Embodied Speculations: Science Fiction and Feminism in South Korea, 1980s-2000s

This talk presents three different types of feminist literary practice by science fiction writers in South Korea, examining their respective narrative strategies and their local and periodical significance. Respectively exemplifying feminist superhero, cyberfeminist, and technofeminist narratives, these works demonstrate the rich and diverse potentials of science fiction's feminist speculation, which majorly account, I suggest, for the genre's current popularity among women and queer writers and readers in South Korea.

Event co-sponsored by Duke Korea Forum.

Professor Sunyoung Park is an Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. Currently, she is extending her contextual and interdisciplinary approach to literary history to the study of popular culture and society in contemporary Korea. She is working on a book manuscript titled "Starship Korea: Science Fiction and the Politics of Modernization in South Korea, 1960s-2010s," whose primary goal is to analyze the cultural politics of science fiction in Korea against the background of the major political and social shifts of the last fifty years. In addition to offering the first critical study of its subject matter, this project will contribute to global science fiction studies by expanding their horizon beyond currently entrenched Western and Japanese frames of reference.