Dredge Kang

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. Dr. Kang teaches courses on love, beauty, race, gender variance, sex work, sexual health, global health, inter-Asian / transnational Southeast Asian studies, and the Korean wave.

Education

MPH in Global Health, Emory University (2016)

Ph.D. in Anthropology, Emory Univsersity (2015)

The White Asian: Aspirational Desires and Queer Racialization in Asianizing Thailand

Development and globalization do not necessarily replicate Westernization. Thai middle class gay men imagine, embody, and use partnerships with white Asians for class distinction in a middle income country with an international reputation for sex tourism. Caucasian partners are desirable, given the political and economic dominance of the West, its media, and beauty ideals. However, contemporary Thais profess preferential desires for “white Asian” partners (i.e. Northeast Asians, Sino-Thais, and Chinese diasporans), who are associated with light skin, economic development, and cosmopolitan modernity. New Asian regionalisms and racializations locally engage transnational forces and facilitate such preferences in an increasingly multi-polar world.

Amazing Waves: Queering East Asian Popular Culture Through Thailand

This project brings together popular culture phenomenon related to the Korean Wave, Cool Japan, and Amazing Thailand. Specifically, it addresses how East Asian popular media shape everyday performances of race, gender, and sexuality in Thailand, focusing on sissies (feminine, young gay men) and tom (butch lesbians). The project also investigates how Thai indigenizations of East Asian popular culture forms, such as boys love, are reworked for local consumption and exported abroad to China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and other parts of the world.

Articles

2017 Eastern Orientations: Thai Middle-Class Gay Desire for "White Asians". Theme issue, "Queer Asia as Critique," Culture, Theory and Critique 58(2).

2014 Idols of Development: Trasnational Transgender Performance in Thai K-Pop Cover Dance. Theme issue, "Trans* Cultural Production," Transgender Studies Quarterly 1(4):559-571.

2012 Kathoey "In Trend": Emergent Gednerscapes, National Anxieties and the Re-Signification of Male-Bodied Effeminacy in Thailand. Theme issue, "Queer Asian Subjects," Asian Studies Review 36(4):475-494.

2011 Queer Media Loci in Bangkok: Paradise Lost and Found in Translation. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 17(1):169-191.

Books

2015 Cultivatig Demi-Idls: the Queer Convergence of New Media and Korean Dance Performance in Thailand. In New Media Configurations and Socio-Cultural Dynamics in Asia and the Arab World. Nadja-Christina Schneider and Carola Richter, eds. Berlin, Germany: Nomos Publishers: Pg.287-303.

2014 Conceptualizing Thai Genderscapes: Transformation and Continuity in the Thai Sex/Gender System. In Contemporary Socio-Cultural and Political Perspectives in Thailand. Pranee Liamputtong, ed. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer: Pg.409-429.

2009 Lek's Story (HIV/AIDS: Thailand). In Global Health Narratives: A Reader for Youth. Emily Mendenhall, ed. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press: Pg.80-85.

1996 Multiple-Box Person. In East to America: Korean American Life Stories. Elaine H. Kim and Eui-Young Yu, eds. New York: New Press: Pg.86-94.

Others

2010 The Transgender Health Handbook (Mama knows best, but mama is not always right. This is another source of advice for transgender women on living a healthy life). Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Bangkok, Thailand: Asian Pacific Network of Sex Workers.

2004 Client Competence and Advocacy at Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center: An Alternative Model for Cultural Competence in Medical Settings. AIDS and Anthropology Bulletin 16(3):15-17.