Our next faculty profile features Dr. John Cho, Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Department of Community, Culture and Global Studies. Discover more about his background, research interests, and teaching philosophy.
Can you tell us a bit about your educational journey? How did you come to pursue the field you are in? What led you to come to UBCO?
I came to anthropology in a rather circuitous way. I had always enjoyed intellectual exchanges but came from an immigrant family background where attending graduate school was not really a “thing.” It wasn’t until I was teaching English in South Korea after college that an acquaintance told me about graduate school. Soon after, I began auditing some classes taught by well-known feminist anthropologists at Yonsei University. This introduction to anthropology coincided with the booming gay scene in the 1990s, which became the topic of my MA thesis. Anthropology, with its emphasis on field work and participant observation, became an ideal means for me to explore a hidden gay subculture with no documented history. After getting my doctorate in anthropology and teaching in the United States for a couple of years, I came to UBCO to work as a queer anthropologist.
Can you talk about your current role(s) at UBCO? What do you find enjoyable about them and what do you find challenging?
At UBCO, I teach courses on gender and sexuality. The things I enjoy the most living and working in our beautiful part of the world are the wonderful colleagues and the collegial environment. To be honest, I found it a bit challenging to transition from teaching at a liberal arts college near New York City to a large public university in the Okanagan. At Sarah Lawrence College, the classes are capped at 15 students and the courses are very discussion-oriented and writing-centered. Many students at UBCO, I find, have a real thirst for theoretically-informed discussions where they can actively engage with other students’ viewpoints and express their own, while also receiving the guidance of their instructor. As a result, I find myself adapting the liberal arts model of education to large classes designed for lectures.
Can you describe your teaching philosophy?
My teaching philosophy is based on my own experiences of education as a critical tool of self-reflection and political empowerment as well as social mobility. As a gay immigrant youth of color growing up in Canada, it was not until I read Black feminist bell hooks’ book, Ain’t I a Woman? (1981) that I found scholarship that spoke to my intersectional identity. Woman of color scholarship allowed me to find the voice to situate myself—and speak out against—multiple intersecting systems of power such as racism, capitalism, colonialism, and hetero-patriarchy.
As a teacher, it is my aim to provide an intellectual environment in which students of all socio-economic and racial/national backgrounds, as well as genders and sexualities, can similarly explore their own complex identities in rapidly evolving geo-political and cultural-economic contexts. This way, they can become informed citizens, better equipped to engage with others in a mutually empowering manner, to address the world’s pressing issues.
What are your research interests and what do you hope to gain/solve/better understand from your research? What research projects have been most meaningful to you?
My research interests center around body, gender, and sexuality in the non-Western, postcolonial, and post-Cold War contexts of South Korea/East Asia. Situated at the intersection of queer theory/LGBT studies, East Asian/Korean studies, and anthropology, my research intervenes into debates about sexual globalization, Korean masculinity, nationalism, and democracy, and queer futurity. My research examines how the Korean state relied upon hetero-patriarchal familism to discipline the population as biologically reproductive and economically productive beings during its compressed modernization.
In contemporary Korean society, however, few Korean youth are marrying. Young women, in particular, are following the radical feminist movement of “4Bs”: refusing dating (biyeonae), refusing sex with (bisekseu), refusing marriage to men (bihon), and refusing childbirth (bichulsan), endangering the family-based model of economic development. While their refusal has provoked widespread panic about the end of the Korean nation, my research shows how gay men have taken advantage of this “national crisis” to forge queer lives beyond reproductive futurity.
It also explores how as more Korean youth—regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identity—refuse marriage and the heteronormative life course, they are becoming “queered” as a non-normative population. In examining this startling convergence of gay and straight lives where the future is “becoming queer,” my research contributes to the fashioning of more inclusive futures beyond the exhausted hetero-patriarchal model.
What is the main thing you hope your students will take away from your classes?
One thing I hope students come to appreciate are the complex manners in which our social realities are produced and reproduced but in complex and patterned ways. Such social construction occurs through the interplay of social, economic, and political factors, mediated by language and symbols, in a dynamic historical and geo-political settings. As such, students require different theoretical and conceptual models developed by scholars such as anthropologists to appreciate the dynamic but structural manner in which power reproduces itself.
What are some of your most memorable teaching moments?
My most memorable teaching moments are when I see the “aha” moment for a student in a class discussion. I have these moments for myself as a teacher as well when the manner in which a student phrases a certain idea or concept produces an insight that might have previously eluded me. These moments of “freedom flashing” (Willis & Trondman 2000) are what make teaching such a powerful process of self-transformation and community-building.
What is your proudest professional accomplishment?
I am most proud of the first research article that I published as a graduate student on so-called “contract marriages” between Korean gays and lesbians (2009). These gay men and lesbians engage in these marriages of convenience to produce the illusion of being a heterosexual couple. As one of the first articles in the world to capture this phenomenon, which has become a huge trend in marriage-centered East Asian countries like China, this article has gotten a lot of traction in terms of research citations and assignment on course syllabi. Many undergraduate students contact me after reading this article in a course. In fact, two students from Australia recently contacted me to get an update on the contemporary situation for gay and lesbians in South Korea.
Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?
I was going to say “retired and sitting on a beach somewhere with a margarita.” But then, I realized that I am too young to retire. So I would say, expanding the field of Queer Asian studies as a queer anthropologist.
Can you tell us something (hobbies, interests etc.) that your colleagues may not know about you?
I really like solo travel. Sometimes, I travel with my best friend from Chicago. Other times, I take off by myself to a new city where I immerse myself in its food, culture, and people.