Nam Lee received her B.A. in Korean Language and Literature from Seoul National University, Korea, and her M.A. and Ph.D in Critical Studies from USC School of Cinematic Arts. Prior to joining the academia, she worked as a film critics and journalist in Seoul, South Korea, writing film reviews and feature articles on Korean film industry. Her scholarship is grounded in the socio-historical analysis of contemporary Korean cinema, authorship in the 21st global cinema, and women’s filmmaking. She is the author of The Films of Bong Joon Ho (Rutgers University Press, 2020). Her current research trajectory is oriented toward examining the ideologies of the “feminine,” especially as it intersects with portrayals of motherhood and the nuances of aging femininity in cinematic representations. Her recent publications include essays and book chapters on Korean cinema in the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, Rediscovering Korean Cinema (University of Michigan Press, 2019) and East Asian Remake (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).
Lee has taught a range of courses at Dodge College since 2008 including Korean Cinema, East Asian Cinema, French New Wave Cinema, Video Essay Workshop, and the graduate seminars Film and Critical Theory and Survey of World Cinema. She has also taught the Thesis Workshop in the Film and Media Studies MA program. Additionally, she has been the chair of more than 50 MA in Film and Media Studies Thesis Committees.
She curated and organized three editions of the Busan West Asian Film Festival on campus with Korean directors Park Chan-wook (2009), Bong Joon Ho (2011) and Kim Jee-woon (2013) as the main guest filmmakers. For her class “Korean Cinema Today,” she has collaborated with the Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles, to bring prominent Korean filmmakers to Chapman. Notable guests include directors Ryoo Seung-wan, Jung July and Yoon Ga-eun; producer Shim Jae Myung; cinematographer Kim Hyung-koo; production designer Shim Bo-kyoung, and singer-songwriter Jeong Ji-hoon, among others.
Lee was awarded the Chapman’s Pedagogical Innovation Grant Award in 2023 for her course “Video Essay Workshop." Her collaborative efforts were acknowledged in 2022 with a co-teaching award for the course “Representation of Motherhood in Contemporary Literature and Film,” conceived for the Motherhood to motherhoods: Ideologies of the ‘Feminine’ conference, which she co-organized in April 2023. She was also the recipient of the Chapman University Unit Faculty Excellence Award (2021) and Diversity & Inclusion Educational Curricular Innovation Award (2017).