The Critical BTS Reader Book Launch

November 7, 2024 - September 7, 2024
Mānoa Campus, Center for Korean Studies Auditorium

Bangtan Remixed delves into the cultural impact of celebrated K-Pop boy band BTS, exploring their history, aesthetics, fan culture, and capitalist moment. The collection’s contributors—who include artists, scholars, journalists, activists, and fans—approach BTS through inventive and wide-ranging transnational perspectives. From tracing BTS’s hip hop genealogy to analyzing how the band’s mid-2020 album reflects the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrating how Baroque art history influences BTS’s music videos, the contributors investigate BTS’s aesthetic heritage. They also explore the political and technological dimensions of BTS’s popularity with essays on K-Pop and BTS’s fan culture as frontiers of digital technology, the complex relationship between BTS and Blackness, the impact of anti-Asian racism on BTS’s fandom, and the challenges BTS poses to conservative norms of gender and sexuality. Bangtan Remixed shows how one band can inspire millions of fans and provide a broad range of insights into contemporary social and political life. This colloquium will feature Dr. Heijin Lee (51²è¹Ý Manoa), Dr. Michelle Cho (U of Toronto) and Dr. Vernadette Gonzales (UC Berkeley).


Event Sponsor
The Center for Korean Studies, Ethnic Studies, American Studies, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Dr. Heijin Lee, (808) 956-7464, shjlee@hawaii.edu

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