University at Buffalo (UB)
Stephanie Choi
PhD
Postdoctoral Associate
Asia Research Institute
Research Interests
popular music culture and consumerism, digital media circulation, postcolonial feminism, immaterial labor, affective economy in South Korea and Korean diaspora
Education
- PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara, Music, 2020
- MA, Wesleyan University, Music, 2012
- BM, Seoul National University, Music, 2008
Current Research and Biography
My research interrogates how intimacy is transacted digitally in the global entertainment business of K-pop. Employing a range of ethnographic methods and media analysis, I explore K-pop’s unique form of affective economy established upon fans’ digital surveillance, media tribalism, and gendered and racial fetishization of idol bodies. I am currently preparing my first book project, Intimate Capital: Gendered Fandom and Commodified Citizenship in Globalizing K-pop, which expands upon studies of global gender politics, affective labor, and political economies in digital media, taking into consideration case studies that investigate how international fans translate mediatized idol bodies as a way of proclaiming cultural diversity, postcolonial feminism, and anti-racism in their (trans)local societies.
Selected Publications
“Alpeseu (RPS) and Business Gay Performance in the Korean K-pop World.” Women We Love In and Around K-Pop and K-Drama in the Hallyu Era, Hong Kong University Press (forthcoming).
“Idol Training System in the K-pop Industry and Fandom.” Cambridge Companion to K-pop, Cambridge University Press (forthcoming).
Dynamic Korea and Rhythmic Form, by Katherine In-Young Lee (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), Journal of Korean Studies 24, no. 2 (2019): 422-426.
Awards
The Lise Waxer Prize, Popular Music Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology, 2018
Ki Mantle Hood Prize, Southern California and Hawaii Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology, 2018
Graduate Student Dissertation Support, University of California Humanities Research
Institute, 2018
Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grant, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2018
IHC Dissertation Fellowship, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2017
Korea Foundation Fellowship for Field Research, the Korea Foundation, 2016
AKMR Prize for the Best Student Paper, the Association for Korean Music Research of the Society for Ethnomusicology, 2015
Wong Tolbert Prize (Honorable Mention), the Section on the Status of Women of the Society for Ethnomusicology, 2015
Thesis Grant and Award, the Academy of Korean Studies, 2011