Amy Brandzel and Jigna Desai
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037832
- eISBN:
- 9780252095955
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037832.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter looks at Seung-Hui Cho and the violence at Virginia Tech to critically interrogate Asian American masculinity and racial formations in relation to contemporary postracial discourses in ...
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This chapter looks at Seung-Hui Cho and the violence at Virginia Tech to critically interrogate Asian American masculinity and racial formations in relation to contemporary postracial discourses in the American South since 9/11. On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho killed thirty-two people on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. The media soon dubbed the event the “deadliest shooting rampage in American history,” and news coverage was inundated with uncovering the “madness at Virginia Tech.” What stood out beyond the numbers of murdered individuals in a “school shooting” was the shooter himself, a Korean American whose identity and location as “alien-other” marked him as always already suspicious, dangerous, and outside. The chapter then analyzes the important ways in which Seung-Hui Cho was simultaneously racially othered as an Asian immigrant alien and whitened as disenfranchised male youth.Less
This chapter looks at Seung-Hui Cho and the violence at Virginia Tech to critically interrogate Asian American masculinity and racial formations in relation to contemporary postracial discourses in the American South since 9/11. On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho killed thirty-two people on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. The media soon dubbed the event the “deadliest shooting rampage in American history,” and news coverage was inundated with uncovering the “madness at Virginia Tech.” What stood out beyond the numbers of murdered individuals in a “school shooting” was the shooter himself, a Korean American whose identity and location as “alien-other” marked him as always already suspicious, dangerous, and outside. The chapter then analyzes the important ways in which Seung-Hui Cho was simultaneously racially othered as an Asian immigrant alien and whitened as disenfranchised male youth.
Grace Y. Kao
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780520271654
- eISBN:
- 9780520951532
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520271654.003.0011
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter presents the case of Seung-Hui Cho, who had killed thirty-two of his fellow students and faculty at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University before he took his own life. It ...
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This chapter presents the case of Seung-Hui Cho, who had killed thirty-two of his fellow students and faculty at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University before he took his own life. It examines the religious significance attributed to the killer's motives, such as certain jeremiadic attempts to identify the root cause of the suicide-shootings and the ritualized expressions of public mourning and solidarity across the school. His case became central to ongoing debates in American society about religion and its relationship to violence, in that some people blamed religion for having caused the shooting rampage while others appealed to religion to explain and even justify the killing.Less
This chapter presents the case of Seung-Hui Cho, who had killed thirty-two of his fellow students and faculty at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University before he took his own life. It examines the religious significance attributed to the killer's motives, such as certain jeremiadic attempts to identify the root cause of the suicide-shootings and the ritualized expressions of public mourning and solidarity across the school. His case became central to ongoing debates in American society about religion and its relationship to violence, in that some people blamed religion for having caused the shooting rampage while others appealed to religion to explain and even justify the killing.
