Email: youngin3@illinois.edu
Research Interests
I interrogate the politics of popular cultures hiding under the cloak of spectacular glitz, through interdisciplinary approaches within cultural studies. My work invites the readers to (re)visit the power relations of languages in contemporary cinema and the pop music industry or to explore a complicated ecosystem of female fandom.聽
From Seoul, where I completed a four-year BA program in Journalism and Communications in just three years, graduating summa cum laude, via London, where I obtained my MA degree in Gender, Media and Culture with Distinction at Goldsmiths, University of London, to Urbana-Champaign, my current home in which I pursue my PhD in media studies, I have been traveling around the world to refine my insights in the historical and geopolitical understanding of cultural phenomena.
Recent Publications/Presentations
Kang, Youngin. Forthcoming. “The Skin Heard Yellow: Raciolinguistic analysis of K-pop “girl idols” within (post)colonial power dynamics.” In A World of Contradictions: Culture and Identity in the Roiling of Globalization, edited by Cameron McCarthy, Warren Crichlow, Theodora Kourkoulou, Manuel P茅rez Tronconso, and Adrian Wong. Common Ground Research Networks.聽
Kang, Youngin. “Cultural Politics Surrounding the “Girl Idols” of the K-pop Industry.” Presented at Left Undone: The Union for Democratic Communications 2023 Conference, Philadelphia, PA, October 14, 2023.
Kang, Youngin. 2022. “Beyond the Layout: Reading South Korean Animations as Affective-Performative Assemblages.” Feminist Media Studies 22 (8): 1885鈥�1901. doi:10.1080/14680777.2021.1939401. (Published online: June 15, 2021)
Courses Taught
- MACS 100: Introduction to Popular TV and Movies聽
- MACS 101: Introduction to Media Studies聽
Included on the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent: Fall 2024 (MACS 101), Spring 2024 (MACS 101), Fall 2023 (MACS 101), and Spring 2022 (MACS 100).
Awards and Honors
- Travel and Research Grant from Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies 2023聽
- Korean Government Scholarship Program for Study Overseas 2017
What Most People Don鈥檛 Know about Me
I love dancing secretly, and silently, alone in my room with headphones on.