Dr. Crystal S. Anderson Interview (Soul in Seoul: African American Popular Music and K-pop)
I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. Click here to subscribe!
Dr. Crystal S. Anderson is Affiliate Faculty, Korean Studies, at George Mason University and the author of Soul in Seoul: African American Popular Music and K-pop, a book that looks at the unique intersections of the two.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
I was always interested in making connections, and often these connections occurred across what I would later understand to be academic disciplines. This led to a PhD in the interdisciplinary field of American Studies, with a focus on comparative race and ethnicity and a dissertation in Afro-Asian literary studies. While most academics develop their dissertations into books, I rethought that idea when a colleague of mine gave me some tough love: “No one wants to read another book about literature.” I had to agree. So, I turned my attention to popular culture and incorporated film and anime into what became my first book, Beyond the Chinese Connection: Contemporary Afro-Asian Cultural Production.