Gina Kim

Gina Kim is a 2023-2025 Japan Iron and Steel Federation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asian Studies Center and History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. Her primary areas of research include modern and contemporary East Asian art in the global context, with specializations in Japanese Imperialism and colonial Manchuria (Manchukuo), East Asian diaspora, and transnational feminism. Her forthcoming book, From Dalian to Changchun: The Aesthetics and Politics of Art in Manchukuo 1932-1945, traces Japan’s Pan-Asianism and its expressions in visual productions and practices in Manchukuo, specifically through art exhibitions, print media, ethnographic studies, and folk arts, which remain largely unknown in current scholarship.

Her secondary or tertiary research interest includes a survey of young female culture in Korea and Japan formed through digital transmedia exchanges, including web-based comics, pop culture, and fandom. Kim’s research and teaching interest also stretches out to the gender and sexuality formations in K-Pop.

At Pitt, Kim offers a survey course on Japanese art, a special topic in Japanese modern visual culture, and senior thesis mentoring. The special topic course focuses on the formation of modernism(s) in East Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Northeast China) in the first half of the twentieth century from postcolonial and decolonial perspectives.