About the Speakers

Yutian Wong

Yutian Wong ’92 is a professor in the School of Theatre & Dance at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Choreographing Asian America (Wesleyan 2010); editor of Contemporary Directions in Asian American Dance (Wisconsin 2016); and co-editor of The Routledge Dance Studies Reader (Routledge 2018); a special issue of Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies titled Dancing in the Aftermath of Anti-Asian Violence (2023); and Bangtan Remixed: A Critical BTS Reader (Duke 2024). Other publications include contributions to Discourses and Dance, Journal of Short Film Studies, and Dance Research Journal among others. Wong’s most recent writing includes essays on humor and cosplay choreography, K-Pop and screen dance, and BTS’s “Black Swan” and Cold War dance. She is currently at work on a book about dance and sincerity.

Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez

Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez is Professor of Ethnic Studies and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

About the Event

Bangtan Remixed: A Critical BTS Reader (Duke University, 2024) delves into the cultural impact of celebrated K-Pop boy band BTS, exploring their history, aesthetics, fan culture, and capitalist moment. The collection’s contributors--who include artists, scholars, journalists, activists, and fans--approach BTS through inventive and wide-ranging transnational perspectives. From tracing BTS’s hip hop genealogy to analyzing how the band’s mid-2020 album reflects the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrating how Baroque art history influences BTS’s music videos, the contributors investigate BTS’s aesthetic heritage. They also explore the political and technological dimensions of BTS’s popularity with essays on K-Pop and BTS’s fan culture as frontiers of digital technology, the complex relationship between BTS and Blackness, the impact of anti-Asian racism on BTS’s fandom, and the challenges BTS poses to conservative norms of gender and sexuality.