K-Historicise this!: Updating Korean Male Beauty Aesthetics for the Global Consumption of Korean Historical Sageuk TV Dramas
Speaker and Discussant
- Speaker: A Prof Joanna Elfving-Hwang (Curtin University, Australia)
- Discussant: A Prof Dong-bae Lee (The University of Queensland, Australia)
A Prof Elfving-Hwang will outline the development of what Laura Miller in the context of Japanese popular imaginary has referred to as “historically hot masculinity” in popular Korean historical TV dramas or sageuk. The presentation will illustrate how embodied cultural representations of Korean. masculinity set in real and imagined historical pasts (whether markedly fantastical or presented as “accurate”
representation of historical realities) are rendered easily consumable by transnational audiences through the deployment of a now- widely recognisable K-pop stage aesthetic.
About the speaker
Joanna (Jo) Elfving-Hwang is an Associate Professor of Korean Society and Culture at Curtin University. She also serves as Dean Global East Asia, with the Office of Deputy Vice Chancellor Global, and the Director of the Korea Research & Engagement Centre at Curtin University. Her research focuses on the body in Korean culture and society, and in her previous work she has examined how beauty work and cosmetic surgery in Korea relate to embodied and material expressions of performing social class and status, race and celebrity beauty work as a form of somatic entrepreneurship. Her current monograph project drawing on the findings of the project is titled Beauty Matters: The Body in Korean Culture and Society.