Ungsan Kim is Assistant Professor of Asian Cinema in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature with adjunct appointment in Cinema and Media Studies. His research and teaching focus on queer cinema and media cultures of Asia, Korean cinema, inter-Asian cinema, experimental cinema, and genre films. His current book project, Future Imperfect, historicizes the pan-Asian emergence of innovative queer cinema, while also theorizing the temporal politics in such films. His next project highlights the chrono-topology of Asian horror genre films. Prior to joining the University of Washington, he was a postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor at the University of Michigan.

His project is a book-length research that historicizes and theorizes the emergence and proliferation of critical queer Asian cinema since the 1990s. Tackling the primacy of the national cinema paradigm, he situates queer Asian cinema as an intra-Asian cultural movement. He also argues that an intra-Asian network of vibrant queer filmmaking and the critique of progressive and heteronormative national temporality in times of national and international crises engendered a highly innovative and politically engaging cinema.