

* * *

This is an urgent request from dear friends at Rainbow Yesu (@rainbowyesu on Twitter), a group of courageous Christians and allies in Korea working to end homophobia. They are under heightened attack for advancing social justice and embracing LGBTQ folks in their church communities and beyond. Despite some amazing accomplishments in recent years, they continue to face an intensely hostile climate. Seminary students are being persecuted for raising the rainbow flag in solidarity, student groups are being banned from campus, and clergy and church workers are being targeted for personal attacks (even including their family members) and being threatened with excommunication and loss of employment all because they refuse to condemn homosexuality. These are not fringe developments. Even so-called mainline denominations are demanding that Christians join their hateful campaigns to endanger queer lives and ask no questions. Rev. Lim Bora of the Sumdol Hyanglin Church, one of the only LGBTQ affirming congregations in Korea, has even been accused of heresy. (Also see this interview.)

Your solidarity and prayers would be most appreciated during this difficult time. Please post a prayer, a poem, a Bible verse, or a message in solidarity, and tag at least 3 friends on Facebook so that they can carry on this relay campaign. And very importantly, please copy and paste the tags below. Thank you.

#Pray4ChristianLGBTQIA
#Pray4ChristianAllies
#nomoreHates #watchingJoo
#사랑이이기네 #함께맞는비

— one of my all-time favorites —

I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies

June Jordan (1977)

1
I will no longer lightly walk behind
a one of you who fear me:
Be afraid.
I plan to give you reasons for your jumpy fits
and facial tics
I will not walk politely on the pavements anymore
and this is dedicated in particular
to those who hear my footsteps
or the insubstantial rattling of my grocery
cart
then turn around
see me
and hurry on
away from this impressive terror I must be:
I plan to blossom bloody on an afternoon
surrounded by my comrades singing
terrible revenge in merciless
accelerating
rhythms
But
I have watched a blind man studying his face.
I have set the table in the evening and sat down
to eat the news.
Regularly
I have gone to sleep.
There is no one to forgive me.
The dead do not give a damn.
I live like a lover
who drops her dime into the phone
just as the subway shakes into the station
wasting her message
canceling the question of her call:
fulminating or forgetful but late
and always after the fact that could save or
condemn me

I must become the action of my fate.

2
How many of my brothers and my sisters
will they kill
before I teach myself
retaliation?
Shall we pick a number?
South Africa for instance:
do we agree that more than ten thousand
in less than a year but that less than
five thousand slaughtered in more than six
months will
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME?

I must become a menace to my enemies.

3
And if I
if I ever let you slide
who should be extirpated from my universe
who should be cauterized from earth
completely
(lawandorder jerkoffs of the first the
terrorist degree)
then let my body fail my soul
in its bedeviled lecheries

And if I
if I ever let love go
because the hatred and the whisperings
become a phantom dictate I o-
bey in lieu of impulse and realities
(the blossoming flamingos of my
wild mimosa trees)
then let love freeze me
out.
I must become
I must become a menace to my enemies.

http://www.junejordan.net/i-must-become-a-menace-to-my-enemies.html

Doggies against homophobia

Five seminary students at Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary (PUTS) who took a photo while dressed in rainbow colors and quietly held up a rainbow flag on International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia (IDAHOT) last May have been disciplined for their action against homophobia. One student has received a 6-month suspension, 3 students were ordered community service, and 1 was censured.

The students belong to a group called Am Haaretz dedicated to urban poverty issues, and had previously been in the news when they organized a campus lecture by a pastor of an LGBTQ congregation. They were later forced to cancel the event #becausehomophobia.

This is an alarming development in the climate of heightened religious homophobia. Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary (PUTS Jangshindae 장신대) is a moderately conservative school described as the Korean counterpart to Princeton Theological Seminary or McCormick Theological Seminary. PUTS belongs to the denomination Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK), which in September 2017 passed a policy to expel sexual minorities from the denomination and to discipline any clergy, seminary personnel, or students who advocate for sexual minorities. The decision was made without much debate, and questions remain as to how exactly churches and schools are to identify and exclude sexual minorities and their advocates.

The AAS is pleased to invite applications to participate in the third workshop in its series “Emerging Fields in the Study of Asia,” supported by the Henry Luce Foundation. The third workshop, “Law, Society, and Justice,” will take place May 17-19, 2019 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

The Association for Asian Studies calls for proposals from early career scholars, early career practitioners, and advanced graduate students (near candidacy or PhD candidates) to participate in a workshop on Law, Society, and Justice, Friday May 17 through Sunday May 19, 2019 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The interdisciplinary field of Law and Society emerged during the late 1950s and mid-1960s from the conviction that law was neither apolitical nor autonomous. This led scholars to analyze matters related to law within their political, social, and economic contexts. Over recent decades, the field has expanded to include a range of topics that extend and challenge the boundaries of law, including feminist legal theory, human rights law and culture, and genocide and crimes against humanity. With insights from earlier critical scholarship on what makes states, and a renewed commitment to social justice, contemporary analysts consider how law takes shape in interaction with structural factors and with the operations of ideology, power and knowledge. At the same time, comparative law, the examination of plural legal systems, and the anthropology of law have also grown and developed multi- and transcultural analytical perspectives on international matters of law beyond jurisprudence and treaties.

While the empirical and comparative study of law and society is not entirely new in scholarship on Asia, nevertheless, law, society, and justice are relatively underrepresented within Asian Studies, and Asia remains relatively scarce in the study of these topics, still heavily focused on Europe and the Americas. This gap presents scholars and practitioners with the potential opportunity to realize comparative and theoretical insights and to rethink the fields of both Asian Studies and law, society, and justice.

With this in mind, our meeting aims to encourage new work and create networks of intellectual exchange among researchers and practitioners. What range of topics in law, society, and justice does Asian Studies encompass? We intend to explore the field’s parameters and the creative and insightful work on law, society, and justice it inspires. Specific topics addressed might include but are not limited to: the relation between private corporate interests and states; plural legal systems and conflict of laws; the role of colonial legal education and legal assistants; law’s relation to slavery and labor systems, as well as to family, gender, and sexuality; the shifting meanings of justice under decolonization and revolution; changing meanings of law and justice under democracy and authoritarianism and the range of intermediary regimes; the operations of law at different scales of interaction across communities, nations, the region and globe; the relationships of law and justice to memory; environmental justice; access to law and justice; rule of law versus rule by law; “lawfare”; the histories and contentious place of human rights ideas and movements in the region; and other topics as yet unimagined.

We welcome participation by early career scholars, practitioners, and scholar-practitioners both inside and outside the university engaged in research about law, society, and justice in Asia. If selected for the workshop, you will be expected to submit a 5,000-7,000 word piece that exemplifies and situates your research contribution to the field of law, society, and justice in Asia, which will be due on 1 March 2019. You may submit a full chapter or article it if falls within the word limit, or may submit a distillation or shorter version of such a piece. Senior and junior colleagues will offer written and dialogic commentary on this pre-circulated writing by participants and engage each other in broader discussions about the field. In addition to timely submission of your own full paper, you will also need to be prepared to read and write one page of comments on each of the other 12-15 participants’ submissions by 5 May 2019. We also hope to have other activities such as professional development, and discussion of publication strategies, as well as career opportunities. Participants are expected to stay for the entire workshop; this means you will need to arrive the preceding Thursday and depart no earlier than mid-afternoon on Sunday.

We invite one-page (single spaced) proposals that summarize your intended submission for the workshop. For consideration, please send your one-page summary along with your CV (two-page maximum) to  https://asianstudies.wufoo.com/forms/qoj7n9602kyg77/ by 1 October 2018. While current AAS membership is not required at the time of application, if accepted to the workshop participants must become members of the Association for Asian Studies or renew their lapsed memberships. News of acceptance will be made by 1 December 2018. Travel, lodging, and meals will be covered by the AAS, with the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation.

Anyone with questions about the workshop or application process is asked to contact the co-organizers, Jennifer Gaynor jlgaynor@buffalo.edu and Tyrell Haberkorn  tyrellcaroline@gmail.com.