Sangjoon LEE PhD

I am an associate professor and head of the Department of Visual Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. I hold a Ph.D. from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in Cinema Studies in 2011 and an MA in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2005. 

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I am a historian of Asian cinema whose interests span the Cultural Cold War, South Korean cinema and popular culture, international film festivals, and the film industries in contemporary Asia. I have extensively investigated film history in its socio-historical and industrial contexts, paying particular attention to issues of the national and the transnational, questions of ownership and control, the new regionalism, industrial networks, and the unprecedented cultural flows and mixing in cinema and media around Asia and the globe. I am the author of Cinema and the Cultural Cold War: US Diplomacy and the Origins of the Asian Cinema Network (Cornell University Press, 2020), the editor of Hallyu 2.0: The Korean Wave in the Age of Social Media (University of Michigan Press, 2015; with Markus Nornes) and Rediscovering Korean Cinema (University of Michigan Press, 2019; 2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title), and the guest editor of “Reorienting Asian Cinema in the Age of the Chinese Film Market (Screen, 2019), “The Chinese Film Industry: Emerging Debates” (Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 2019), and “Transmedia and Asian Cinema” (Asian Cinema, 2020). I am currently completing a new monograph Destination Hong Kong: South Korean Cinema's Encounter with Sinophone Cinemas while co-editing The South Korean Film Industry (University of Michigan Press), Asian Cinema and the Cultural Cold War (Amsterdam University Press), and Routledge Companion to Asian Cinema. 

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I am the recipient of the Jay Leyda Award for Academic Excellence (2011) and the David H. Culbert Prize for the Best Article in Film and Media History by an Established Scholar (2019). My works have been translated into Korean, Japanese, Chinesem, and Italian. Prior to joining NTU, I was an associate professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University (2015-2022) and assistant professor in the Department of Screen Arts and Cultures and Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2011-2014). I was also a visiting assistant professor at the Australian National University in 2018. At Lingnan University, I teach classes on international film festivals, South Korean cinema, Chinese-language cinemas, film industries in Asia, and Hollywood

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