Jenny Wang MedinaAssistant Professor

I received a Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and I specialize in modern Korean literature and culture. I am currently working on a book manuscript titled K-World: Cultural Capital and the Ethno-Nation in Global South Korea. The book traces the evolution of the contentious relationship between state and cultural producers in their efforts to instrumentalize national culture, an emerging developmental economy, and information technology to create a specifically South Korean image of “Global Korea”. I analyze literature, film, television, translation institutes, and cultural policy to explore the assumptions of cultural continuity and representation in a society moving from the idea of a homogeneous ethno-nation divided by the Cold War to a post-developmental multicultural global entity.

In addition to my research on global Korea, I am more broadly interested in theories of trans/national culture, globalization, ethnic identity construction, and canon formation. I am involved with literary translation and international literary exchange, and am a translator of Korean literary fiction. I am also interested in the intersection of visuality, food, technology, race, and the body. I teach courses in East Asian Studies, Asian-American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Film, Literature, Media and Cultural Studies, and Food Studies.

Korean Cinema

Korean Literature in Translation

Making of Modern Korea

Consuming Global Asia: Food, Media, and Transnational Cultures

“At the Gates of Babel: The Globalization of Korean Literature as World Literature,” Acta Koreana, 21 (2), 2018.

“Empire Radio, Live Transmission,” by Ch’oe In-hun, tr. Jenny Wang Medina, in Sunyoung Park, Park Sang Joon, eds., Readymade Boddhisatva: The Kaya Anthology of South Korean Science Fiction. Los Angeles: Kaya Books, 2019.