The Battle to define cultural normalcy rages hot in contemporary Korea, with on e of the fiercest battlegrounds being the realm of sexual and myriad other identities.
The Battlegrounds are most strongly and obviously delineated by age, with folks in the 2018 Queer culture festival being generally in their 30's and below and marked by diverse assortment of political interests, ethnicity, and personalities.
This talk is an exploration of how this has been made socially and culturally possible in a new hyper modern Korea in which gender and race have been rendered into meaningful, albeit malleable categories of ethical consideration.
Dr. Michael W. Hurt is a photographer and professor living in Seoul , who received his doctorate from UC Berkeley 's Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies. He started Korea 's first street fashion blog and published the first English language book about Korean Fashion. He researches youth, street fashion, and digital subcultures in Seoul. He lectures on Cultural Theory and Art History
at the Korea National University of the Arts. His present research focuses on using the camera to access and document emergent digital subculture s in Korea, including the political economy of the "pay model " on Korean Instagram.