Hayun Cho

Biography

Hayun Cho is Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Notre Dame where she also holds a concurrent appointment in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre. She is a scholar of contemporary Korean literature and culture.

Cho is currently working on a book manuscript that examines the politics of emotion in South Korean women’s literature and film. Her research interests span feminist and queer theory, affect theory, and transpacific studies with a focus on how difference shapes the critical registers of emotional expression and creative practice. Her scholarship appears and is forthcoming in The Journal of Korean Studies. Her translation has been published by Kaya Press and her poetry appears in The Rumpus and The Margins among others. She is the author of Sea Changes (Abode Press, 2025), a collection of poetry that explores the interplay between intergenerational memory and creative practice in the Korean diaspora. Cho holds a PhD and MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures and a graduate certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies from the University of Southern California. She earned her BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University.

A faculty fellow at the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies and affiliated faculty at the Gender Studies Program at Notre Dame, Cho teaches courses on Korean literature, popular culture, film, and media.