in progress: Book Project
Queer unification:
Community and healing in the korean diaspora
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My first book, Queer Unification: Community and Healing in the Korean Diaspora, re-imagines Korean unification as decolonial sovereignty emerging from transnational grassroots organizing.
I argue that queer diasporic Koreans' community practices enable "geopolitical healing" as embodied relationships of belonging and accountability. |
ph.d. dissertation
"Queer Korean diaspora:
an ethnography of geopolitics"
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Diverse Korean subjects gravitate towards grassroots organizing in major US cities, including transnational adoptees, Zainichi Koreans (Koreans in/from Japan), and queer-identified individuals. My ethnography shows how those organizers cultivate queer diasporic kinship by centering their sense of place, time, and belonging. Confronting a genocidal division, their embodied practices animate ethnic community solidarity through what I call geopolitical healing, a process of articulating the sacredness of life and land. Such collective agency challenges liberal social theory dominating the discourse of Korean unification. Upgrading social science with queer of color critique, my research illuminates a cultural ecology of community life mediated by spirits. |
publications
"Archipelagic Feeling: Counter-Mapping Indigeneity and Diaspora in the Trans-Pacific" In Stephens, Michelle and Martínez-San Miguel, Yolanda (Eds.). 2020. Contemporary Archipelagic Thinking: Towards New Comparative Methodologies and Disciplinary Formations. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. 
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"Unmaking Borders to Demilitarize Peace: A Zainichi Korean Experience" In Crystal Mun-hye Baik and Jane Jin Kaisen (Eds). 2018. Social Text Periscope: Korea and Demilitarized Peace. December 2018. |
"Disaster Justice: Mobilizing Grassroots Knowledge Against Disaster Nationalism in Japan" In Jolivétte, Andrew (Ed.). 2015. Research Justice: Methodologies for Social Change. Bristol: Policy Press. "I was fascinated by...Eda’s story of how natural disasters can exacerbate structural inequalities in society." - Dr. Helen Kara Winner of 2014 Phillips G. Davies Graduate Student Paper Award, National Association for Ethnic Studies 
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"Louisiana Creoles and Latinidad: Locating Culture and Community" In Adekunle, Julius O. and Williams, Hettie V. (Eds.). 2013. Converging Identities: Blackness in the Contemporary African Diaspora. Durham: Carolina Academic Press. *Co-authored with Andrew Jolivétte |
"Intimate Agency: A Radical Sexual Revolution" In Garcia, Noemi de Haro and Tseliou, Maria-Anna (Eds.). 2013. Gender and Love: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Leiden: Brill. |
Research Awards
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Ann Foner Dissertation Prize Department of Sociology, Rutgers University, 2022 "Queer Korean Diaspora: An Ethnogoraphy of Geopolitics" |
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Jack Riley and Matilda White-Riley Qualifying Paper Award Department of Sociology, Rutgers University, 2018 "Contention and Coalition: Imagining Korean Unification through Queer Diaspora" |
Phillips G. Davies Graduate Student Paper Award
National Association for Ethnic Studies, 2014 "Disaster Justice Feat. Research Justice" |
