Guest Speaker Series

Speaker: Professor Jungmin Kwon
Portland State University

Date: March 31st, 2023 at 11:00 AM-12:00 PM PT
Location: HC 2290 

K(Q)ueer-Pop: Queer Practices in K-Pop, Commodification, and Queer Audiences

In this talk, Dr. Kwon argues that the K-pop space, which on one level appears to be homogeneously cishetpatriarchal, actually encompasses multiple configurations of gender and sexual identity. She suggests a new term, K(Q)ueerness meaning the aesthetics, imaginations, practices, performances, and ideas of K-pop players sublate binaristic identifications, including masculinity and femininity and heterosexual and homosexual—as well as Butler’s distinction between performance and performativity—to embrace the multifarious expressions of gender and sexuality surrounding K-pop. Dr. Kwon presents diverse modalities of K(Q)ueerness and emphasizes the importance of increasing queer sensibility within the K-pop studies discipline and K-pop fan communities. In addition, based on her interviews with queer-identified audiences, she responds to the critiques toward the commodification of queerness in the K-pop industry and unpacks the ways in which it contributes to queer visibility in Korean society.

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The Transnational Culture and Digital Technology Lab
School of Communication