Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
English
Document Type
Dissertation
Abstract
This dissertation examines the feminization of Asian and Asian American masculinity within Asian American studies and masculinity studies. While existing scholarship has adopted transnational approaches to analyze racial dynamics within the United States through U.S.–Asia relations, less attention has been paid to how masculinity itself becomes racialized. Responding to this gap, I argue that the racialization of Asian and Asian American masculinity emerges through familial imaginaries. The Asian American family is frequently imagined as self-sufficient, confining Asian American men to the private sphere while depriving them of public authority and voice. Similarly but differently, the Asian family is often framed as an intimate and nostalgic object that casts Asian men as caring and aesthetic. Through close readings of Asian American and Asian cultural texts, this project develops four approaches to destabilize these racialized fantasies. In particular, it understands Koreanness as a cultural node that can both configure and reconfigure such imaginaries. Focusing on Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay (2019), Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker (1995), the K-pop boy band BTS, and the Korean Netflix drama series Squid Game (2021–2025), the dissertation demonstrates how these texts rethink the family model, strategically inhabit racialized masculinity, generate new meanings through cross-cultural interpretation, and reimagine masculinity through the specificity of Korean heroic masculinity. Each analysis engages contemporary neoliberal formations, including the justice system, multicultural celebration, bodily regulation, and global capitalism. By examining the feminization of Korean and Korean American masculinity, this project offers a new framework for understanding the intersection of race and gender. It challenges the double racialization through which Asian and Asian American masculinity is both idealized and derogated, ultimately reimagining how Asianness, care, and masculinity are defined.
Date
3-20-2026
Recommended Citation
Kwon, Seohye, "Asiatic Masculinities: Family, Race, and Neoliberal Governance Across South Korea and the United States" (2026). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 7021.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/7021
Committee Chair
Kahan, Benjamin
LSU Acknowledgement
1
LSU Accessibility Acknowledgment
1