Hye Seung Chung received her B.A. in English Literature from Ewha Woman’s University (Seoul, South Korea) in 1994, her M.A. in Cinema Studies at the College of Staten Island, C.U.N.Y. in 1999, and her Ph.D. in Film and Television from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004. Her areas of specialization include: classical and contemporary Hollywood cinema, race and multiculturalism in American popular culture, feminist and postcolonial film theories, Asian American media, East Asian/Korean cinema, and global Cold War cultures.

Before joining the American Studies faculty at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, in fall 2008, Professor Chung taught in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the Department of Comparative Literature at Hamilton College. During her first year at UH Manoa, she will be teaching AMST 250: The Hollywood Century, AMST 352: Screening Asian Americans, and AMST 656: Film in America.

Chung is the author of Hollywood Asian: Philip Ahn and the Politics of Cross-Ethnic Performance (Temple University Press, 2006). As the first book-length study of Korean identities in American cinema and television, this volume investigates the career of Philip Ahn (1905-1978), a pioneering Asian American screen icon as well as the son of celebrated Korean nationalist An Ch’ang-ho. Far more complex than a conventional star biography, this transnational study bridges American and Korean film histories; suggests new theoretical paradigms with which to address cross-ethnic performance and Asian American spectatorship; and explores the role of American foreign policies in the construction of Hollywood’s “Oriental genres” from the 1930s to the 1950s. Drawing upon a wide range of archival documents from the actor’s personal papers and studio memos to files of federal government agencies, Professor Chung’s book addresses a number of significant historical, theoretical, and critical issues pertaining to different disciplines including film and media studies, cultural studies, Asian American studies, and Korean studies. Since its publication, Hollywood Asian has received positive reviews in Library Journal, Asian Week, International Journal of Communication, Choice, Korean Quarterly, Journal of American History, Journal of Popular Culture, and Pacific Historical Review. For more information, see: http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1854_reg.html

In addition to her book, Professor Chung’s scholarship on Korean cinema has been published in such journals and anthologies as Asian Cinema, Film and Philosophy, South Korean Golden Age Melodrama, New Korean Cinema, and Seoul Searching. Her most recent writings on Asian American identities in contemporary television programs will appear in the forthcoming books Grace under Pressure: Grey’s Anatomy Uncovered (edited by Cynthia Burkhead and Hillary Robson) and Screwball Television: Critical Perspectives on Gilmore Girls (edited by David Scott Diffrient and David Lavery). A lifelong fan of classical Hollywood cinema, she is now nurturing a passion for American television shows such as The Wire, Lost, Weeds, Nip/Tuck, and Big Love and hopes to teach a course exploring these and other Quality TV series in the future.