Chengbao Seong-Bo Jin

Pronouns: they/he

Chengbao's research looks into the afterlives of colonial decimation and the refurbishment of late capitalism in different media forms. Their work asks how postcolonial transnationalism informs the landscapes of cultural artifacts. Through the lens of queer theory, critical ethnic studies and Indigenous studies, Chengbao's studies aim to unruly compare the uneven racialization and queer politics in the US and postcolonial East Asia. 

Chengbao, or Seong-Bo, which is their Korean name (They use their Korean name as the middle name to unapologetically accuse settler colonialism and their displaced identity, conspired by the Japanese colonization in the Korean Peninsula, American imperial occupation after the Korean War and ongoing cultural erasure and plunder by Han settlers). Chengbao is a Korean-Chinese transnational media studies scholar, activist, cultural worker and currently an MA student in Media Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies and American Studies at the University of Virginia. Animated by queer theory, critical ethnic studies, performance studies and media studies, and attentive to art historical inquiry to visuality and mediality, their primary works focus on the (historical) political economy of the Korean cultural industry, inter-Asian queer politics and the "arts" of queer activism and transcoloniality and transcolonialism across the Indigenous Pacific. Throughout their research, they ask about the impossibility of cultural recuperation in the aftermath of colonial decimation and the refurbishment of late capitalism. Their work attempts to historicize and archive the flash moments brought by brave queer feminist activists in East Asia to contemplate the democratic progress in the conjuncture of authority, postcoloniality and imperial shades.

Research areas: visual culture, queer activism and politics, postcolonialism and transcolonialism, transpacific Indigenous studies, Afro-Asian intimacy

Graduate Certificate Program: Gender and Sexuality Studies, American Studies

Education:

BA in Management, Yanbian University, Yanji, China, 2024

MA in Journalism and Communication, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China, 2025