Overview
Adhy Kim (he/they)* is an assistant professor in the Literatures in English Department and the Asian American Studies Program. His research is situated at the intersection of Asian and Asian American literary studies, with a focus on Korea, Japan, and their diasporas. Adhy’s book project, Speculative Natural Histories, examines the tightly connected and contested relationship between geopolitical realism and literary speculation in post-1945 Northeast Asian/American cultural production. Arguing that literature and film can both reveal and rethink the hegemonic geopolitical narratives embedded in South Korean, Japanese, and American memoryscapes like museums, peace parks, eco-reserves, and memorials, Speculative Natural Histories tracks how Asian/Americans deploy transhistorical and transhemispheric imaginaries in their search for alternative spatiotemporal philosophies from within the grip of U.S.-led security alliances, inter-capitalist normalizations, and colonial occupations.
More generally, Adhy is interested in how imperialism, capitalism, and militarism in Asia and the United States produce transnational and multilingual formations in twentieth-century Asian/American literatures. Their scholarship may be in found in Comparative Literature Studies and Mosaic, among other venues, and is forthcoming in positions: asia critique and the edited volume Techno-Orientalism II (Rutgers University Press). His English translation of the novel Blood and Bones (chi to hone) by the Zainichi Korean writer Yang Seok-il was published in 2022.
*For the curious, Adhy’s name is an acronym of the first letters of his English and Korean names. Please feel free to pronounce it as you would the name “Addy.”
Research Focus
- transnational Asian American studies
- Comparative empire studies
- Environmental humanities
- Speculative fiction