Crystal Anderson
Crystal Anderson is an Associate Professor and Assistant Director of the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning at George Mason University. Dr. Anderson works within the fields of transnational American Studies and Global Asias, focusing on African American, Asian and Asian American cultures in popular culture, media studies, visual culture, audience reception and literature. Her most recent book, Soul in Seoul: African American Music and K-pop, explores the impact of African American popular music on contemporary Korean pop, R&B and hip-hop and the role of global fans as the music press and promotional apparatus. Her 2013 book, Beyond the Chinese Connection: Contemporary Afro-Asian Cultural Production, uses the films of Bruce Lee to interpret cross-cultural dynamics in post-1990 novels, films and anime. She has published articles on Afro-Asian cultural studies in several journals including African American Review, MELUS, Ethnic Studies Review and Extrapolation as well as book chapters on masculinity in K-pop and Afro-Japanese representation in art. Moreover, she also manages several digital humanities projects, including KPK: Kpop Kollective (https://kpopkollective.com), the oldest and only aca-fansite for K-pop, and KPOPCULTURE, a digital humanities project that which organizes information about K-pop music, choreography, creative personnel, fandom and media.
Colette Balmain
Colette Balmain is a senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at Kingston University in London. She specializes in East Asian cinema and cultures and has written numerous articles and reviews focusing on identity politics, aesthetics, and ideology. Her main specialization is horror and gothic cinemas. Her first book was Introduction to Japanese Horror Film and she is currently working on an edited collection on BTS as well as a monography with the working title Beyond the Symbolic: Performative Masculinity, Authenticity, and Emotionality in BTS. She is currently completing her second monograph of East Asian Gothic Cinema. She also writes for London Korean Links, easternKicks, and Asian Movie Pulse.