Research

Interactional Queerscapes: Representations Men Attracted to Men in South Korea challenges explanations for the heteronormative conditions shaping the relationships of men attracted to men (MAM) in South Korea that rely too heavily on monocausal accounts of “Confucian culture.” Through analysis of South Korean cultural productions, the thesis shows how media representations of MAM illuminate a complex interplay of state power, nationalism, Christianity, medicalization, and sociocultural ideology. Drawing on queerscape theory to examine how these forces structure queer relationality and space, it advances queerscaping as an active, interactional process and proposes queer(multi)scapes to account for differentiated experiences across class, generation, and health status.