Dr. Kevin Shadel

Biography

Kevin Shadel is an Assistant Professor and Korea Foundation Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in modern Korean literature and culture. His research focuses on the mediation of literary forms and social forms in Korean literature. Dr. Shadel has published articles on Korean and Japanese poetry, painting, photography, and popular music poetry translations. He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled 'Shuddering Century: Korean Modernist Poetry and Poetics of Belatedness', which is under contract with Columbia University Press. This book explores the reception of avant-garde aesthetics by Korean poets in the 1920s and 30s and how they grappled with the challenges of colonial underdevelopment while positioning themselves in relation to Euro-American cultural trends. Additionally, he is developing a project titled 'Seas: Maritime Itinerary of Modern Korean Poetry', which examines the mid-20th century seafaring journeys of Korean poets and the corresponding lyrical forms that arise in the context of neo/colonial power dynamics in the Asia-Pacific region. This project seeks to contextualize the shifting parameters of transnational (im)mobility experienced by Korean (post)colonial subjects through the analysis of maritime infrastructures and poetic constructions.

Research Interests