Our Faculty

headshot of Hye Won Kim

Hye Won Kim

Assistant Professor

Department of Asian and Asian American Studies

Biography

Hye Won Kim is an assistant professor in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at Binghamton University. Her research and teaching interests focus on the transnational circulation of modern and contemporary drama, theatre, performance, and media, with particular attention to the intersections of critical race theory, gender and sexuality studies, visual culture, sound studies, and performance studies.  

Kim’s first monograph, South Korean Musical Theatre: Transnational Encounters, is under contract with Oxford University Press, and her scholarship has appeared in The Drama Review (TDR), Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, The Cambridge Companion to K-pop, Studies in Musical Theatre, and The Journal of Popular Culture, among other publications. She also serves on the editorial boards of MusicTheatreDance, the flagship journal of the Music Theatre Dance Association, and the Journal of Korean Musical Theatre Studies.

Publications

  • South Korean Musical Theatre: Transnational Encounters, Oxford University Press (under contract).
  • 2025. “The Power of ‘Felt Absence’ in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion,” Explicator. Vol. 83, No. 2.
  • 2023. "Recording the Soundscape of K-Pop," The Cambridge Companion to K-Pop, Cambridge University Press.
  • 2023. "Performing Asian/American Women, Labor, Resistance, and (De)Compression in The King and I and KPOP," The Drama Review (TDR). Vol 67, No. 3.
  • 2023. “Thrill Me: Queerness, Spectatorship, and the Utopian Performative,” Modern Drama. Vol. 66, No. 1.
  • 2022. “MT/D, or Change: An Anti-Racist Musical Theatre Reading Group,” Studies in Musical Theatre. Vol. 16, No. 1. Edited by Donatella Galella and co-authored by Masi Asare, Jordan Ealey, SAJ, Mathew D. Morrison, Fred Moten, Karen Shimakawa, and Celine Shimizu.
  • 2021. “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie,” Theatre Journal. Vol. 73, No. 3: 429-32.
  • 2018. “Domesticating Hedwig: Neoliberal Global Capitalism and Compression in South Korean Musical Theatre,” The Journal of Popular Culture. Vol. 50, No. 2: 421-45. 
  • 2017. “Play the Woman: The Feminine Theatricality of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Henry VIII,” Foreign Literature Studies. Co-authored with Gyeonlyung Kim. Vol. 66: 35-54.
  • 2016. “Celebrating Heteroglossic Hybridity: Ready-to-Assemble Broadway-Style Musicals in South Korea,” Studies in Musical Theatre. Vol. 10, No. 3: 343-54.

Research Interests

  • Theater Studies
  • Performance Studies
  • Dramatic Literature
  • Musical Theater
  • Critical Theory
  • Cultural Studies
  • Sound Studies
  • Media Studies
  • Visual Culture
  • Reception Theory
  • Transnational Asian Studies
  • Asian American Studies
  • Korean Popular Culture

Honors and Awards

  • Regents’ Award for Excellence in High Impact Practices and Experiential Learning, English Department, University System of Georgia, 2026
  • ACLS Project Development Grant Award, 2025
  • RCHSS Creative Scholarship Award, Kennesaw State University, 2025
  • RCHSS Dissemination Acceleration Program Award, 2025
  • RCHSS Project Development Grant Award, Kennesaw State University, 2024
  • RCHSS Seed Grant Award, Kennesaw State University, 2023
  • American Society for Theatre Research, Research Fellowship Award, 2022
  • RCHSS Manuscript Completion Program Award, Kennesaw State University, 2022
  • Deputy Prime Minister/Ministry of Education’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship, Korean Government, 2017
  • The Bruce Kirle Memorial Debut Panel in Music Theatre/Dance Recipient, Association for Theatre in Higher Education, 2016