[Book Talk] Queer Throughlines: Spaces of Queer Activism in South Korea and the Korean Diaspora
![[Book Talk] Queer Throughlines: Spaces of Queer Activism in South Korea and the Korean Diaspora](//www.international.ucla.edu/media/images/large--default,-rooftop--1z-z51.webp)
Prof. Ju Hui Judy Han (UCLA) joined by Prof. Giancarlo Cornejo Salinas (UCLA), Prof. Grace Kyung-won Hong (UCLA), Laura Hyun Yi Kang (UC Irvine), and Dr. Yeong Ran Kim
Tuesday, April 21, 20262:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Bunche Hall, Room 10383
About the Book
Queer Throughlines draws on years of direct participation, interviews, and ethnography to examine transnational Korean LGBTQ+ activism since the 1990s. Han maps the sites and routes of leftist and queer political movements, highlighting challenges posed by Christian conservatives in both South Korea and the United States. The book uses the concept of "throughlines" to weave together a web of movement stories across time and space: a coalition of Los Angeles-based LGBTQ+ activists and allies fighting an anti-gay petition campaign led by Korean immigrant churches; queer activists involved in anti-war protests in Seoul; progressive clergy embracing inclusivity and risking heresy charges and excommunication; and queer and trans activists refusing to be sidelined form visions of political change underway. These moments do not always line up in a straightforward narrative of victory of progress, yet they create powerful lines of solidarity, community, and kinship.
Moderated by Grace Kyung-won Hong (Asian American Studies and Gender Studies at UCLA, it will begin with brief comments by Ju Hui Judy Han (Gender Studies at UCLA) and then shift to an open ended dialogue among panelists, with Giancarlo Cornejo Salinas (Gender Studies at UCLA), Laura Hyun Yi Kang (Gender & Sexuality Studies at UC Irvine), and Yeong Ran Kim.
Discussion
Moderated by Prof. Grace Kyung-won Hong, Dept. of Asian American Studies, UCLA
Ju Hui Judy Han is Associate Professor in Gender Studies at UCLA. Han is the author of Queer Throughlines: Spaces of Queer Activism in South Korea and the Korean Diaspora (University of Michigan Press, 2025) and co-author of Against Abandonment: Repertoires of Solidarity in South Korean Protest (Stanford University Press, 2025) with Jennifer Jihye Chun. She is currently working on a decolonial travel guide to Korea and a new project on the "feminist take" on contemporary cultural politics.
Giancarlo Cornejo Salinas is Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at UCLA. His recent essays have appeared in Camera Obscure, GLQ, Journal of Homosexuality, Lectora, and Revista de Estudios Socialies. His first book project, Travesti Memory and Politics: Toward a Peruvian Transfeminist Imaginary, cultivates trans-disciplinary and trans-national dialogues around the vernacular term travestimo.
Laura Hyun Yi Kang is Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies and Chancellor's Fellow (2022-2025) at UC Irvine. She is the author of Compositional Subjects: Enfigurina Asian/American Women (Duke University Press, 2002) and Traffic in Asian Women (Duke University Press, 2020). With Elaine H. Kim, she co-edited the anthology, Echoes Upon Echoes: New Korean American Writings (Asian American Writers Workshop, 2002). Her current book project is titled, Sallim: Korean Women's Diasporic Life-Making.
Yeong Ran Kim is a researcher and artist who sees aesthetic practices as a central means to build social movements that create unique moments of coming together. Their work has been published in TDR: The Drama Review, Korea Journal, as well as Hwanghae Review and other publications in Korean. They hold a PhD in Theatre Arts and Performance Studies from Brown University and was previously a Mellon Digital Media Fellow at Sarah Lawrence College and Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures at Emory University.
Grace Kyung-won Hong is Professor of Asian American Studies and Gender Studies at UCLA. She is the author of Death Beyond Disavowal: The Impossible Politics of Difference (University of Minnesota Press, 2015) and The Ruptures of American Capital: Women of Color Feminism and the Cultures of Immigrant Labor (University of Minnesota Press, 2006) and the co-editor (with Roderick Ferguson) of Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization (Duke University Press, 2011).
Sponsor(s): Center for Korean Studies, Gender Studies, Asian American Studies Center, Asian American Studies Department , Center for the Study of Women
