Joseph Jeon
Joseph Jeon was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1971. Two years later, his family immigrated to the United States when his father entered a medical residency program in Barberton, Ohio. Currently a professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, he is also the director of the UCI Center for Critical Korean Studies, an institution aiming to centralize Korean Studies at the university and support students and faculty in their work. His experience of raising a daughter has helped him discover how racial dynamics in American communities have shifted over the past few decades and provided him with a positive outlook on the future. His process of learning how the different places in a person’s life shape the culture in which they grow up has, in turn, helped strengthen his commitment to contribute to his community. All content has been recorded in advance prior to the US outbreak of COVID-19.