Presented in collaboration with James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies

In the forthcoming book Remedying the Body (Stanford University Press, October 2026), So-Rim Lee explores a cultural discourse of plastic surgery in South Korea through the feminist politics of care. Pulling together archival and cultural materials from the 1950s to the 2020s, Lee takes Korea as a paradigmatic example to reimagine coalitional ways of surviving a world governed by oppressive bodily norms. 

Professor Lee will be joined by Penn scholars Laurie Lee (Music), Soosun You (Political Science), and Emily Ng (Anthropology, on Zoom). Books will be available for purchase.

So-Rim Lee is a Korea Foundation Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. She is interested in how people marginalized on the basis of difference (in identity, health, appearance, and lived experience) resist the material and discursive oppression by caring for one another in radically compassionate ways. Her research addresses the politics of embodiment (living in and with a body) in Korea and the Korean diaspora from the intersection of performance studies, visual and media studies, queer politics, disability justice, and feminist activisms.