About

Todd Henry is an assistant/associate professor in the Department of History at UC San Diego, specializing in modern Korea with a focus on the period of Japanese rule (1910-1945) and its postcolonial aftermath. His research explores cross-border processes linking South Korea, North Korea, Japan, and the US, particularly in the context of militarisms, medical sciences, and lived experiences of heteropatriarchal capitalism. As a historian of gender, sex, and sexuality, Dr. Henry seeks to expand Euro-American-centric approaches to queerness, transgenderism, and intersexuality by emphasizing Asian forms of embodiment that are intertwined with the geopolitics of imperialism, colonialism, military occupation, and diaspora. He authored the book 'Assimilating Seoul,' which addresses the contested role of public spaces in colonial Korea and has received recognition through the Sejong Book Prize. His ongoing work includes monographs on South Korea's global queer history, examining media, medicine, citizenship, sex tourism, and transgender advocacy during authoritarian periods, as well as creative projects like documentaries on gay sociality and South Korea's first male fashion designer, André Kim. Dr. Henry's interdisciplinary projects analyze the ideological functions and subcultural dynamics of sexuality and gender variance within the contexts of capitalist development, anticommunist citizenship, bodily autonomy, and the global sexual revolution. He has received multiple fellowships and grants, including Fulbright awards, and is an affiliate faculty member of several interdisciplinary programs at UCSD. Fluent in multiple languages, he has taught and lectured internationally, fostering collaborations with students, scholars, activists, and artists to explore and shape histories related to gender, sexuality, and postcolonial studies.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Gender studies
• Philosophy
• Art
• History

Selected publications

• Investigation of long-term storage of space materials for future constellation missions: study of Braycote^® 601 EF lubricant

  IOP Conference Series Materials Science and Engineering · 2023-08-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The long-term storage (LTS) of space materials is becoming more and more critical for the next missions. For instance, for MTG (Meteosat Third Generation) mission, 5-year assemble, integration and testing (AIT) time on ground, up to 17.5-year storage for recurring models plus at least 8.5 years in orbit operation are planned. Hence, a good understanding of materials’ aging properties is desirable to ensure that materials’ specifications are still suitable after LTS, and, eventually, to anticipate the potential non-conformities. For this purpose, the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) is investigating these problematics thanks to its wide capabilities from aging with environmental, climatic and vacuum chambers up to physico-chemical characterizations by numerous instruments such as microscopes, spectroscopes, thermal, mechanical or electrical analyzers. An overview is presented herein through the study of a fluorinated based grease lubricant named Braycote ® 601EF widely used in mechanisms in space sector such as the US space shuttles actuator or the basic end effectors of The European Robotic Arm.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Queer Korea

  Duke University Press eBooks · 2020 · 6 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Sociology
  • Gender studies
  PublisherDOI

• 6. Queer Lives as Cautionary Tales: Female Homoeroticism and the Heteropatriarchal Imagination of Authoritarian South Korea

  2020-12-31

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Only history, material conditions, and context can account for the specific content of gay kinship ideologies, their emergence at a par tic u lar point in time, and the variety of ways people have implemented those ideologies in their daily lives.-Kath Weston, Families We Choose S ince the turn of the century, South Korean filmmakers, visual artists, and other creators of alternative culture have worked to overturn derogatory and exploitative repre sen ta tions of sexual minorities, whose lives remain largely missing from historical accounts of their country's modernity.1 Aligned to varying degrees with lgbti activism, these intrepid self-expressions followed in the wake of more than four de cades of military dictatorships and drew on the fruits of labor and antigovernment protests that ebbed and flowed across this tempestuous period. 2 Like many authoritarian regimes during the Cold War, South Korean leaders prioritized national defense and capital accumulation while subordinating the working classes,

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Queer Lives as Cautionary Tales

  Duke University Press eBooks · 2020 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • History
  • Art
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Duke University Press eBooks · 2020 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Philosophy
  PublisherDOI

• QUEER LIVES AS CAUTIONARY TALES:

  2020-02-21

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction Queer Korea: Toward a Field of Engagement

  2020-12-31

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 3. Material Assimilation: Colonial Expositions on the Kyŏngbok Palace Grounds

  2019-05-07

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Assimilating Seoul

  2019-05-07

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Assimilating Seoul , the first book-length study written in English about Seoul during the colonial period, challenges conventional nationalist paradigms by revealing the intersection of Korean and Japanese history in this important capital. Through microhistories of Shinto festivals, industrial expositions, and sanitation campaigns, Todd A. Henry offers a transnational account that treats the city’s public spaces as "contact zones," showing how residents negotiated pressures to become loyal, industrious, and hygienic subjects of the Japanese empire. Unlike previous, top-down analyses, this ethnographic history investigates modalities of Japanese rule as experienced from below. Although the colonial state set ambitious goals for the integration of Koreans, Japanese settler elites and lower-class expatriates shaped the speed and direction of assimilation by bending government initiatives to their own interests and identities. Meanwhile, Korean men and women of different classes and generations rearticulated the terms and degree of their incorporation into a multiethnic polity. Assimilating Seoul captures these fascinating responses to an empire that used the lure of empowerment to disguise the reality of alienation.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction. Assimilation and Space: Toward an Ethnography of Japanese Rule

  2019-05-07

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• King King

  2 shared

• Helen Hok‐Sze Leung

  1 shared

• Małgorzata Hołyńska

  1 shared

• Joseph M. Mellichamp

  University of Alabama

  1 shared

• David M. Miller

  United States Geological Survey

  1 shared

• Howard Chiang

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  1 shared

• King

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Sejong Book Prize in History (2020)
• Fulbright grants (Kyoto University, 2004-2005; Hanyang and E…
• Korea Foundation Fellowships (Seoul National University, 200…
• Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies Fellowship (2019)
• East-West Center Fellowship (2024)