Soojin Jeong

Jeong

Ph.D. Candidate

Soojin's research interests are communication studies, Asian-American studies, literary studies and gender studies in Korea and Japan.

Wonjun Kang

Wonjun Kang

Ph.D. Student

Wonjun specializes in postwar Japanese literature and thought. His dissertation, tentatively titled Narrating the Spirit of Words: Questioning Colonialism, Ethnography, and Seimeishugi in the Writings from Postwar Kyushu, examines the works of writers and intellectuals based in the Kyushu region of southwestern Japan circa 1950s~1980s. Highlighting their writings on Kyushu’s coal miners, Minamata Disease patients, ordinary people during the early Meiji upheavals, and Karayuki-san, his project investigates the formation and possibility of their unique form of narrating the words of others which encompassed ethnography (minzokugaku) people’s history(minshūshisōshi), and ‘listening and writing’(kikigaki).

 

Chapters include: 

  1. Colonial Continuity in Postwar Kyushu: Hŭngnam and Minamata

  2. Coal Vitalities: Morisaki Kazue in Chikuhō

  3. The Other Rebellion: Reading Ishimure Michiko’s Legends of Satsuma Rebellion with Irokawa Daikichi’s People’s History

  4. The Challenges of Shiranui Sea Comprehensive Academic Research Group and Ishimure Michiko’s Southern Islands

Wonjun received his B.A. and M.A. in Asian Languages and Civilizations at Seoul National University. His master's thesis centered on Ishimure Michiko's Kugai Jōdo (Paradis in the Sea of Sorrows), a literary record on the sufferings of Minamata Disease patients. (wonjun.kang@uci.edu)

Adam Miller

Miller

Ph.D. Candidate

Adam's research centers on gender and sexuality in contemporary Korean literature and film. He is particularly interested in exploring constructions and representations of masculinity in the post-democratization period through the present day. His research interests also include speculative fiction, poetry, and critical theory.

Asha Rieussec

Asha Riessec

Ph.D. Student

Asha focuses on feminism and ecocriticism in Korean literature. In particular, she's interested in how female writers discuss feminism, queerness, and plants within different literary works. She received a bachelor's degree in Korean Literature & Language at UC Irvine and a master's degree in Korean Area Studies at University of Southern California before returning to UC Irvine.

 

Sophie Wheeler

Wheeler

Ph.D. Candidate

Sophie's research interests are travel photography, ethnography, food studies, environmental politics, and multimedia storytelling.

Yaqi Wang

Yaqi Wang

Ph.D. Candidate
Yaqi's research focuses on postwar Japanese cinema and literature. She is interested in film philosophy and theory, modernity in East Asia, and environmental humanities. She received a bachelor's degree in media and cinema studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master's degree in Humanities from The University of Chicago before joining UC Irvine. (yaqiw7@uci.edu)

Blossom Jeong

Blossom Jeong

Ph.D. Student
Blossom is interested in the politics of in/exclusion and community building in post-colonial repatriation narratives by Korean and Taiwanese writers.

Xiangu Qi

Xiangu Qi

Ph.D. Student
Xiangu Qi is a Ph.D. student advised by Professor Bert Scruggs, published different papers respectively in East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, Journal of Film Art, and Journal of Beijing Film Academy. Her research interests include Chinese-language films, Chinese diaspora cinema, film history, and environmental humanities. She is the founder of Voice-Over (画外音), an academic podcast that focuses on film studies and cultural studies. She also launched the Chinese-language Cinema Discussion Club that holds regular online discussions on various films across global Chinese-language communities with scholars from different fields.

Xinming Liao

Xinming

Ph.D. Student

Xinming Liao is a Ph.D. student advised by Professor Hu Ying, specializing in the literature and culture of late 19th- to early 20th-century China. Her research has explored translingual practices and the cultural construction of the “Yellow Peril” (see her Chinese-language publication “The Citizens and the Slaves: The Signifying Chain and Literary Images of the ‘Yellow Peril’ in Modern China”), and also worked on ecological entanglements in the writings of Xiao Hong. She currently focuses on the intersection of ecological politics and the biopolitics of aging in 20th- and 21st-century Sinophone literature and film. Her broader research interests include ecocriticism, feminist literature and theory, and critical age studies.

Jiaxin Yang

Jiaxin Yang

Jiaxin Yang is a Ph.D. student advised by Professor Bert Scruggs. Her research focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Taiwanese literature and visual culture. Her broader research interests lie at the intersection of media and literary studies, postcolonial studies and ecocriticism within Sinophone contexts.

Yuta Shimoyama

Yuta Shimoyama

Yuta’s research interests center on Japanese studies and environmental humanities. He holds a BA in Art History from the University of Tsukuba and an MA in Culture and Representation from the University of Tokyo. His detailed CV can be found on Researchmap: https://researchmap.jp/yuta_shimoyama?lang=en.