Timothy Gitzen.
Timothy Gitzen is a doctoral student of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities. His research focuses on constructions of homosexuality in South Korea and the entanglements with discourses and experiences of kinship, gender, sexuality and nation. His project first began with an ethnographic study of the interrelationship between experiences and discourses of gayness and kinship among self-identified gay college students in a particular Seoul university’s gay club. Identities are multivalent and always in-motion assemblages that incorporate other forms of entanglement without necessitating the destruction of other relationships.
His dissertation research furthers this approach by moving from the first entanglement of sexuality and kinship to other entanglements of sexuality and the state, sexuality and gender, and sexuality and other (perhaps transnational) forms of sexuality. As such, he is interested in how self-identified gay college students in South Korea embody and inscribe (or are inscribed upon) discourses and experiences of gender, sexuality and nation. In addition, he examines the ways in which popular culture and literature can act as informants for ethnography, incorporating characters from film and television dramas into ethnographic writing.
Timothy Gitzen is the author of “(Un) Conventional Investments: The Partnership of Avex and SM Entertainment” (PEAR 2009) and an upcoming book chapter entitled “Mothers and Affect: Encounters with Gay Sons in South Korea.”
