Queer Korea

Queer Korea
Author: Todd A. Henry
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2020-02-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1478003367

Since the end of the nineteenth century, the Korean people have faced successive waves of foreign domination, authoritarian regimes, forced dispersal, and divided development. Throughout these turbulent times, “queer” Koreans were ignored, minimized, and erased in narratives of their modern nation, East Asia, and the wider world. This interdisciplinary volume challenges such marginalization through critical analyses of non-normative sexuality and gender variance. Considering both personal and collective forces, contributors extend individualized notions of queer neoliberalism beyond those typically set in Western queer theory. Along the way, they recount a range of illuminating topics, from shamanic rituals during the colonial era and B-grade comedy films under Cold War dictatorship to toxic masculinity in today’s South Korean military and transgender confrontations with the resident registration system. More broadly, Queer Korea offers readers new ways of understanding the limits and possibilities of human liberation under exclusionary conditions of modernity in Asia and beyond. Contributors. Pei Jean Chen, John (Song Pae) Cho, Chung-kang Kim, Timothy Gitzen, Todd A. Henry, Merose Hwang, Ruin, Layoung Shin, Shin-ae Ha, John Whittier Treat

Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies

Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies
Author: Jungmin Kwon
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2019-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1609386213

This book is about ardent Korean female fans of gay representation in the media, their status in contemporary Korean society, their relationship with other groups such as the gay population, and, above all, their contribution to reshaping the Korean media’s portrayal of gay people. Jungmin Kwon names the Korean female fandom for gay portrayals as “FANtasy” subculture, and argues that it adds to the present visibility of the gay body in Korean mainstream media, thus helping to change the public’s perspective toward sexually marginalized groups. The FANtasy subculture started forming around text-based media, such as yaoi, fan fiction, and U.S. gay-themed dramas (like Will & Grace), and has been influenced by diverse social, political, and economic conditions, such as the democratization of Korea, an open policy toward foreign media products, the diffusion of consumerism, government investment in the culture, the Hollywoodization of the film industry, and the popularity of Korean culture abroad. While much scholarly attention has been paid to female fandom for homoerotic cultural texts in many countries, this book seeks to explore a relatively neglected aspect of the subculture: its location in and influence on Korean society at large.

Queer Asia

Queer Asia
Author: J. Daniel Luther
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2019-05-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1786995832

Queer studies is now a rapidly expanding field, as scholars from a variety of disciplines seek to address the long-running marginalisation of queer perspectives and experiences. But there has so far been little effort to unify the study of queer communities outside the West, and much of the current writing views these communities through a narrowly Western lens. Building on the work of the annual Queer Asia conference, which the editors helped to establish, this collection represents the most comprehensive work to date on queer studies in an Asian context. Featuring case studies and original research from across the continent, covering the Middle East, South and East Asia, and Asian diasporas, the collection offers a genuinely pan-Asian perspective which places queer Asian identities and movements in dialogue with each other, rather than within a Western framework. By considering how queerness is imagined within plural Asian experiences and contexts, the contributors show a that re-envisioning of 'queer' through Asian perspectives has the potential to challenge existing discourses and debates in the wider field of contemporary gender, sexuality, and queer studies.

Queer Wars

Queer Wars
Author: Dennis Altman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2016-03-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0745698727

The claim that 'LGBT rights are human rights' encounters fierce opposition in many parts of the world, as governments and religious leaders have used resistance to 'LGBT rights' to cast themselves as defenders of traditional values against neo-colonial interference and western decadence. Queer Wars explores the growing international polarization over sexual rights, and the creative responses from social movements and activists, some of whom face murder, imprisonment or rape because of their perceived sexuality or gender expression. This book asks why sexuality and gender identity have become so vexed an issue between and within nations, and how we can best advocate for change.

Rights Claiming in South Korea

Rights Claiming in South Korea
Author: Celeste L. Arrington
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2021-05-27
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108841333

An analysis of rights-based activism in South Korea, including case studies of women, workers, disabled persons, migrants, and sexual minorities.

Love in the Big City

Love in the Big City
Author: Sang Young Park
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2021-11-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 080215879X

A funny, transporting, surprising, and poignant novel that was one of the highest-selling debuts of recent years in Korea, Love in the Big City tells the story of a young gay man searching for happiness in the lonely city of Seoul Love in the Big City is the English-language debut of Sang Young Park, one of Korea’s most exciting young writers. A runaway bestseller, the novel hit the top five lists of all the major bookstores, went into twenty-six printings, and was praised for its unique literary voice and perspective. It is now poised to capture a worldwide readership. Young is a cynical yet fun-loving Korean student who pinballs from home to class to the beds of recent Tinder matches. He and Jaehee, his female best friend and roommate, frequent nearby bars where they push away their anxieties about their love lives, families, and money with rounds of soju and ice-cold Marlboro Reds that they keep in their freezer. Yet over time, even Jaehee leaves Young to settle down, leaving him alone to care for his ailing mother and to find companionship in his relationships with a series of men, including one whose handsomeness is matched by his coldness, and another who might end up being the great love of his life. A brilliantly written novel that takes us into the glittering nighttime of Seoul and the bleary-eyed morning after with both humor and emotion, Love in the Big City is a wry portrait of millennial loneliness as well as the abundant joys of queer life.

Queer Theory and the Jewish Question

Queer Theory and the Jewish Question
Author: Daniel Boyarin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 431
Release: 2003-12-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231508956

The essays in this volume boldly map the historically resonant intersections between Jewishness and queerness, between homophobia and anti-Semitism, and between queer theory and theorizations of Jewishness. With important essays by such well-known figures in queer and gender studies as Judith Butler, Daniel Boyarin, Marjorie Garber, Michael Moon, and Eve Sedgwick, this book is not so much interested in revealing—outing—"queer Jews" as it is in exploring the complex social arrangements and processes through which modern Jewish and homosexual identities emerged as traces of each other during the last two hundred years.

Feeling Backward

Feeling Backward
Author: Heather Love
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2009-03-31
Genre: Education
ISBN: 067403239X

'Feeling Backward' weighs the cost of the contemporary move to the mainstream in lesbian and gay culture. It makes an effort to value aspects of historical gay experience that now threaten to disappear, branded as embarrassing evidence of the bad old days before Stonewall. Love argues that instead of moving on, we need to look backward.

Queer Theology

Queer Theology
Author: Linn Marie Tonstad
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 115
Release: 2018-07-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498218806

What do Christianity and queerness have to do with each other? Can Christianity be queered? Queer Theology offers a readable introduction to a difficult debate. Summarizing the various apologetic arguments for the inclusion of queer people in Christianity, Tonstad moves beyond inclusion to argue for a queer theology that builds on the interconnection of theology with sex and money. Thoroughly grounded in queer theory as well as in Christian theology, Queer Theology grapples with the fundamental challenges of the body, sex, and death, as these are where queerness and Christianity find (and, maybe, lose) each other.

Queer Asian Cinema

Queer Asian Cinema
Author: Andrew Grossman
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2000
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781560231394

This unique book presents multiple points of view on the portrayal of gay, lesbian, and transgendered people in film throughout Asia. From the subversive sadomasochism of Japan's "pink films" to the hard-boiled world of Hong Kong's gangster movies, Queer Asian Cinema analyzes and discusses attitudes toward homosexuality in the full spectrum of Asian film. In addition, it reveals the hidden homoerotic subtext of otherwise conventional films. Queer Asian Cinema brings together experts in both film-making and movie criticism, providing a balanced viewpoint to unite the worlds of academic and popular perceptions on this largely neglected area of cinematic discourse.