B/ordering the Global: Transnational Feminist Critiques from Asia

International Conference | July 9–11, 2026 | Asian Center for Women’s Studies (ACWS), Ewha Womans University

The Asian Center for Women’s Studies (ACWS) at Ewha Womans University is pleased to announce the international conference “B/ordering the Global: Transnational Feminist Critiques from Asia,” to be held July 9–11, 2026 in Seoul, Republic of Korea. 

B/ordering the Global: Transnational Feminist Critiques from Asia convenes scholars, researchers, activists, and practitioners to examine borders as ordering practices that govern mobility, labor and care, reproduction, health, and whose lives are deemed legitimate or disposable.

Centering Asia as a generative ground for feminist critique, the conference explores how war, climate crisis, right-wing backlash, and AI-driven technologies are reshaping border regimes and everyday hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality/queerness, and disability.

*키노트 강연에는 동시통역(영-한)과 문자통역이 제공됩니다. 

Mel Y. Chen 

"Method's Negative Imprint" 

If method is what conveys production of knowledge, then where are the limits of analysis at its heart, and what is the character of such limits? Furthermore, what is the quiet reach of imperial thought? Whether or not current intensities of violence as well as urges for repair call for them, I am interested in the possibilities for pause, to reflect again on the juncture of method and intellectual doing on the one hand, and the scenes of “current conditions” on the other. This talk illustrates a conceit which I call the space of “method’s negative imprint”, where entrainments of habitual, legitimated effort, often limned through models coveted by disciplinarity, seem to fail -- yet something else flourishes. In this talk I will reflect on the possibilities of invitations to intellectual practice of what is wrong and/or unwieldy: the conduction of untrainable energies, the communing of unformalizable senses, where, for instance, spirit and praxes of life-giving generation have have been deflected to the nonsecular, irrational, and unreasonable. To the extent that unlearning can be understood as re-sensing, I am concerned with sensory work done not simply through vectors of lexicality, making determined allowances for chaotic, confusing, contribution. I will attempt to ground some of this discussion in previous considerations of race, materiality, environment, and disability.

Kalindi Vora 

"AI and the Crisis of the Human"

The question of what it means to be human is at the center of public discourse surrounding our interactions with so-called artificial intelligence, presenting a critical opportunity for feminist and anti-racist anthropology. This talk engages with the current moment of meaning-making in the face of emerging technologies to revisit postcolonial, decolonial, and Black studies critiques of the human and of post-Enlightenment reason. These fields have long worked to recover submerged, silenced, or otherwise erased histories of the colonized, offering alternative accounts of who counts as a subject and what forms of life are possible. Drawing on preliminary fieldwork in AI ethics spaces in Europe and the U.S., alongside speculative AI designs that challenge dominant norms, this talk explores the potential of redescribing the human (Wynter 2003) as a foundation for confronting the exclusion of marginalized worldviews from modernity.

*Due to unforeseen personal circumstances, Professor Kalindi Vora is unable to attend the conference. Her keynote lecture is being rescheduled and will be hosted by the Asian Center for Women’s Studies at a later date. We will share further details once they are confirmed.

Hyun Mee Kim 

"Crossing Intimate Boundaries: A Feminist Reflection on Globalized Korean Masculinities, Race, and Digital Violence"

Korean masculinities have gained unprecedented global visibility through K-pop and digital culture, often circulating as emotionally expressive, caring, and progressive forms of masculinity. This presentation critically examines the globalization of Korean masculinities from a feminist perspective. Over the past decade, I argue that Korean feminism has contributed to the “democratization of intimacy” by transforming issues such as sexual violence, care, dating, and reproduction into central democratic concerns. At the same time, Korean masculinities crossing borders have become increasingly entangled with racial hierarchy, digital exploitation, and reproductive politics. Drawing on recent interviews with Korean men, I explore how masculinity is being renegotiated amid a broader crisis of intimacy and social reproduction, asking whether alternative forms of care, vulnerability, and relationality can emerge within these contradictions.

July 9-11, 2026

Ewha Womans University & Online