Dr. Laurie Lee

Biography

Laurie Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Music at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests center on the place of music in the lives of laboring people, particularly within the contexts of histories shaped by racial capitalist systems. Her current book project, 'Kisaeng: Women’s Waged Entertainment Work in Colonial Korea,' examines the history of class and labor of women entertainment workers known as kisaeng in early-twentieth-century Korea, analyzing their transition from hereditary performers under court patronage to waged entertainers within a colonial state-run union system. This work explores the commercialization of women’s entertainment during this period, leading to the proletarianization of the kisaeng and engaging with anti-capitalist and anti-colonial discourses concerning the criminalization of their labor. Through the lens of kisaeng labor struggles, her project contributes to critical understandings of the violent modern construction of the artist within capitalist market forces. Lee received her PhD in music from Harvard University and her BA in music from the University of Chicago. Her research has been supported by grants from Harvard University’s Korea Institute, the Korea Foundation, and the Academy of Korean Studies. She is currently affiliated with the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies and the Center for East Asian Studies at Penn.

Research Interests