Jieun LeeAssistant Professor, Theater StudiesDirector of Undergraduate Research (Scholarship), Theater Studies

 

Lee is the author of Unsettling Acts: Performing Transnational Adoption (Ohio State University Press, 2025). In this book, she examines twelve theater and performance art works from South Korea, the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Denmark, which depict Korean transnational adoptees’ birth search and reunion. In doing so, Lee argues that performing transnational adoption unsettles ethnonationalist, postwar humanitarian, and colorblind multicultural narratives that have essentialized Korean adoptees in both adoptive and birth cultures. Her analysis highlights selected theater and performance pieces that challenge myths about Korean transnational adoption and reimagine adoptees’ identity, kinship, and belonging in the twenty-first century.

 

Lee’s current projects include a drama anthology of Korean transnational adoption and a second monograph on the performativity of biometrics.

 

At Emory, Lee teaches the courses Asian American Drama, Theater and Feminism, and Reading for Performance. In her classes, students analyze how race, gender, and sexuality are depicted in theater and performance, while also evaluating how these portrayals both reflect and resist systemic inequalities and power imbalances in and out of US society. Through her teaching, she hopes her students will recognize the transformative power of theatrical arts.

 

Lee holds a PhD in Theater and Performance Studies as well as a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Georgia, and an MA in Theater Studies from Hunter College of the City University of New York. Prior to Emory, Lee taught at the University of Georgia and Wake Forest University. Since 2014, she has served as a volunteer translator for the South Korean Feminist Journal ILDA.