Description:

Part of the One Book, One Northwestern event series surrounding Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart, this talk examines the rhetoric and embodied performance of mourning by “Sewol Parents.” The talk develops the idea of insurgent melancholia to explain their role in moving a nation and the Korean diaspora across the Pacific, including fueling the democratic movement to impeach Korea’s first female president, Park Geun Hye, in 2017. By engaging representations of the broken family that frames the survivors’ insurgent melancholia, the talk reflects on the unruliness of watery graves. Dr. Kim will also discuss grief and the art of loss in broader Korean diasporic cultural productions. Co-sponsored by One Book, One Northwestern, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, Program in Critical Theory, Program in Comparative Literary Studies, Asian American Studies Program, and Council for Race and Ethnicity Studies.