Youngkyun Choi

Education

•  PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan

•  MA in Hispanic Language and Literature, Seoul National University

•  BA in Social Studies Education, Seoul National University

Research and Teaching

My research and teaching adopt a comparative and transcontinental approach to modern and contemporary East Asian and Latin American literature, culture, and philosophy. I focus on transpacific comparisons and translations of radical theories and theologies of social change from non-European perspectives. Additional areas of interest include literary and cinematic representations of the Korean diaspora in Latin America and Latin Americans in South Korea, as well as transpacific labor migration under global capitalism.

I coordinate the international research cluster Translating Korean Marxism within the Marxism Lab at the University of Michigan. As part of this project, we co-authored an introductory article on Pak Hyŏnch’ae—one of the most important South Korean Marxists of the 1980s—and translated his critical response to Latin American dependency theory. I have also collaborated with the Nam Center for Korean Studies and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies by organizing an international and interdisciplinary conference on Transpacific Marxism, which brought together leading scholars in East Asian and Latin American studies.

Currently, I am developing a book manuscript based on my doctoral dissertation, Rethinking Universality from the South: Transpacific Journeys of Marxism in the 20th Century. The book project compares reformulations of Marxism in non-European contexts by Paek Namun (Korea) and José Carlos Mariátegui (Peru), and traces the transpacific circulation of Marxist thought during the 1970s and 1980s—particularly the reception of Chinese Maoism in Latin America and Latin American dependency theory in South Korea.