Dal Yong Jin

Dal Yong Jin is a distinguished professor at Simon Fraser University. Jin's major research and teaching interests are digital platforms and digital games, globalization and media, transnational cultural studies, and the political economy of media and culture. Jin has published numerous books, journal articles, and book chapters. His books include Korea's Online Gaming Empire (2010), Digital Platforms, Imperialism and Political Culture (2015), New Korean Wave: Transnational Cultural Power in the Age of Social Media (2016), Artificial Intelligence in Cultural Production: Critical Perspectives on Digital Platforms (2021), and Understanding Korean Webtoon Culture: Transmedia Storytelling, Digital Platforms, and Genres (2022). Jin has also published articles in scholarly journals, such as New Media and Society, the Information Society, and Media, Culture and Society. In May 2022, Jin was inducted as an International Communication Association (ICA) fellow. He is the founding book series editor of Routledge Research in Digital Media and Culture in Asia. He has been directing the Transnational Culture and Digital Technology Lab since the summer of 2021. Benjamin M. Han is an associate professor in the Department of Entertainment and Media Studies at the University of Georgia. His research focuses on global media, race and ethnicity, and the cultural intersections between Korea and Latin America. He is the author of Beyond the Black and White TV: Asian and Latin American Spectacle in Cold War America (Rutgers University Press, 2020) and the co-editor of Korean Pop Culture beyond Asia: Race and Reception (University of Washington Press, 2024). His forthcoming books include Reckoning with the World: South Korean Television and the Latin American Imaginary and Netflix Korea and Global Television. Kirk Kanesaka is an assistant professor of Japanese and Asian studies in the Department of World Languages and Literatures at California State University, San Bernardino. His expertise encompasses premodern Japanese popular fiction (1603-1868) and the performing arts. Additionally, Kanesaka's research interests extend to the intersections between the performing arts and contemporary media, including anime, video games, and popular culture. Beyond his academic pursuits, he holds the distinction of being the first non-Japanese individual to achieve professional status as a kabuki actor in the theater's history. He also teaches Japanese classical dance and the art of Japanese kimekomi dolls. Vivien Nara is an early career researcher and research affiliate of gender and cultural studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is interested in the intersection of gender, modernity, and popular culture across Asia. She has previously been published in Media, Culture & Society. Jiahua Bu is a doctoral candidate in translation studies at the University of Hong Kong. He is interested in the transcultural audience engagement on Asian social media platforms. His doctoral thesis explores fandom culture, translational remixes, and participatory digital ethnography. Yixin Xu is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages at the University of California, Riverside. Her research areas include Ming-Ching fiction, modern Chinese literature, Chinese-language cinema, and contemporary Chinese popular culture, with a focus on feminist studies, emotion studies, and medical humanities. With both intercultural and interdisciplinary approaches, Yixin's work aims to address the discursivity of literature and culture in Chinese-speaking communities. So Young Koo is a PhD candidate in the Literature, Media, and Culture program at Florida State University. She earned her MA in literary studies at the University of Texas at Dallas and her BA in English and French at the University of Texas at Austin. She focuses on Asian/Asian American literature and media, specifically on the transnational cross-pollinations of literature and media in the cultural psyche. Her dissertation looks at the relationship of twenty-first century adaptations of various Cinderella stories in different cultures. Taking a story that repeatedly appears in various iterations throughout history, adaptations of Cinderella stories offer interesting insight into how different cultures transform the familiar story.