Gendering Modern Korean Literature and Cultural Studies
A Seminar with Professor Youkyung Son

Thursday, March 8, 2018 | 4:30-6:30pm | THH 371

RSVP to Professor Sunyoung Park at sunyounp@usc.edu

Inside and outside of South Korea, the study of Korean literature and culture has grown in recent decades to include important contributions from the fields of feminist and gender studies. Having moved beyond rediscovering forgotten women authors, Korean feminist literary criticism has evolved today into an exciting and diversified field of inquiry, and it has become ever more encompassing of gender and queer perspectives that question hegemonic paradigms of both modernity and the contemporary world. Through the reading and discussion of select publications, this seminar aims to map out the shifting terrains of this critical scholarly development, highlighting in the process the latest accomplishments as well as reflecting on present and future challenges. The seminar will be conducted in Korean and is open to all interested USC faculty and graduate students. 

Professor Youkyung Son is an Associate Professor in the Department of Korean Language and Literature at Seoul National University. She is the author of numerous articles and two monographs—The Structure of Sensibility in Modern Korean Proletarian Literature (2012) and Sorrowful Socialists (2016)—both of which offered innovative readings of colonial Korean socialist literature through the analytical lens of emotion studies. Her current research focuses on Korean feminist theories and movements from the late 1980s to the early 1990s.