Soo Ryon Yoon teaches and writes about contemporary performance, dance history, and racial politics in South Korea. She is currently working on her first monograph, Choreographing Affinities: Performing Koreanness and Blackness in the Global Era which explores choreographic articulations — both staged and quotidian — of raced bodies of Koreanness and blackness in the context of global Afro-Asian relations. She received PhD in performance studies from Northwestern University. Before coming to Lingnan, Soo Ryon taught at Yale University as a postdoctoral associate and visiting lecturer in the Council on East Asian Studies and the East Asian Languages and Literatures department. More information about her work and teaching can be found at sooryonyoon.wordpress.com.

PhD in Performance Studies, Northwestern University

MA in Performance Studies, Northwestern University

BA in Sociology, Yonsei University

Monograph

In progress. Choreographing Affinities: Blackness, Koreanness, and Performing Race in South Korea.

Refereed Articles

2021. Taylor C. Black, Shawn Chua, Eero Laine, Milton Lim, Rumen Rachev, and Soo Ryon Yoon. “ElastiCity: A Psi Theme Park Guest Book.” Special Issue “Elasticity,” Natalia Esling, Megan Andrews, Bruce Barton,and Pil Hansen, eds., GPS: Global Performance Studies 4, no. 1.

2020. “Artists or Slave Laborers? Performing Uncapturability in Burkinabé Performers’ Labor Rights Struggle in South Korea.” positions: asia critique 28, no. 2: 311-39.

2019. “Theatrics between Life and Death: Performing the urban history of Garibong-dong, Seoul in Camp or the Place that Became a Lion by Miwansung Project and OLTA.” Performance Research 24, no. 4: 118-24.

2018. “‘Gangnam Style’ in Dhaka and Inter-Asian Refraction.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 19, no. 2: 162-79.

2017. “Choreographing Affinities and Differences: Notes on Korea-Africa Relations in Transnational Dance Collaboration.” Journal of Contemporary Research in Dance (当代舞蹈艺术研究) 4, no. 2: 18-29. 

Chapters in Edited Volumes

Under review (commissioned). Co-authored with Kayla Ji Hyon Yuh (Montclair State University), “Racing the Real: Realism and Representation in 20th Century Korean Theatre.” Realisms in East Asian Performing Arts, edited by Jessica Nakamura and Katherine Saltzman-Li. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, projected publication in 2022.   

In preparation (commissioned). Artist interview with siren eun young jung. The Routledge Companion to Feminist Performance, edited by Nobuko Anan, Charlotte Canning, and Asiedu Awo Mana. New York: Routledge. projected publication in 2022.

2020. “Fans, Sashes, and Jesus: Evangelical Activism and Anti-LGBT Performance in South Korea.” Corporeal Politics: Dancing East Asia, edited by Emily Wilcox and Katherine Mezur. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 284-300.

2019. “Refusing Obliquely in siren eun young jung’s Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project.” History Has Failed Us, But No Matter: The Korean Pavilion – 58th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale Di Venezia. Edited by Hyunjin Kim. Milano: Mousse Publishing. Also published in the bilingual version in Korean and English, History Has Failed Us, But No Matter: The Korean Pavilion – 58th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale Di Venezia. Edited by Hyunjin Kim. Seoul: Art Council Korea.     

Book and Performance Reviews

Forthcoming in 2021. Book review of Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy. Theatre Research International 46, no. 2. n.p.

2021. Book review of Originless Fantasy: Reading Modern and Contemporary Korean Cultural History from Feminist Perspectives (<원본 없는 판타지: 페미니스트 시각으로 읽는 한국 현대문화사>), Seoul Journal of Korean Studies 33, no. 2: 581-4.

2020. Book review of Elizabeth Son’s Embodied Reckonings. Theatre Survey 61, no. 2: 286-8.

2019. “서평: 에밀리 윌콕스 저, <혁명적 몸들: 사회주의 유산과 중국무용>” (“Book review of Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy”), 무용역사기록 (Journal of Society for Dance Documentation and History) 53: 303-9 (Korean).

2018. “Clean Labour by Brendan Fernandes.” ASAP/J, Mar. http://asapjournal.com/clean-labour-by-brendan-fernandes-soo-ryon-yoon.

2016. “God Bless Baseball by Toshiki Okada (review).” Theatre Journal 68, no. 3: 453-4. 

Other Writings

2019. “Looking Back and Looking Forward in Dêgèsbé.” GPS: Global Performance Studies 2, no. 2.

2019. “Mapping the Stage Differently: Theatre Me Too Movement and Internet Culture in South Korea.” GenderIT. Oct 25.

CUS 2403 Methods in Cultural Research I 

CUS 3402 Perspectives in Cultural Studies II

CUS 3002 Curating Performance and Cultural Practice 

CUS 3359 Introduction to Performance Cultures

CUS 3206 Global Citizenship and Culture

CUS 3350 Power and Body in Performing Arts

CLA 9008 Performance Arts in Modern Times