I am Christine Choi (she/they), a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh. My work explores the intersections of traumatic public memory, unconventional media, and transnational feminism. My research investigates how diasporic Korean artists use contemporary media forms—such as graphic novels, virtual reality, and animation—to reimagine the memory of "comfort women" within survivor-centered, transnational feminist frameworks.
I am the recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship and a Humanities Center Summer Research Fellowship, which have supported my ongoing research, including the development of my dissertation and my method, the "co-creative iterative writing process". My dissertation, Reconfigurations of Trauma: Navigating Tensions and Contradictions of Multimodal Representations of Comfort Women Discourse, seeks to understand how alternative media construct complex, ethical modes of witnessing that challenge dominant narratives about gendered violence, trauma, and war.
Choi, C. (2024). (Re)Animating ‘Comfort Women’ Memories: Fantastical Abstractions and Metaphorical Violence. Howard Journal of Communications, 1-14.
Recent and Upcoming Presentations
2025
“Mediating Global Asias: Race & Gender from a Transnational Communication Perspective,” Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Conference, Columbus, OH.
2024
“Fragmented Narratives, Pained Expressions, and Author-As-Witness: Nonlinear Visual Storytelling in Keum-Suk Gendry-Kim’s Grass,” National Communication Association (NCA) Conference, New Orleans, LA.
Christine Choi, a graduate student in our department, has received a Summer Graduate Fellowship from the University of Pittsburgh Humanities Center. This prestigious fellowship, which provides $10,000 of summer support, fosters multidisciplinary humanities research and connections with the Center's networks.
Christine has been using her fellowship to expand a chapter of her dissertation, exploring traumatic public memory, violence, and new media representations of Japanese and U.S. military "comfort women" during and after WWII. Following the Center’s annual theme on “Method,” she is refining her "co-creative iterative writing process" method, drawing from autoethnography, oral history, and Conquergood's "dialogic performance." As part of the fellowship, she will participate in the Humanities Center's colloquiums throughout the academic year and share her research on Thursday, Oct. 31st from 12:30-2:00 PM with the community.
Another part of her project was published in the Howard Journal of Communication, titled "(Re)Animating ‘Comfort Women’ Memories: Fantastical Abstractions and Metaphorical Violence." This article, part of a special issue on memory infrastructures, examines the intersection of public memory, violence, and new media representations through Sujin Kim’s animated short film, Unforgotten. Christine uses close reading to identify four main representations of "comfort women": as metaphorical objects, surreal alternative bodies, physical land, and unseen implied forms. She explores the affordances and limitations of animation, demonstrating its potential for addressing sensitive subjects with metaphorical and fantastical elements, creating narratives that replicate the fragmented memories of “comfort women.” Despite historical efforts to silence these narratives, Christine highlights how Kim’s film provides an alternative mode of representing and witnessing stories of the past.