The 55th International Conference organized by The American Studies Association of Korea (ASAK)
“Identity Politics and Political Institutions”
Date: October 29-30, 2021 (Korean Standard Time)
Virtual Online Conference
The American Studies Association of Korea (ASAK) is pleased to announce an international conference on the theme, “Identity Politics and Political Institutions” to be held online from October 29 to 30, 2021 (Korean Standard Time).
For this year’s conference, we are delighted to welcome Robin D. G. Kelley, Distinguished Professor of History and African American Studies and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA, as our keynote speaker. The title of the keynote speech is “Black Spring, Blue Winter: On the Identity Politics of Police.”
This year’s conference will be held on Zoom. Admission is free and open to the public. To access the conference Zoom meetings, you will need to register beforehand using the links below. Please note that there are two simultaneous Virtual Rooms per day. Session details, including information about corresponding Zoom meeting rooms, are available in the attached program.
For questions please email us at asakconference@gmail.com.
Virtual Room A, Oct. 29 (Fri): Please register in advance here.
Virtual Room B, Oct. 29 (Fri): Please register in advance here.
Virtual Room A, Oct. 30 (Sat): Please register in advance here.
Virtual Room B, Oct. 30 (Sat): Please register in advance here.
* All sessions will be conducted in English unless otherwise noted.
* All times are in Korean standard time.
October 29 (Friday)
9:00 – 9:10 a.m. Virtual Room A
Opening Remarks
Jae H. Roe, Sogang University, President of ASAK
9:10 – 10:50 a.m. Virtual Room A
Mediating the Transpacific Cold War
Chair In Shik Bang, Sookmyung Women’s University
Far from Hollywood: War and Spectacle at Camp Pendleton
Madeleine Han, Yale University
Reimagining the Military Archive: Figurations of Korean Women in US Military Clubs
Sam Yoon, University of Toronto
From Self-Determination to Self-Referentiality: The Travels of Yunbok’s Diary in the Cold War
Juwon Kim, University of Toronto
9:10 – 10:50 a.m. Virtual Room B
Fantasies of Attachments, Projections of Identity
Chair Hyungji Park, Yonsei University
Pork Belly Fallacy: Yemen, Korea, and the United States at the Gastronomic Crossroads
Robert Ji-Song Ku, Binghamton University of the State University of New York
America, Anglophilia, Brexit and The Great British Bake Off
Anita Mannur, Miami University
Korean American Fantasies of Adoption: An Adoptee Returns to South Korea
Kimberly McKee, Grand Valley State University
Mental Illness and the Event Horizon of Asian America
James Kyung-Jin Lee, University of California, Irvine
11:10 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Virtual Room A
Keynote Address
Moderator Sung Yup Kim, Seoul National University
Black Spring, Blue Winter: On the Identity Politics of Police
Robin D. G. Kelley, University of California, Los Angeles
—lunch break—
2:20 – 4:00 p.m. Virtual Room A
Neoliberal Political Economy in the United States *in Korean
Chair Shang E. Ha, Sogang University
Respondent Jungkun Seo, Kyung Hee University
Updating the U.S. Collective Bargaining Platform during the 1960s and Its Failure
Yongwoo Jeung, Incheon National University
Employers’ Political Mobilization of Workers and the Rise of Neoliberalism in the United States
Youn Ki, Seoul National University
Disruptive Innovation of Real Estate Trading in the US -Focusing on “i-buying” Business Model
Lee, Hyun-Song, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
2:20 – 4:00 p.m. Virtual Room B
Gendered and Racialized Bodies in Modern American Literature
Chair Dong In Cho, Inha Technical College
“My prison muscles”: Incarceration and Unresolvable Black Manhood in An American Marriage
Minjeong Son, Ewha Womans University
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: Identity Politics between Inclusiveness and Exclusiveness
Hyunjung Kim, Sookmyung Women’s University
Obfuscating Orientations to Adjust Alignments: Dissonance as Re-orientation in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For
Ayoung Kim, Ewha Womans University
Transnational Motherhood against the Forces of Domestic Neo-Slavery for an Undocumented Immigrant in Nicole Dennis-Benn’s Patsy
Hyejun Kim, Ewha Womans University
October 30 (Saturday)
9:00 – 10:40 a.m. Virtual Room A
Race, Labor, and Plasticity in Late Capitalism
Chair Hye Jean Chung, Kyung Hee University
Vlogging as Translation: Pop Musicology on YouTube
Michelle Cho, University of Toronto
Making over ‘The Big Reveal’: Neoliberal Multiculturalism and the Globalizing of the South Korean ‘Look’”
S. Heijin Lee, New York University
The Universal Charm of the South Korean Zombie
Christopher T. Fan, University of California, Irvine
9:00 – 10:40 a.m. Virtual Room B
Questions of Inclusion and Belonging in the Nation State
Chair Dae-Joong Kim, Kangwon National University
Cleaning Up After White Supremacy: Asian American Patriotism
Jin R. Choi, University of Maryland
Postsecular Renderings of Korean American Faith, Loss, and Terror in R. O. Kwon’s The Incendiaries
Sara Lee, Binghamton University
Guantánamo Bay Literature
Moustafa Bayoumi, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Richard Wright's Moral Weapons
Kevin Spencer, Duke University
11:00 a.m. – 12:40 p.m. Virtual Room A
Popular Representation, Race, and Geopolitics
Chair Min-Jung Kim, Ewha Womans University
Asian Fast and the American Furious: Race and Trade in the Washington Consensus
Joseph Jeon, University of California, Irvine
The Command Line, GUIs, and Empire: The Zainichi American Hiro in Snow Crash
David S. Roh, University of Utah
Transpacific Noir
Jinah Kim, Cal State Northridge
Taste Matters: Global Asian Food Media and Transpacific Racialization
Jenny Wang Medina, Emory University
11:00 a.m. – 12:40 p.m. Virtual Room B
Identity and Solidarity in Acts of Resistance
Chair Joon Hyung Park, Pukyong National University
Korean American Wilderness: Uprooting the Myth of the Promised Land in Minari
Joo Young Lee, Korea University
Black Men’s Creation of Neo-Fugitive Spaces in John Edgar Wideman’s Brothers and Keepers
Juyoun Jang, University of Mississippi
Black Lives Matter: Identity Politics and The Rise of New Social Movement
JongWan Baik, New School
—lunch break—
1:40 – 3:20 p.m. Virtual Room A
AAAS (Association for Asian American Studies) Delegation: Korean and American Anti-Colonial Imaginations
Chair Kyung-Sook Boo, Sogang University
“None Like Us”: The Promises and Liabilities of Cross-Racial Politics
Jang Wook Huh, University of Washington, Seattle
A Diaspora of Dignity: Remapping Black-Korean Solidarities and Histories of Resistance in the Korean American Diaspora
Youngoh Jung, University of California, San Diego
Visualizing the Railroad in Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer
Julia H. Lee, University of California, Irvine
1:40 – 3:20 p.m. Virtual Room B
JAAS (Japanese Association for American Studies) – ASAK Joint Session:
Rethinking Race and Identity in Art and Literature
Chair EunHyoung Kim, Seoul National University
Unraveling and Connecting: Post-Identity in Asian American Art
Yasuko Takezawa, Kyoto University (Vice President of JAAS)
Translating Blackness: Pacific-Rim Triangulation of Race and Literature
Michio Arimitsu, Keio University
What Passes for Race Loyalty: Insights from Nella Larsen and Chang-Rae Lee
Min Young Godley, Dartmouth College
Ethical Reading and Becoming “We” in Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Blu’s Hanging
Jin Lee, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
3:40 – 5:20 p.m. Virtual Room A
Fictional Engagements with Race and Inequality *in Korean
Chair Ju Young Jin, Soonchunhyang University
Reversing the White Narrative of Frontier Conquest: Meta-theatrical Strategy in the Native American Drama Foghorn
Jungman Park, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
Joon-ho Bong’s Parasite (2019) and the Aestheticization of Politics
Soo Yeon Kim, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
Racial Melancholia and Masculinity in Minari
Yang Julie Kyu, Sogang University
3:40 – 5:20 p.m. Virtual Room B
“American Dilemma” in the Shaping and Censorship of American Identity *in Korean
Chair Hyun Hur, Chungnam National University
The Other “American Dilemma” for American Identity: Nationalism and Sectionalism After the War of 1812
Hyun Hur, Chungnam National University
Racial Perception and Racial Classification of Koreans in the United States in the First half of the 20th Century
Kim, Yong-Tae, Kangwon National University
Movie and Censorship: The National Board of Censorship and the Motion Picture Patents Company
Hong, Jongkyu, Catholic Kwandong University
5:20 – 5:30 p.m. Virtual Room A
Closing Remarks
Jae H. Roe, Sogang University, President of ASAK