About Hyunseon Lee

Dr. Hyunseon Lee I studied in Seoul, Berlin, Bochum and Dortmund (Germany); my doctoral thesis on GDR literature received the dissertation award of Dortmund University in 1998 and was subsequently published by J.B. Metzler Verlag. I have held postdoctoral scholarships at Siegen University (Germany) and Seoul National University and visiting scholarships at Columbia University (New York), Chuo University (Tokyo) and at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London. As a researcher I worked for several years at Siegen University in the fields of media & cultural studies. I have lectured at universities throughout Germany, Japan, South Korea and the USA. My research interests are wide-ranging; I have been published on Stefan Heym, Monika Maron, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Akira Kurosawa, Nam June Paik, Franz Lehár, Giacomo Puccini and Lorenzo Da Ponte et al.
My research areas are media aesthetic, media history and global popular culture (focused on literature, music theatre & film, and particularly related to issues of gender performance, intermediality and interculurality of Europe & Eastasia).

My current project at the University of Siegen and IGRS (School of Advanced Study, University of London) focuses on the cultural and medial metamorphoses of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly”. I have organized an international interdisciplinary symposium Opera, Exoticism and Visual Culture: The Fin de Siècle and Its Legacy (London, September 2008) and “Mörderinnen: Verbrechen – Körper – Inszenierung” [Murderesses: Crime – Body – Performance] (Siegen, October 2011) - more details see below.
I am currently editing two books: Opera, Exoticism and Visual Culture, jointly with Naomi Segal, the former director of the Institutes of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London and Mörderinnen: Verbrechen – Körper – Inszenierung.