Self Making Through Hybridized Cultural Citizenship: Diasporic Korean American College Students and Their Engagement with Korean Popular Media

This thesis examines the experiences of 1.5 and 2nd generation Korean American immigrant college students and the ways that their hybridized Korean American cultural citizenship place them into processes of self-making within the contexts of social networks, their changing legal citizenship, and experiences of racialization as Asians in America. This thesis specifically focuses on the consumption of Korean popular media, including Korean popular music, TV shows, news, and movies, as a manifestation of hybridized Korean American cultural citizenship. Using Korean popular media as a lens through which to consider hybridized Korean American cultural citizenship, this thesis ultimately aims to consider the ways that young diasporic Korean Americans continually navigate the constructions and contestations of their hybridized cultural identities as they negotiate belonging within both Korean and American national imaginaries