In “I, Stereotype,” Seo-Young Chu applies Mori’s theory of the uncanny valley not to robots but to a different species of humanoid artifact: stereotypes of the “yellow peril.” Through analyses of stories by Sax Rohmer, World War Two propaganda, and films from the Bond franchise, Chu investigates ways in which the logic of the uncanny valley has…[Read more]

Dream Life of Waste: Archaeologies of the Soul in the Key of Capitalism

(Entries organized in chronological order by date of obsolescence)

Chu, Seo-Young. “Tiny Art Museum for the Floater in My Eye.” ASAP/Journal, vol. 5 no. 3, 2020, p. 509-510. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/asa.2020.0025.

In “Hwabyung Fragments” the Korean American poet Seo-Young Chu uses pieces of Korean mythology, family lore, DMZ iconography, speculative lyricism, allusions to Plato’s Symposium (the figure of one’s missing other half), and allusions to chimerism, mosaicism, and twinning to explore generational trauma, Korean division, postmemory han, the…[Read more]

“Emoji Poetics.” Seo-Young Chu. ASAP/Journal, Volume 4, Number 2, May 2019, pp. 290-292 (Article). Published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

…No matter what form they may take, emojis allow users to automate and outsource certain types of labor. For example: the heart emoji relieves the user of the (relatively simple) “burden” of having to…[Read more]

My talk, a thought-experimental blend of literary criticism and speculative “design fiction,” will introduce you to an Asian American superhero of North Korean origin. In this science-fictional superhero, whom I have tentatively named “구름”/”☁️”/“Ku-reum,” Korea’s elusive realities coalesce into legible form. More specifically, they be…[Read more]

Seo-Young Chu’s “The DMZ Responds” appeared in Telos 184 (Fall 2018), a special issue on Korea edited by Haerin Shin.

Kafkaesque, Orwellian, eerie, surreal, bizarre, grotesque, alien, wacky, fascinating, dystopian, illusive, theatrical, antic, haunting, apocalyptic: these are just a few of the vaguely science-fictional adjectives that are now associated with North Korea. At the same time, North Korea has become an oddly convenient trope for a certain aesthetic…[Read more]

Abstract
Focusing on poems that observe her own mandate to “Deal with the soul / As with Algebra!” (Fr240), I will analyze some of the ways in which Dickinson uses specific mathematical principles to account for mysteries like death, wonder, the relation of self to God, and the limits of human knowledge. […] in her poetry she brings…[Read more]

science-fictional pronouns
“√-1, Other” / “The Square Root of Minus One, Other”
Reviewed Work(s): Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism: Beyond the Golden Rule
Review by: Seo-Young Chu
Source: Science Fiction Studies , Vol. 42, No. 2, Italian Science Fiction (July 2015), pp. 376- 378

Chu talks about her visit to Las Vegas and Las Vegas’s ironic resemblance to North Korea. Recently she visited Las Vegas for the first time. During her brief stay, she explored the Strip and its famously themed spaces. An afternoon drifting through the arcades and tourist traps of Vegas’s Resort Corridor became a kaleidoscopic collage of…[Read more]

As Marianne Hirsch observes in Family Frames (1997), children of Holocaust survivors often “remember” the suffering that their parents endured. The memory of the Holocaust is no less vivid for

After “A Refuge for Jae-in Doe”: A Social Media Chronology* / Seo-Young Chu
March 15, 2018

CAPTIONS for CHIMERICAL MOSAIC : SELF TEST KIT IN D# MINOR (This was never meant.) Return address: landscape of raindrops or holes. Enclosed, to be opened by recipient only: (1) a picture held within a picture; (2) maplike divination; (3) a specimen of missing twin; (4) capsules of pure time; (5) invisible tears. …Perhaps you will wonder if t…[Read more]

DMZ-American poetry

Two Poems by Seo-Young Chu: “What is the maiden name of Frankenstein’s creature?” and “I am Korean American”

Chogakpo Fantasia
(a speculative Korean American crossword patchwork quilt poem)
printed in: and/or Volume 5 (Color) Paperback – November 23, 2015