Queer Throughlines: Spaces of Queer Activism in South Korea and the Korean Diaspora
Queer Throughlines: Spaces of Queer Activism in South Korea and the Korean Diaspora
by Ju Hui Judy Han
University of Michigan Press, 2025
ISBNs
Cloth: 978-0-472-07772-4
Paper: 978-0-472-05772-6
eISBN: 978-0-472-90531-7 (OA)
About the Book
Queer Throughlines draws on years of direct participation, interviews, and ethnography to examine transnational Korean LGBTQ+ activism since the 1990s. Han maps the sites and routes of leftist and queer political movements, highlighting challenges posed by Christian conservatives in both South Korea and the United States. The book uses the concept of “throughlines” to weave together a web of movement stories across time and space: a coalition of Los Angeles–based LGBTQ+ activists and allies fighting an anti-gay petition campaign led by Korean immigrant churches; queer activists involved in anti-war protests in Seoul; progressive clergy embracing inclusivity and risking heresy charges and excommunication; and queer and trans activists refusing to be sidelined from visions of political change underway. These moments do not always line up in a straightforward narrative of victory or progress, yet they create powerful lines of solidarity, community, and kinship.
About the Author
Ju Hui Judy Han is Associate Professor of Gender Studies at UCLA.
Reviews
“Queer Throughlines represents a magisterial accomplishment in its subject. . . Essential.”
— C. Brienza, Choice“Ju Hui Judy Han offers an elegantly woven and trenchantly argued study of the spaces and times of queer activism in Korea and its diaspora starting from the late 20th century to the present day. Weaving stories from various movements confronting challenges established by conservative churches and contingencies of war, Han offers a sobering yet hopeful narrative about the expansive linkages and powerful possibilities of queer activist efforts in and beyond the Korean nation.”— Martin F. Manalansan IV, Rutgers University
“The book is theoretically sophisticated, deeply contextualized, geographically interconnected across national boundaries, and methodologically multidisciplinary. It offers a powerful account of the dynamic, transformative power of queer politics and effectively illustrates the interplay between the personal and the structural, the local and the global. A must-read.”— Hyaeweol Choi, University of Iowa
“By conceptualizing activism as a relational and processual formation and developing queer throughlines as a method for tracing its uneven continuities, Ju Hui Judy Han advances a significant methodological intervention into how activism is theorized across queer and feminist scholarship, Korean and Korean American studies, and related fields.”
— Yeong Ran Kim, Asian Journal of Women's Studies“In elucidating how thoughtful refusals and committed relationalities have been activated against hatred, orthodoxy, and injustice across multiple time-space nodes, Queer Throughlines powerfully illuminates how love and defiance have been inextricable for marginalized and subordinated subjects in Korea and the Korean diaspora.”— Laura Hyun Yi Kang, UC Irvine
Tags
Global Queer Asias, Spaces, South Korea, LGBT activism, Korean diaspora, LGBTQ+ Studies, 21st century, Asia, Social aspects, United States, Social Science, History
Open Access Information
License: CC BY-NC
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