[Commlist] Mediating the South Korean other: Representations and discourses of difference in the post/neocolonial nation state

Call for book chapters
Title: Mediating the South Korean other: Representations and discourses 
of difference in the post/neocolonial nation state

South Korea’s ethnoscape has undergone dynamic change. It is peculiar as 
it has both a postcolonial history with Japan and a neocolonial 
relationship with the United States. These histories shape complex views 
of who belongs and who is valued vis-a-vis racial, ethnic, and national 
others. One major site of the construction of difference is popular 
culture. Popular and online media in South Korea construct difference 
through the celebration of the desirable otherness of Whites and 
biracial White-Koreans (Ahn, 2015), the joining of Southeast Asian women 
and their multi-ethnic children in the paternal nation-state through the 
loss of their difference (Oh & Oh, 2016), and marginalized, outcast 
others, who are rendered irredeemably different. With this in mind, the 
purpose of the book is to animate postcolonial impulses by drawing 
together local theories developed in the South Korean context that 
focuses on the construction of ethnicized, racialized, and nationalized 
difference in the local cultural terrain.

Previous literature on ethnoracial differences in Korea explains that 
differences are due to (1) Korea’s myth of ethnic homogeneity (2) 
Confucian preferences for “civilized” societies, (3) internalization of 
the racial logics of the US, and (4) a lack of distinction between race, 
ethnicity, and nation. While each is informative and useful, they are 
partial explanations and do not adequately explain the ways difference 
is mediated and discursively constructed, e.g., Western racial 
hierarchies are not merely mapped onto Korean cultural logics of 
difference nor are there simple binaries of Koreans versus others.

By bringing together media scholars of Korean popular culture located in 
and outside Korea, the project aims to map the ways in which 
ethnic/racial/national difference vis-a-vis Koreanness is represented 
and constructed at the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, class, 
ethnicity, and nation. Thus, I seek contributions that analyze the 
discourse of multiculturalism and ethno/racial/national/regional difference.

As an interdisciplinary project, I am interested in contributions, which 
include fields such as Communication Studies, Media Studies, Korean 
Studies, Asian Studies, Sociology, Literature, Performance Studies, and 
Ethnic Studies. Though it is interdisciplinary, I limit the methods to 
critical qualitative inquiry in order to maintain a focused 
epistemological vantage point. Finally, I accept original, unpublished 
submissions that are written in English. Areas of interest might include 
but are not limited to:

	• Mediated constructions of desirable otherness
	• Mediated constructions of assimilated otherness
	• Mediated constructions of marginalized otherness
	• Mediated constructions of multiple assimilations
	• Mediated constructions of ambivalent otherness
	• Self-mediated constructions of belonging in the imagined nation
	• Self-mediated rejection of the imagined nation

If interested in contributing, please submit a 250-400 word extended 
abstract and CV to David C. Oh ((doh /at/ ramapo.edu)) and a 100-word bio by 
August 1, 2019.  Please include (1) your purpose, (2) justification, (3) 
proposed method, (4), if available, tentative findings, and (5) 
references. Final manuscripts should be 7,000-8,000 words, which 
includes all elements of the paper – title page, body essay, references, 
and, if necessary, tables and figures. Final book chapters will be due 
June 1, 2020.


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