Gunha Kim

Gunha studies the gendered notions of death in twentieth-century Iran by engaging with themes such as martyrdom, suicide, necropolitics, and masculinity. Through this study, he intends to construct the study of the "modernity of death" by incorporating previously disparate pathological studies of suicide and religiopolitical studies of martyrdom. In the course of his studies, he aims to highlight its embedded gendered quality, attentive to the higher tendency of suicide among men and the masculine embodiment of martyrdom in the revolutionary and post-revolutionary Iranian context.

His B.A. thesis, “On Imperfect Rationality in Diplomacy: Evaluation of Iran’s negotiation tactics during 2013-2015 Eu3+3 nuclear negotiation,” won the best paper award in his International Relations major, and his article “Blood, History, and Soil: Strategy of Iranian Jewish Diaspora in the United States,” won 2nd place in 3rd Middle Eastern Studies Student Paper Contest held by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea. He was given multiple scholarships, including a full tuition scholarship and stipends during his B.A. studies and overseas language training funding by the Center for Central Eurasian Studies at Seoul National University. Very Recently, he won the Dalsoon Memorial Scholarship from the Korean Canadian Scholarship Foundation.

Since October 2021, Gunha has been part of the Tavakoli Archive. He has also been involved with Cinema Iranica, an encyclopedic project on the Iranian Cinema.

Education

• M.A. in West Asian Languages and Civilizations, Seoul National University
• B.A. in West Asian Languages and Civilizations & International Relations, Seoul National University

Current Supervisor(s)

Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi

Dissertation Title

Between Martyrdom and Suicide: Gendered and Scientific History of Death in Modern Iran (Tentative)

Publications

• "Iranian Masculinities: Analysis of Changing Islamic Masculinity Found in the Martyrdom Discourse of Ali Shariati and Morteza Avini." MA diss., Seoul National University, 2021. https://hdl.handle.net/10371/177860.
• "Construction of Iranian Jewish Diaspora in United States Examined by Shofar Magazine." Paper presented at Spring Conference of Korean Association of Middle East Studies, Yongin, Korea, 27 April 2019 (presented in Korean).
• Han, Sang Gyu, Kim, Gun Ha, Woo, Hye Jin, Yoon, Hye Yeon, & Jung, Jae Hun. "Legislative Watch and Citizen Politics." in Citizen Politics of Gwanak: Six Cases Studied by Students, Local Residents, and Civil Servants, edited by Euiyoung Kim, 219-271. Seoul: Purungil, 2018 (published in Korean).
• Kim, Euiyoung, Sang Gyu Han, Gun Ha Kim, Hye Jin Woo, Hye Yeon Yoon, & Jae Hun Jung. "Legislative Watchdog at the Local Level: Case of Gwanak People’s Solidarity." Journal of Korean Politics 26, no. 3 (2017): 243-275 (published in Korean).

Presentations

• “Iranian Martyrdom: Embedded Masculinity in the Discourse of Ali Shariati and Morteza Avini.” Paper virtually presented at Asian University Alliance Conference 2021, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, 20-21 February 2021, Thailand.