Minwoo Jung

With the support of a Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship, I plan to complete my book manuscript, Queer Geopolitics: Rights Projects in Contested Asia. Drawing on two years of multi-sited ethnographic research from Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea, this book offers new theoretical and empirical insights into our understandings of queer politics and globalization. I foreground geopolitics as the primary lens through which to understand the construction of queer activisms in Asia and beyond by examining three aspects of geopolitics: 1) the legacies of colonialism and authoritarianism, 2) the ascendancy of neoliberal capitalism, and 3) the intensifying geopolitical tension between China and the U.S. My book offers a novel account of how global politics shape the conditions for the lives and struggles of marginalized communities, and how they respond to such hardships in distinct and creative ways. By the end of 2024, I will have refined my book proposal and submitted it to scholarly presses with two chapters of the book manuscript for review. By May 2025, I will have completed the entire book manuscript, consisting of four chapters with an introduction and conclusion. The fellowship will be essential for me to devote all my efforts to creating a strong book manuscript.