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Women We Love: Femininities and the Korean Wave

Editor: SooJin Lee, Kate Korroch and Liew Kai Khiun
Author: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Publisher: , 2023
Link to online store *

Women We Love: Femininities and the Korean Wave is an edited volume exploring femininities in and around the Korean Wave since 2000. While studies on the Korean Wave are abundant, there is a dearth of thought put toward the female-identifying stars, characters, and fans who shape and lead this crucial cultural movement. This collection of essays is one of the first works to focus on gender and the key female actors of this global phenomenon. Using “women” as an inclusive term extending to all those who self-define as women, this volume examines the role of women in K-pop and K-drama industries and fandom spaces, encompassing crucial intersectional topics such as queering of gender, dissemination of media, and fan culture.

In addition to the communities engaged with visual culture of the Korean Wave, the audience for Women We Love will reflect the contributors to this text. They are K-pop and K-drama fans, queer, international; they are also academics of Asian histories, sociology, gender and sexuality, art history, and visual culture. The chapters are playful, intersectional, and will be adapted well into syllabi for media studies, gender studies, visual culture studies, sociology, and contemporary global history.

SooJin Lee is an art historian and assistant professor at Hongik University.

Kate Korroch is a PhD candidate in visual studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Liew Kai Khiun is an assistant professor at Hong Kong Metropolitan University.

Source: publisher’s website

Contents

Introduction: Femininities and the Korean Wave | Kate Korroch, SooJin Lee, and Liew Kai Khiun

Part I: Characters We Love

  1. Is Femininity Hard? Naming Femininities in the Age of Soft Masculinity | Kate Korroch
  2. Tomboy in Love: Korean and US Views of Heterosexual Eroticism in the K-Drama First Shop of Coffee Prince | Maud Lavin
  3. Miss Kim: God of the Workplace | SooJin Lee

Part II: More than Girl Groups

  1. Ella Gross and Child Social Media Stars: Rising to Fame through K-Pop Idol Trainee Systems, Mixed-Raceness, and Tabloid Cycle Controversies | Jin Lee and Crystal Abidin
  2. Girl Groups in Uniform: Moranbong Band and the Staging of NK-Pop in and out of North Korea | Douglas Gabriel
  3. Ssen-Unni in K-Pop: The Making of “Strong Sisters” in South Korea | Jieun Lee and Hyangsoon Yi

Part III: Fans and Fan-Producers

  1. Alpeseu (RPS) and Business Gay Performance in the Korean K-Pop World | Stephanie Jiyun Choi
  2. Females, Frontliners, Fringes: K-Pop’s Performers and Protesters from Southeast Asia | Liew Kai Khiun, Malinee Khumsupa, and Atchareeya Saisin
  3. Riding the Korean Wave in Iran: Cyberfeminism and Pop Culture among Young Iranian Women | Gi Yeon Koo
  4. Into the New World: From the Objectification to the Empowerment of Girls’ Generation | Erik Paolo Capistrano and Kathlyn Ramirez

External links:

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