L.S. Kim is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research and teaching specialties include: Television history and theory, race and representation, Asian American film and media, feminist criticism, and social change through media culture. She has written about race, class, gender, and genre in publications such as the Routledge Companion to Asian American Media, The Sage Handbook of Television, Flow TV, Journal of Film and Video, and Ms. Magazine. She appears in the film, Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines (2012), and in Uploaded: The Asian American Movement (2012), a documentary about Asian American artists utilizing new media and the Internet. She serves on the Ms. Committee of Scholars, and on the American Film Institute Awards Jury.
L.S. Kim's book, Maid for Television: Race, Class, Gender, and a Representational Economy (2023) investigates the cultural significance of the racialized female domestic in American television from 1950 to the present. (You can read more about the book here.) She graduated from Smith College with a major in Government and a minor in Film, and earned her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in the Department of Film and Television at UCLA.
"The Illegibility of Asian American Feminism On Screen," in Anti-Feminisms in Media Culture. Eds. Michele White and Diane Negra. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022.
"Asian America On Demand: Asian Americans, Media Networks, and a Matrix Stage," in Routledge Companion to Asian American Media. Eds. Lori Kido Lopez and Vincent N. Pham. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017.
"Raced Audiences and The Logic of Representation," The Sage Handbook of Television Studies, edited by Milly Buonanno, Herman Gray, and Toby Miller. London and Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publishing, 2015.
“Speed TV: NASCAR Nation, Class, and Convergence” in Flow TV: Essays on a Convergent Medium, edited by Michael Kackman, et. al. New York: Routledge, forthcoming 2009.
“Asians Can Dance” for In Media Res, a project of MediaCommons: A Digital Scholarly Network sponsored by The Institute for the Future of the Book (part of the Annenberg Center for Communication at USC) and the MacArthur Foundation (Week of April 28, 2008).
“Representation of Race” in Battlegrounds: The Media, edited by Robin Andersen and Jonathan Gray. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007.
“All in the Family: Reaganism, Capitalism, and American Television” in Neo-Conservativism and Mass Culture in America (in Korean), edited by Hee-Joon Chung and Hyun-Suk Seo. Seoul, Korea: Chaeksesang, 2007.
“Air Time” in Ms. 35th Anniversary Issue. Fall 2007.
“Making Women Warriors: A Transnational Reading of Asian Female Action Heroes in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” JUMP CUT: A Review of Contemporary Media, No, 48, Winter 2006.
“AZN Television: The Network for Asian America,” Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture, Volume 3, Issue 7 (December 9, 2005).
“Be The One That You Want: Asian Americans in Television Culture, Onscreen and Beyond,” Amerasia Journal volume 30, no. 1 (2005).
“Race and Reality … TV,” Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture, Volume 1, Issue 4 (November 19, 2004).
“‘Serving’ American Orientalism: Negotiating Identities in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” Journal of Film and Video, volume 56, no. 4. (2004).
“The Performance of Multicultural Identity in U.S. Network Television: Shiny, Happy, POPSTARS (Holding Hands)” with Gilberto Moíses Blasini, Emergences: Journal for the Study of Media and Composite Cultures, volume 11, no. 2. (2001).
“‘Sex and the Single Girl’ in Postfeminism: The F-word on Television,” Television & New Media, volume 2, no. 4. (2001).
Television History and Theory, Racial Discourse and Representation, Asian American Cinema, Feminism and Feminist Media Theory and Criticism, Music in Film and Television, Genres (for example, the Action Genre and Reality Television), K-Drama and K-Pop, Korean Cinema. (You can please read course descriptions here.)