Each year the Cultural Studies Program organizes a series of events with nationally and internationally recognized scholars and cultural practitioners. By offering public talks, seminars with students and faculty members, and community engagement activities, the annual Cultural Studies speakers contribute to facilitating interdisciplinary conversation on various cultural issues.
The highly anticipated March 16, 2020 visit by Dr. Suk-Young Kim was cancelled due to the global pandemic and restrictions around travel. The CULT program was unable to rebook Dr. Kim given continuing restrictions on travel in Fall and Spring 2020. We have left the descriptions of her planned research talk and public lecture below and deeply regret the loss of this opportunity.
Suk-Young Kim is Professor of Theater and Performance Studies at UCLA where she also directs Center for Performance Studies.
She is the author of Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea (Michigan Univ. Press, 2010), DMZ Crossing (Columbia Univ. Press, 2014), and most recently, K-pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance (Stanford Univ. Press, 2018). Her scholarship has been recognized by the James Palais Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies, the Association for Theater in Higher Education Outstanding Book Award, and ACLS/SSRC/NEH International and Area Studies Fellowship, and her comments on Korea have been featured in CNN, NPR, and Billboard. She is currently writing a book on North Korean millennials.
Suk-Young Kim will be on campus on Monday, March 16 working with students, faculty and offering a research talk and a free public talk.
Co-sponsored by Cultural Studies, the UBCO Equity and Inclusion Office, Department of Economics, Philosophy and Political Science, and the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies.
Millennial North Korea: Cell Phones, Forbidden Media and Living Creatively with Surveillance
Monday, March 16, 2020
10:00-11:00 am, ART 206
Free event. Refreshments provided. A coffee reception begins at 9.50 am.
North Korea might be known as the world’s most secluded society, but during the new millennium it too has witnessed the rapid rise of new media technologies. While the North Korean state is anxiously trying to catch up with the world standard when it comes to communication technology, it is also faced with the need to block the open influx of outside information by designing its own “intranet” for its people. In a country where the smuggling of foreign media is still punishable by public execution, how do North Koreans manage to access outside information? This project asks how millennials in North Korea manage to live creatively under the threat of censorship and relatively freely under the constant watch of state surveillance by taking a deep dive into how intellectual property and copyright are creatively reconstituted in North Korea.
What is K-pop?
Monday, March 16, 2020
2:00-3:00 pm, UNC Ballroom (UNC 200)
Free event. Refreshments provided. A coffee reception begins at 1:50 pm.
K-pop is a dynamic field with many faces: for the South Korean government, it is a prominent tool for the nation to promote its growing influence through soft power; for Asian-American youth, it provides an occasion to claim their cultural coolness; for industry insiders and consumers, it presents a unique entertainment form where various media formats converge; for business communities, it provides effective marketing opportunities. By taking into consideration these various factors that comprise what we call K-pop, this talk explores its dynamic history, practice, and cultural implications.
R. Cassandra Lord is an Assistant Professor of Sexuality Studies in the Department of Historical Studies, Women and Gender Studies Program at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) campus with a graduate appointment in the Women and Gender Studies Institute (St. George campus).
Her work draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with participants of Pelau MasQUEERade, a Caribbean queer diasporic group of colour that participates in annual Toronto Pride Parade.
Min Sook Lee is an Assistant Professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University where she teaches Art and Social Change. Her research and teaching focuses on the intersections of labour, border politics, migration, art, and social change. Min Sook is also an award-winning Canadian filmmaker with a diverse and prolific portfolio of multimedia work.
Her filmography includes the Gemini nominated El Contrato (2005); Hogtown (2005); Tiger Spirit (2008); Badge of Pride (2010); The Real Inglorious Bastards (2012); and Migrant Dreams (2016)
Wanda Nanibush is an Anishinaabe-kwe image and word warrior, curator, and community organizer living in her territory of Chimnising. Nanibush was guest curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario and toured, The Fifth World, which opened in January 2016 at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. The island life allows her to finish upcoming projects: a film called A Love Letter to My People, a documentary on Gerald Vizenor, and a book called Violence No More (with ARP Press), an anthology of Indigenous curatorial writing.
Harsha Walia is a South Asian author and activist, currently residing in Vancouver, on unceded Coast Salish territories. Harsha is a cofounder of the migrant justice group No One Is Illegal and the progressive South Asian network Radical Desis. She works at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Center. She is also an organizer in the Annual Women’s Memorial March Committee, Defenders of the Land Network and South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy.
David Chariandy, PhD, who teaches in the English department at Simon Fraser University, co-founded Commodore Books, the first Black Canadian literary press in Western Canada. His debut novel, Soucouyant (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2007), was nominated for 10 literary prizes and awards, including being shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award, a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book, and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize; it was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Award.
Helen Haig-Brown (Tsilhoqot’in) is an award-winning director, director of photography and teacher, whose documentaries focus on experiences from within her own family and explore issues of land and language that are of significance to many First Nations people. Her first fictional work, The Cave, was an official selection of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and of Berlinale 2010. In 2009, The Cave was named one of Canada’s Top Ten Short Films by the Toronto International Film Festival.
