Graduate students and post-docs currently researching Korean popular culture are invited to submit proposals for the graduate forum portion of the Korean Studies Summer Workshop 2010, to be held at UC Irvine, June 25th-26th, 2010. The two-day event, organized by professors Kyung Hyun Kim (UC Irvine), Serk-Bae Suh (UC Irvine), and Youngmin Choe (USC), seeks to provide a forum that will promote transnational exchange and dialogue between scholars teaching and conducting research on Korean popular culture at institutions in the United States and in South Korea. Confirmed speakers include Professors KWON Bodrae (Dong-guk University), KIM Chang-nam (Sungkonghoe University) LEE Dong-yeon (Korean National University of Arts), Nancy Abelmann (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne), CHOI Kyeong-Hee (University of Chicago), and SEO Hyun-suk (Yonsei University).

The primary goal of the workshop format is to promote opportunities for lively intellectual exchange. Topics will include the following:
  • Practice of reading and teaching Korean popular culture
  • Potentiality of Korean popular culture beyond Korean studies
  • Comparative perspectives on cultural studies
  • Interdisciplinary and transnational approaches
  • Invention of new curriculums and teaching materials
  • Intersections of the colonial, the postcolonial, and the cultural
  • Cyber-, Physical, and subculture spaces
  • New technology and youth culture
  • Tourism and Affective Sites
  • Musicality
  • Cosmopolitanism
  • Hybrid and Mimicry
  • Post-literature cultures
  • Cultural Translations
Selected participants will have the opportunity to present their work and get feedback. Meals, hotel accommodations, and travel expenses will be remunerated by the organizing committee. A brief bio and 250-word abstract should be submitted electronically to coordinator Hyun Seon Park (hyunsp@uci.edu) no later than April 1st. Please direct inquiries to Youngmin Choe (youngmij@usc.edu).