Youngkyun Choi

My research takes a comparative and transregional approach to modern and contemporary literature, culture, and thought across East Asia and Latin America. I examine how radical theories, theologies, and aesthetic practices have circulated between these regions, generating new understandings of modernity, liberation, and global interconnection. My work also explores diasporic narratives of migration between East Asia and Latin America and representations of transpacific labor, capital, and community across the formation of global capitalism and the neoliberal turn in the present.

 

I design courses that integrate literature, film, and critical theory to trace East–South exchanges and engage questions of modernity, coloniality, religion, and political economy. My teaching ranges from advanced seminars on transpacific and diasporic relations to general courses on modern Korean and Latin American language, literature, and culture.

 

I have sought to build bridges between East Asian and Latin American studies by organizing panels through the Asia and the Americas section of the Latin American Studies Association and by hosting a major Transpacific Studies event in collaboration with the East Asian and Latin American & Caribbean Studies Centers, bringing together scholars from both fields.

 

I am also a translator of Latin American and East Asian Marxisms. Ongoing translation projects include José Carlos Mariátegui’s Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality (Spanish to Korean) and Pak Hyŏnch’ae’s “Study on the Characteristics and Developmental Stage of Modern Korean Society” (Korean to English). These projects invite a broader transpacific conversation by making foundational texts of non-European Marxist thought newly accessible across linguistic and regional boundaries.