Best Kdramas of 2023

Sociology of the P. Diddy Trial “Mulatas,” “Homophobia,” and Socialization of Potential Targets

In this podcast episode, Dr. Chi discusses the trial of P. Diddy, billionaire music producer and businessman, who was charged with racketeering and sex trafficking. Rather than thinking of him specifically, she discusses issues surrounding the socialization of women into the “freak offs.” Listen to discussions of colorism, homophobia, and love-bombing. For more on ideas of mixed-race (mulata) women in the United States and Brazil check out Dr. Jasmine Mitchell’s Imagining the Mulatta: Blackness in U.S. and Brazilian Media, Dr. Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought: Controlling Images and Chinyere Osuji’s Boundaries of Love: Interracial Marriage and the Meaning of Race Produced by: Genete Demessew and Dr. Chi Music Credit: Candy Stars by Space Doves

Frogs before the Pot Boils

Kat Turner is one of my Kdrama besties. We discussed her experiences being in South Korea during the impeachment procedures there as well as what we in the United States can learn from how South Koreans fight authoritarianism. We discussed the Gwangju Uprising in 1980 in which scores of Koreans were attached and killed by national police in their fight for democracy. We recorded this before the protests against ICE and the "No King" protests of June 2025.

Slavery in Spain with Antonio Rueda

This past February, I sat down with Dr. Antonio Rueda, Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Washington. We talked about using linguistics to examine Spanish literature and its depiction of enslaved Africans in Europe as well as their mixed race descendants. He wrote a paper I found fascinating called "From Bozal to Mulata: a Sociolinguistic Analysis of the Black African Female Slave in Early Modern Spanish Theater." [https://www.academia.edu/80861671/From_Bozal_to_Mulata]

Best Kdramas of 2023

My Kdrama Besties Kat and Jennay join me to chat about the best Kdramas of 2023. We discuss our top 3 but cannot understand why we keep forgetting about Divorce Attorney Shin. On the DMV Kdrama Meetup: Join me at Korean Drama Game Night https://meetu.ps/e/MHdV6/YCnrM/i See more of Kat Turner’s work on Korean adoptees on her website: Katturner.com

What Kdramas Tell Us about Korean Culture: Part II

An oldie but goodie from the vault! Here is Part II of my interview with Dr. Jennifer Jung-Kim who teaches classes about East Asian cultures and Korean culture at UCLA. We discuss the use of Blacks in Kdramas for commercialization purposes, women marriage migrants, Filipino undocumented migration, sex and foreign women, and Korea's use of soft power around the globe in the Covid-19 crisis. What a treat! Follow me at @chinyereosuji on Twitter and @drchislab on Instagram. If you'd like to support the work I do, buy me a coffee! You can do that here: https://ko-fi.com/doctorchi