Jinah Kim

Candidate statement

I first attended the AAAS annual conference as a 2nd year graduate student and never turned back, going back to present nearly every year since. I have been an active member for 15 years and served as the inaugural co-chair of the Asian American Feminisms Caucus. I also participated in the 2017 AAAS ambassadorship to the American Studies Association of Korea. I am currently an Associate Professor in Communication Studies at California State University, Northridge. My scholarship focuses on the histories and cultures of contact and migration across the transpacific as a result of US militarism in the arena. My first book Postcolonial Grief: The Afterlives of the Pacific Wars in the Americas was published by Duke University Press in 2019. I am currently working on two research areas. The first, Unruly Dead, focuses around accounts of dead bodies or bones that resurface in the Pacific Arena, unsettling militarized knowledge production and enabling closure. The second addresses the vibrant transpacific and diasporic Korean arts and activist communities that have risen to support the ‘Comfort Women.’ The AAAS has provided vital intellectual and activist community to ensure the survival and growth of Asian American Studies. It would be my honor to serve as the Association’s Southern California Representative.