Precarious Translations: Korean Language Media and the American Political Imagination

FAIN: FT-291154-23

Judy Suh
Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA 15282-0001)

Research and writing the introduction and conclusion for a book about the shared cultural and political terrains of Koreans and Korean Americans.

Precarious Translations explores two sets of cultural forces—Korean and Korean American—that have created significant outlooks on precarity in the U.S. while inventing new terrains of active interaction between cultural production and politics. In the last ten years, the number of Korean-language films, music videos, and dramas that are readily accessible to Americans has grown dramatically, as has the fervency of their reception. This book manuscript is built around the surprising yet striking fact that so many of these works are built on narratives involving precarious lives of underemployment, displacement, and isolation. The book explores how and why many of these works are creating new cultural and political habits in U.S. fans. I argue that these habits—and the fans who have tailored them—are enabling new insights and actions with regard to global precarity.