Jane Park is a cultural studies scholar trained in literary and media studies. Her work examines the social and cultural impact of popular media – from film, television and music to advertising and the Internet – on changing notions of gender, race and nationality in the US and Asia Pacific, with a focus on South Korea and Australia.
Her first book, Yellow Future: Oriental Style in Hollywood Cinema (Minnesota University Press, 2010) considered how and why East Asia became more visible in Hollywood films, from the 1980s to the 2000s, with the economic rise of Japan, China and the NICs and the increasingly global appeal of Asian popular culture. Park has also published journal articles and book chapters on a wide range of Asian and American media.
She is currently working on three research projects. The first is a series of articles on the globalization of Korean popular culture, focusing on the embodied aesthetic that defines the brand of South Korean soft culture, from K-Pop stars and Korean films to Korean beauty culture and foodways. The second is a comparative study of race between Australia and the US, looking at how racial categories and ideas from US popular culture are used to articulate racial dynamics in Australia. And the third is a collaborative grant on diversity in the Australian advertising industry with regard to creative content, hiring practices and workplace culture.
Based on her academic expertise, Park has given talks and done consulting work on diversity and Asian markets for CARAT, Proctor & Gamble, Space Doctors, Aus-Aid, and Nickelodeon Jr. as well as the Sydney Film Festival and Sydney Writer’s Festival.
The Asia Pacific Screen Academy expresses its respect for and acknowledgement of the South East Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We pay our respects to the Traditional Owners of country, including the custodial communities on whose land works are created and celebrated by the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. We acknowledge the continuing connection to land, waters and communities. We also pay our respects to Elders, past and present. We recognise the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nations peoples continue to play in storytelling and celebration spaces.