Current Position
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and Global Health Program, University of California at San Diego
Biography
Dredge Byung’chu Kang’s research focuses on beauty and love as they intersect with race, class, gender, sexuality, globalization, and structural violence in body modification and interracial relationships. His current work focuses on the intersections of queer and trans* studies, critical race theory, and inter-Asian regionalism. Dredge’s dissertation, White Asians Wanted: Queer Racialization in Thailand examines the racialization of cosmopolitan Asianness as it intersects with transnational partnership patterns, beauty ideals, and economic development. Dredge’s second project, tentatively titled Amazing Waves: Queering East Asian Popular Culture through Thailand, explores the impact of the Korean Wave on the performance of Thai gender, sexuality, and race as well as Thailand’s subsequent influence on other Southeast Asian nations such as Vietnam and the Philippines.
Education
MPH in Global Health, Emory University (2016)
Concentration in Global Epidemiology, Infectious Diseases
Ph.D., M.A. in Anthropology, Emory University (2015)
Concentration in Medical Anthropology
B.A. Anthropology, with honors (2002)
Research
Dredge Byung’chu Kang’s research focuses on beauty and love as they intersect with race, class, gender, sexuality, globalization, and structural violence in body modification and interracial relationships. His current work focuses on the intersections of queer and trans* studies, critical race theory, and inter-Asian regionalism. Dredge’s dissertation, White Asians Wanted: Queer Racialization in Thailand examines the racialization of cosmopolitan Asianness as it intersects with transnational partnership patterns, beauty ideals, and economic development. Dredge’s second project, tentatively titled Amazing Waves: Queering East Asian Popular Culture through Thailand, explores the impact of the Korean Wave on the performance of Thai gender, sexuality, and race as well as Thailand’s subsequent influence on other Southeast Asian nations such as Vietnam and the Philippines.
Topics of Interest
Love and Sex Work; Beauty and Body Modification, Hallyu (Korean Wave) and East Asian Popular Culture Studies, Queer/Trans and Critical Race Studies, Applied Sexual Health, especially HIV; Critical Medical Anthropology; Social Epidemiology, Geographic Emphasis: Southeast Asia, especially Thailand; Inter-Asia Studies; Asian Diasporas
Select Publications
2021 “The Duty to Transform: Properly Refining the Body and (Re)defining Oneself in Thailand.” Theme issue, “Chasing Beauty: Cosmetic Surgery and Skin Lightening in East Asia,” Asian Studies Review 45 (2): 272-289. https://doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2021.1895722
2019 Kang, Dredge, Sara Goico, Sheena Ghanbari, Kathleen C. Bennallack, Taciana Pontes, Dylan H. O’Brien, and Jace Hargis. “Providing an Oral Examination as an Authentic Assessment in a Large Section, Undergraduate Diversity Class.” International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 13 (2/10): 1-14. https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2019.130210
2018 “Surfing the Korean Wave: Wonder Gays and the Crisis of Thai Masculinity.” Theme issue, “Southeast Asian Visual Cultures,” Visual Anthropology 31 (1-2): 45-65. https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2018.1428013
2017 “Eastern Orientations: Thai Middle-Class Gay Desire for ‘White Asians.’” Theme issue, “Queer Asia as Critique,” Culture, Theory and Critique 58 (2): 182-208. https://doi.org/10.1080/14735784.2017.1288580
2014 “Idols of Development: Transnational Transgender Performance in Thai K-Pop Cover Dance.” Theme issue, “Trans* Cultural Production,” Transgender Studies Quarterly 1 (4): 559-571. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-2815246
2012 “Kathoey ‘In Trend’: Emergent Genderscapes, National Anxieties and the Re-Signification of Male-Bodied Effeminacy in Thailand.” Theme issue, “Queer Asian Subjects,” Asian Studies Review 36 (4): 475-494. https://doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2012.741043
2011 “Queer Media Loci in Bangkok: Paradise Lost and Found in Translation.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 17 (1): 169-191. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2010-028
Book Chapters (Peer Reviewed)
2020 Aldarondo, Cecilia; Roger Hallas; Pablo Alvarez; Jim Hubbard; Dredge Byung’chu Kang-Nguyễn; and Jih-Fei Cheng. “Dispatches from the Pasts/Memories of AIDS: A Dialogue” in AIDS and the Distribution of Crises, edited by Jih-Fei Cheng, Alexandra Juhasz, and Nishant Shihani, 183-216. Durham NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478009269-009
Contact
dredgekang [at] ucsd [dot] edu
https://www.anthro.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/faculty-profiles/dredge-kang.html
Mario Sánchez del Campo, Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Last Revision: 3/25/2022