Category: Soh Jaipil Lecture Series

Soh Jaipil Lecture Series
How to Claim a Migrant:
Koreans and Transnational History
at the Border of Korea, Russia, and China

Speaker

Alyssa Park
Associate Professor of History
University of Iowa

Moderator

Gregg A. Brazinsky
Deputy Director
George Washington University

Date & Time

Wednesday, February 10, 2021
3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time

Virtual Event via Zoom

This event will not be recorded.

Event Description

In the late nineteenth century, Koreans suddenly began to cross the border to Russia and China by the thousands.  Their continuous mobility and settlement in the tripartite borderland made them an enduring topic of dispute between multiple countries (Korea, Russia, China, and Japan), and prompted a host of questions that concerned fundamental questions about states’ governance over people: Which country had the right to exercise authority over mobile people and where?  Who possessed the right to control their movements?  This talk brings the global phenomena of mobility and bordermaking into the microspace of Korea’s borderlands—specifically, the Maritime, the Russian side of a newly delineated border.  Moving away from scholarly debates centering on disputes over territory, this talk focuses on contests over people.  It examines why Koreans moved, what officials thought of them, and how they attempted to claim Koreans in their own states.  It also illuminates questions that emerge from engaging in transnational history projects in the East Asia and Russia contexts.  The talk draws from Alyssa Park’s book, Sovereignty Experiments: Korean Migrants and the Building of Borders in Northeast Asia, 1860-1945.

 

Speaker

Alyssa Park is Associate Professor of History at the University of Iowa.  Her research focuses on migration, borderlands, and transnational history in Korea and northeast Asia, including Russia.  Her work has been supported by numerous fellowships, including ACLS/Mellon, Korea Foundation, and the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center.  She published the book Sovereignty Experiments: Korean Migrants and the Building of Borders in Northeast Asia, 1860-1945 (Cornell University Press, 2019).  Dr. Park received her A.B. from Princeton University and Ph.D. from Columbia University.

 

Moderator

Gregg A. Brazinsky is Professor of History and International Affairs and Deputy Director of GW Institute for Korean Studies. His research seeks to understand the diverse and multi-faceted interactions among East Asian states and between Asia and the United States. He is the author of Nation Building in South Korea: Koreans, Americans, and the Making of a Democracy (University of North Carolina Press, 2007) and Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). He served as Interim Director of the GW Institute for Korean Studies during the Spring 2017 semester.

The GW Institute for Korean Studies & Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program Present:

Lecture Series

“Baby Miles”: Reproductive Rights, Labor, and Ethics
in the Transnational Korean Reproductive Technology Industry

 

Speaker

Sunhye Kim, Assistant Research Professor of International Affairs and Postdoctoral Fellow, GW Institute for Korean Studies

Moderator

    Jisoo M. Kim, Director, GW Institute for Korean Studies

Date & Time

Wednesday, January 20, 2020
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Location

Room 505, Elliott School of International Affairs,
the George Washington University, 1957 E Street, NW, Washington, DC 20052

Event Description

This research project examines the transnational circuits of the assisted reproductive technology (ART) industry in South Korea to demonstrate how the concepts of reproductive rights and labor have been contested, negotiated, and reconstructed by various actors—including infertile couples, gamete donors, gestational surrogates, state agents, and medical professionals—across national boundaries. This study envisions reproductive ethics as part of a transnational feminist agenda by examining the ethical issues raised by the complicated relationships between intended parents and gamete donors/gestational surrogates. Drawing on three years of multi-sited ethnographic research conducted in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Ukraine, this project disputes the unilateral understanding of ART, which is typically conceptualized as having a unidirectional flow from the “West” to Asia, by focusing on the complex relations between Korean intended parents and non-Korean gamete providers and gestational surrogates.

Speaker

Sunhye Kim is Assistant Research Professor of International Affairs and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Korean Studies at GW. Her research and teaching focus on the politics of human (re)production, technology and gender, family and labor, cross-border medical tourism, and qualitative methods. She is also interested in Korean women’s movements and transnational feminism. She has published several journal articles and book chapters in English and Korean related to population policy, biomedical technology, and reproductive justice movement in English and Korean. She received her Ph.D. in the Department of Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland and earned her M.A. and B.A. in the Department of Sociology at Yonsei University. She is currently working on a book manuscript that examines how the concepts of reproductive rights and labor have been contested and negotiated by various actors—including infertile couples, gamete donors/gestational surrogates, state agents, and medical professionals—across national boundaries.

Moderator

Jisoo M. Kim is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of History, International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Literatures and Director of the Institute for Korean Studies at GW. She received her Ph.D. in Korean History from Columbia University. She is a specialist in gender and legal history of early modern Korea. Her broader research interests include gender and sexuality, crime and justice, forensic medicine, literary representations of the law, history of emotions, vernacular, and gender writing. She is the author of The Emotions of Justice: Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Chosŏn Korea (University of Washington Press, 2015), which was awarded the 2017 James Palais Prize of the Association for Asian Studies. She is also the co-editor of The Great East Asian War and the Birth of the Korean Nation by JaHyun Kim Haboush (Columbia University Press, 2016). She is currently working on two book projects titled Suspicious Deaths: Forensic Medicine, Dead Bodies, and Criminal Justice in Chosŏn Korea and Sexual Desire and Gendered Subjects: Decriminalization of Adultery Law in Korean History.

GWIKS Lecture Series
“Curative Violence:
How to Inhabit the Time Machine with Disability”

Photograph by Park Young Sook,
The Madwomen Project: A Flower Shakes Her (2005)
Description of image:
A woman wearing a blue shirt and navy pants is lying on a bed of pink wildflower in bloom,
with her eyes closed and a slight smile on her face.

 

Speaker
Eunjung Kim
Associate Professor, Syracuse University

Date & Time
Thursday, September 19, 2019
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Location
Room 505
Elliott School of International Affairs, the George Washington University
1957 E Street, NW, Washington, DC 20052

Event Description

Presenting from her book, Curative Violence (2017), Kim will examine a direct link between cure and violence that appears in the representations of disability and Cold War imperialism in South Korea. She explores the notion of “folded time” in which the present disappears through the imperative of cure in the case of Hansen’s disease care. By thinking about the imperative of cure as a time machine that seeks to take us to the past and to the future by universalizing disability experiences and denying coevalness, Kim explores the possibility of inhabiting in the present with disability and illness. While calling attention to the transnational construction of disability under militarism and imperialism, Kim argues that the possibility of life with disability that is free from violence depends on the creation of a space and time where cure is understood as a negotiation rather than a necessity. In addition, Kim will introduce her work in progress on “necro-activism,” emerging in the form of persistent involvements of dead bodies and presences-other-than-human as important agents for making claims for justice.

Speaker

Eunjung Kim, Associate Professor, Syracuse University
Eunjung Kim is Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies and Disability Studies Program at Syracuse University. Her book, Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disabiity, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea (Duke University Press, 2017) received Alison Piepmeier Award from the National Women’s Studies Association and the James B. Palais Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. Her work also appeared in several journals and anthologies, such as GLQ, Disability & Society, Sexualities, Catalyst, Intersectionality and Beyond, Against Health, and Asexualities.

 

Moderator

Moderator: Jisoo M. Kim, GW Institute for Korean Studies
Jisoo M. Kim is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of History, International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Literatures and Director of the Institute for Korean Studies at GW. She received her Ph.D. in Korean History from Columbia University. She is a specialist in gender and legal history of early modern Korea. Her broader research interests include gender and sexuality, crime and justice, forensic medicine, literary representations of the law, history of emotions, vernacular, and gender writing. She is the author of The Emotions of Justice: Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Chosŏn Korea (University of Washington Press, 2015), which was awarded the 2017 James Palais Prize of the Association for Asian Studies. She is also the co-editor of The Great East Asian War and the Birth of the Korean Nation by JaHyun Kim Haboush (Columbia University Press, 2016). She is currently working on two book projects titled Suspicious Deaths: Forensic Medicine, Dead Bodies, and Criminal Justice in Chosŏn Korea and Sexual Desire and Gendered Subjects: Decriminalization of Adultery Law in Korean History.

 

Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) service will be provided
Light refreshments will be served
This event is on the record and open to the public
Please RSVP online at https://go.gwu.edu/gwiks919

                                                                                                                                          

 

The Institute for Korean Studies
and
The Latin American & Hemispheric Studies Program
Present:

Lecture Series, “Korean Women, Argentine Documentaries:
A Look at La chica del sur (2012) and Una canción coreana (2014)”

 

Speaker
Chisu Teresa Ko, Associate Professor of Spanish, Ursinus College

Date & Time
Thursday, April 25, 2019, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Venue
503 Conference Room
Elliott School of International Affairs, the George Washington University
1957 E Street, NW, Washington, DC 20052

 

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◊ Event Description

This talk examines two recent Argentine documentaries focused on Korean women. La chica del sur (The Girl from the South, 2012) by José Luis García features the iconic South Korean student activist, Lim Su Kyung, who shocked the world in 1989 by visiting North Korea for the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students, a transgression for which she would be sentenced to five years in a South Korean prison. Una canción coreana (A Korean Song, 2014) by Yael Tujsnaider and Gustavo Tarrío sets out to depict the daily life of Ana Jung, a Korean immigrant in Buenos Aires, as she works on her artistic, business, and familial pursuits. While both women have “vocal” jobs and vocations—Lim is a politician and Jung a singer—the documentaries turn their attention to the ways their voices are silenced by gendered power structures or changing political discourses. This talk will take a close look at how these two Korean women are documented and imagined from the Argentine perspective. Furthermore, given that representations of Koreans in Argentina have been scarce and often negative, this talk also attempts to understand the ‘why’ and ‘why now’ of these two documentaries.

 

◊ Speaker

Chisu Teresa Ko, Ursinus College

Chisu Teresa Ko is Associate Professor of Spanish and Coordinator of the Latin American at Ursinus College. She specializes in Argentine cultural and racial studies with an emphasis on Asian Argentines. Her work on Argentine multiculturalism, Orientalism, and the place of Asians in Argentine cultural production has appeared in a wide range of scholarly venues. She is currently working on a book project titled Argentina: Race in a Raceless Nation.

 

 

 

◊ Moderator

Moderator: Jisoo M. Kim, GW Institute for Korean Studies

Jisoo M. Kim is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of History, International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Literatures and Director of the Institute for Korean Studies at GW. She received her Ph.D. in Korean History from Columbia University. She is a specialist in gender and legal history of early modern Korea. Her broader research interests include gender and sexuality, crime and justice, forensic medicine, literary representations of the law, history of emotions, vernacular, and gender writing. She is the author of The Emotions of Justice: Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Chosŏn Korea (University of Washington Press, 2015), which was awarded the 2017 James Palais Prize of the Association for Asian Studies. She is also the co-editor of The Great East Asian War and the Birth of the Korean Nation by JaHyun Kim Haboush (Columbia University Press, 2016). She is currently working on a new book project titled Suspicious Deaths: Forensic Medicine, Dead Bodies, and Criminal Justice in Chosŏn Korea.

 

 

 

This event is on the record and open to the media.

GWIKS Lecture Series

“Paintings, Songs, and Board Games: Travels to Kŭmgangsan in Late Chosŏn Korea (1600-1900)”

 

 

Speaker: Maya Stiller, University of Kansas

Moderator:  Jisoo M. Kim, GW Institute for Korean Studies

 

Thursday, March 7, 2019, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Elliott School of International Affairs Room 505, the George Washington University

1957 E Street NW, Washington, DC 20052

 

◊ Description

Kŭmgangsan, also known as the Diamond Mountains, has a vibrant and rich history as one of the most famous mountains in Korea. In the late Chosŏn period, sophisticated knowledge about the mountain was a prerequisite to being considered cultured. Therefore, (aspiring) elite groups used a variety of virtual options such as travel accounts, folding screens, board games and songs to travel to the mountain and acquire knowledge about Kŭmgangsan. These forms of virtual travel have an organizing principle in common that reveals pre-modern understandings of the arrangement of places and their histories to optimize the memorization of important cultural sites. Combining the study of visual, literary, sonic, and haptic dimensions of Kŭmgangsan, this research complements previous art history scholarship which focused primarily on the mountain’s depiction in landscape paintings.

 

Speaker:  Maya Stiller, University of Kansas

 Maya Stiller is Assistant Professor of Korean Art and Visual Culture at the University of Kansas. From 2015 until 2018, she was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Department of Art History and Architecture and a fellow at Harvard University’s Korea Institute. As an art historian with an interdisciplinary approach, Maya Stiller explores the visual cultures of Chosŏn period (1392-1910) Korea. Her article “The Politics of Commemoration: Patronage of Monk-General Shrines in Late Chosŏn Korea” was published in The Journal of Asian Studies in 2018. An article entitled “Slaves, Village Headmen, and Aristocrats: Patronage and Functions of Buddhist Sculpture Burials in Pre-Twentieth Century Korea” is scheduled for publication in Cahiers d’Extreme-Asie in 2019. Maya Stiller’s research projects have received support from the ACLS/Robert Ho Family Foundation, Harvard University’s Korea Institute and the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies at Seoul National University.

 

Moderator: Jisoo M. Kim, GW Institute for Korean Studies

Jisoo M. Kim is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of History, International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Literatures and Director of the Institute for Korean Studies at GW. She received her Ph.D. in Korean History from Columbia University. She is a specialist in gender and legal history of early modern Korea. She is the author of The Emotions of Justice: Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Chosŏn Korea (University of Washington Press, 2015), which was awarded the 2017 James Palais Prize of the Association for Asian Studies. She is also the co-editor of The Great East Asian War and the Birth of the Korean Nation by JaHyun Kim Haboush (Columbia University Press, 2016).

 

This event is on the record and open to the media.

Lecture Series with Eunkyung Kim

 

“Democratization and Gender in Postcolonial South Korea”

1957 E St. NW, Room 505, Washington, DC 20052

 

South Korea achieved rapid economic development and democratization. On the one hand, Korean democracy seems to have taken root and stabilized. On the other hand, it is the case that hate speech and violence against women and sexual minorities are increasing. Dr. Kim questions what democratization means for women in contemporary South Korea. She explores its historical trajectory focusing on the new civil code that has gender discriminatory characteristics in postcolonial South Korea.

 

Speaker

Eunkyung Kim

Eunkyung Kim is Research Professor of Research Institute of Asian Women at Sookmyung Women’s University and Administrative Director of Korean Association of Women’s History. Her research focuses on the issues of gender, sexuality, family, and cultural history of cinema in South Korea. She is the author of Cultural History of Korean Students: From Liberation to the 1960 April Revolution (Seohaemunjip, 2018).

 

Moderator

Celeste Arrington

 

Celeste L. Arrington is Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University. She specializes in comparative politics, with a regional focus on the Koreas and Japan. Her research and teaching focus on law and social movements, the politics of redress, the media, litigation, lawyers, policy-making processes, historical justice, North Korean human rights, and qualitative methods. She is also interested in the international relations and security of Northeast Asia and transnational activism. She is the author ofAccidental Activists: Victims and Government Accountability in South Korea and Japan (2016) and has published in the Comparative Political Studies, Law & Society Review, Journal of East Asian Studies, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, and the Washington Post, among others. She received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and an A.B. from Princeton University. She is currently writing a book that analyzes the role of lawyers and legal activism in Japanese and Korean policies related to persons with disabilities and tobacco control.