<div dir="ltr"><div><b>Feminist Korean Studies: Reimagining Futures</b></div><div><div>
<div>
<div><div><div><p dir="ltr">This edited volume extends the project initiated by the Korean Studies 2025 special section <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/54881" target="_blank">\u201cFeminist Korean Studies,\u201d</a>
which deployed feminist critique across digital media, popular culture,
legal discourse, public health, neoliberalism, and postcoloniality.
Building on that foundation, the volume invites interdisciplinary,
interregional, and bilingual feminist scholarship to address pressing
global and regional developments: the rise of right-wing
authoritarianism, intensified anti-feminist backlash in South Korea, and
the persistent marginalization of feminist discourse in Anglophone
Korean Studies. </p><p dir="ltr">We especially welcome contributions that critique
disciplinary boundaries and interrogate language-related exclusions
within the field. The digital entanglement of misogyny and violence
against women and girls\u2014visible in phenomena such as the Nth Room,
deepfake abuse, and the censorship of women\u2019s expression online\u2014demands a
dual focus on structural harm and emergent forms of resistance. South
Korea\u2019s feminist movements of the past decade have gained global
visibility through hashtags, viral imagery, and protest slogans. Yet
Western interpretations often flatten the complexity of movements like
4B (rejecting heterosexual dating, marriage, sex, and reproduction).
This volume seeks contextualized, nuanced interventions that disrupt
both Orientalist pathologization and celebratory exceptionalism.</p>
<p>We invite papers that intervene in two intersecting terrains:</p>
<p dir="ltr">Within Korean Studies: Submissions should push back against
disciplinary conservatism and the field\u2019s preoccupation with Cold War
legacies, which often sidelines contemporary feminist activism. We
encourage work that crosses status, national, and language boundaries to
foreground feminist urgency.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Within Gender & Sexuality Studies: We welcome analyses
of recent South Korean feminist thought, culture, and activism in
transnational conversation. Areas of engagement might include sexual
citizenship, neoliberal feminism, transgender exclusions, and
state-sanctioned gendered violence\u2014particularly works that integrate
Korean feminist scholarship (much of which remains untranslated and
uncited) with broader decolonial and transnational feminist frameworks.</p><ol><li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Emerging Voices</p>
</li></ol>
<p dir="ltr">We seek contributions from early-career scholars,
independent researchers, translators, and graduate students whose work
expands or redefines the terrain of feminist Korean Studies. Submissions
might engage new methodologies, archives, or affective registers that
unsettle disciplinary hierarchies and linguistic boundaries.</p><ol start="2"><li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Activist Narratives</p>
</li></ol>
<p dir="ltr">We invite essays, reflective pieces, and ethnographic
accounts that center the work of activists, organizers, and collectives
shaping feminist struggles in and beyond South Korea. Possible areas of
focus include\u2014but are not limited to\u2014the intersections of digital
organizing, bodily autonomy, labor, disability, regional disparity, and
resistance to gendered, racialized, and sexualized violence.</p><ol start="3"><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">Collaborative Voices as Co-Authoring</p>
</li></ol>
<p dir="ltr">Recognizing that feminist knowledge is often co-produced,
this section welcomes co-authored or multivocal contributions that blur
the boundaries between researcher, activist, artist, and participant. We
particularly encourage hybrid and dialogic forms of writing that embody
feminist praxis\u2014collaboration, care, and collective reflection. </p>
<ol start="4"><li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Feminist Reimaginings of Korean Studies</p>
</li></ol>
<p dir="ltr">This final section invites critical essays and theoretical
interventions that reimagine the epistemic foundations of Korean
Studies. How might feminist, queer, indigenous, and decolonial
frameworks transform the field\u2019s intellectual genealogies, methods, and
institutions? We seek pieces that propose new directions for feminist
Korean Studies as a site of knowledge production, solidarity, and global
exchange.</p><p dir="ltr">We invite contributions that foreground these tensions,
crossings, and ruptures in order to reimagine what feminist Korean
Studies can be. As an interdisciplinary and mixed-method edited volume,
this project seeks to bring feminist scholarship in and of Korea into
direct dialogue with transnational feminist and decolonial theories and
frameworks. By situating Korean feminist thought within these broader
intellectual and political currents, the volume aims not only to
unsettle disciplinary and linguistic boundaries but also to chart new
futures for feminist Korean Studies. In that spirit, we welcome
contributions from within and beyond Korean Studies, including those
that approach Korea as a site of feminist solidarity, collaboration, and
reimagining rather than disciplinary frames.</p>
<p dir="ltr">For questions and to submit an abstract (up to 500 words)
and 2-page CV by January 31, 2026, email Dr. Anat Schwartz (California State
University, Dominguez Hills) and Dr. Soyi Kim (Duke University) at <a href="mailto:feministkoreanstudies@gmail.com" target="_blank">feministkoreanstudies@gmail.com</a>.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>