Korean Studies in the Global Humanities: A Roundtable Discussion

Participants:

• Stephen Choi, Columbia University [Initials SC]

• Kira Donnell, University of California, Berkeley [Initials KD]

• Theodore Hughes, Columbia University [Initials TH]

• Albert L. Park, Claremont McKenna College [Initials ALP]

• Alyssa Park, University of Iowa [Initials AP]

• Evelyn Shih, University of Colorado [Initials ES]

• Serk-Bae Suh, University of California, Irvine [Initials SBS]

• Moderated by Christina Yi, University of British Columbia [Initials CY]

INTRODUCTIONS

Theodore Hughes:

I'd like to welcome everybody. My name is Ted Hughes and I teach Korean literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Welcome to this event, which is entitled "Korean Studies in the Global Humanities: A Roundtable Discussion."

We have an exciting group of scholars working across disciplines and also doing transnational work. I would like to welcome you here today to share ideas about Korean studies. One thing I did want to say is that there should be a bunch of scare quotes up there in the title. We're not taking "Korean studies" at face value and we're certainly not taking this rather vague, amorphous notion of "global humanities" as a given either. I hope we can put them into conversation with each other and rework them or dispense with them, wherever the conversation leads. So with that, I will turn it over to our moderator, Professor Christina Yi.

Christina Yi:

Thank you, Professor Hughes. My name is Christina Yi, and I am an assistant professor of modern Japanese literature at the University of British Columbia. I will be moderating this event. On behalf of the participants, I would like to begin by thanking the Center for Korean Research, also the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, the Academy of Korean Studies, and the EALAC department for making such an exciting event possible. Before we start, I would like for everybody to briefly introduce yourselves. To add to my own introduction, I work on Japanese-language cultural production in modern Japan and Korea, with particular interest in issues of coloniality and language politics.

Alyssa Park:

Alyssa Park, assistant professor of Korean history at the University of Iowa. I've just finished my project on migrants and the borderlands of Korea, which extended into North China and Russia at the turn of the twentieth century.

Kira Donnell:

My name is Kira Donnell, I'm a PhD candidate in ethnic studies at UC Berkeley and also a lecturer in the Asian American studies department at San Francisco State University. My research looks at representations of transnational Korean adoptees in American and South Korean media.

Albert L. Park:

My name is Albert L. Park. I'm from Claremont McKenna College of the Claremont Colleges. I'm in the Department of History and my current project is on environmentalism in modern Korea and its connection to anarchism.

Evelyn Shih:

Hi, my name is Evelyn Shih and I am teaching at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in Modern Chinese. I'm working on my manuscript right now, that compares Cold War comic culture in Taiwan and South Korea.

Serk-Bae Suh:

Hello, I'm Serk-Bae Suh. I teach Korean literature at the University of California, Irvine. A book I coedited is forthcoming from the University of Washington on the political death and sacrifice. And that is the topic of my second book project as well. I'm examining 1970s and 80s South Korean literature with a focus on the theme of sacrifice and utility.

Stephen Choi:

My name is Stephen Choi. I'm a second-year PhD student here at Columbia, focusing on modern Japanese literature with children's culture and literature in mind. I am also looking to branch out into the colonies such as Korea, Taiwan, and Manchuria.

THE QUESTION OF CLAIM

CY:

Thank you, all. As we've just heard, we have a very diverse group of scholars working in a variety of different fields and disciplines, who are nonetheless still connected by Korea—a term that often operates as a site of knowledge production as in the Asian studies or...