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Korean Studies at a Glance

In the field of Korean Studies, recent Columbia graduates have made remarkable accomplishments in the job market. The most recent good news is that Jae Won Chung, who is a seventh year in modern Korean literature, got a job from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

According to Jae Won, he has been having a solid stretch of time to focus on research and writing to wrap up his dissertation. “A few weeks ago, I made some eye-catching course posters to publicize Korea-related classes I’ll be teaching in Boulder next fall. It’s exciting to have the opportunity to set up your own shop after years of graduate training. I feel very lucky to have had such a wonderful and talented group of faculty and peers at Columbia to prepare me for this next step,” Jae Won said.

For the past five years, five people received doctorates in Korean history and literature, and all of them were successfully positioned in the academic world. For instance, Ksenia Chizhova obtained a tenure-track position at Princeton University, and Mi-Ryong Shim took a tenure-track position at Northwestern University. In addition, there is a lot of good news from the graduates this year. Jisoo Kim, who is in the class of 2010, has received tenure at George Washington University, as well as having been awarded the 2017 James B. Palais Prize for her book The Emotions of Justice: Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Choson Korea. Charles Kim, who graduated with the class of 2007, also received tenure in the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Harrison Cheehyung Kim, a class of 2010, is going to move from the University of Missouri where he has been teaching to the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Hwisang Cho has obtained a tenure-track position at Xavier University in Cincinnati. Furthermore, Sixiang Wang, from the class of 2015, has settled at Stanford University as Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities; Jonathan Kief, from the class of 2016, has received a postdoctoral fellowship from University of Southern California, following a postdoctoral fellowship at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Below is the graphic to show where Columbia graduates in Korean Studies are.

 

Eunsung Cho

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Graduate Students Meet with ChinaFile’s Jonathan Landreth

On Friday, April 14th, a handful of EALAC graduate students joined members of the journalism school for a conversation on scholarly journalism with ChinaFile’s Managing Editor, Jonathan Landreth. As new media on China proliferates, contributing voices to the public conversation on China have grown as well. Workshop participants considered how the academic community could best participate in this evolving public conversation, and the burgeoning interest in China that this discourse reflects. Landreth encouraged attendees to produce work for the readers who comprise this curious, informed public. What, he probed, does your research reveal about the way China understands itself? Scholars and experts are also welcome to contribute to ChinaFile (http://www.chinafile.com). Each week, the online magazine, which is published by the Asia Society, hosts a conversation on a topic of broad interest by soliciting short opinion pieces from its diverse community of readers. Recent topics have included the fate of democracy in Hong Kong, the relationship between China’s imperial past and its present-day foreign policy, and Ivanka Trump’s role as a U.S.-China emissary. These exciting, productive conversations are a timely reminder to members of the academy that we can be valuable partners in this ongoing public discourse on China, and that public-facing efforts are worth our time.

This event, organized by Ph.D. candidate Chris Chang, was the second installation in a pair of spring workshops focused on the theme of public humanities. The first workshop, organized by Ph.D. candidate Allison Bernard, was a forum for sharing resources on public scholarship. Both workshops received support from the Center for Teaching and Learning as part of the Lead Teaching Fellows program.

Allison Bernard

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Comparative Postwars: Japan, Germany, and Elsewhere

By: Michelle L. Hauk (January 2016)

On Friday, October 21st, students, faculty, researchers, and members of the public packed room 918 in the International Affairs Building at Columbia University. Staff at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute had filled the tiny T-shaped room with as many chairs as could fit in anticipation of a big event that it co-sponsored with EALAC and the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture. “Comparative Postwars: Japan, Germany, and Elsewhere,” promised a riveting evening of postwar films, followed by stimulating panel discussions the next day. This event is a part of a longstanding tradition at Columbia University that dates back to 1989, when Carol Gluck, and later Gregory Pflugfelder, began working with Narita Ryuichi of the Japan Women’s University to plan programs every fall at Columbia University that engage a diverse range of scholars from across disciplines in Japan and the United States.
At 5:00 pm sharp, the room went dark and Oshima Nagisa’s 1971 film Ceremony (Gishiki) began. The film followed the slow and surreal unraveling of a family in postwar Japan, touching on themes of tradition, change, memory, and regret. After a break, the group reconvened for a second film, the Marriage of Maria Braun (Die Ehe der Maria Braun) directed by Rainer Fassbinder in 1979. This tragic story recounted one woman’s persistent love for a husband lost first to war and later to prison as she remakes her life in postwar Germany.
On Saturday, two panels stimulated conversation about the films and about the postwar period in Japan and Germany. In the morning, Saito Ayako of Meiji Gakuin University opened a panel discussion on “Post Wars in Film: Japan and Germany” with a comparative analysis of Ceremony (Gishiki) and Marriage of Maria Braun (Die Ehe der Maria Braun). Following her presentation, Tsuboi Hideto of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies and Ko Youngran of Nihon University joined her in a discussion moderated by Gregory Pflugfelder.
In the afternoon, Iwasaki Minoru of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Franziska Seraphim of Boston College, Osa Shizue of Kobe University, Watanabe Naoki of Musashi University, and Henry Rousso of Columbia University and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique joined together in a panel titled “Comparative Postwars: Remembering and Forgetting.” In this discussion, moderated by Paul Kreitman, questions of the changing legacy of World War II in Germany, Japan, and France explored how wartime experience was remembered, forgotten, and rewritten in the postwar period. Taken together, the films and conversations shared at the “Comparative Postwars: Japan, Germany, and Elsewhere” conference offered new perspectives on the role the legacy of World War II played in shaping personal experience and national memory in postwar Japan and Germany.

EVENTS
Friday, October 21
FILM SCREENINGS
5:00-7:00 PM Ceremony (Gishiki), Oshima Nagisa, 1971
7:00-8:00 PM Pizza Supper
8:00-10:00 PM Marriage of Maria Braun (Die Ehe der Maria Braun), Rainer Fassbinder, 1979

Saturday, October 22
WORKSHOP
11:00 AM-1:00 PM “Post Wars in Film: Japan and Germany”
1:00-2:30 PM Lunch
3:00-5:00 PM “Comparative Postwars: Remembering and Forgetting”

PARTICIPANTS & GUESTS
Saito Ayako, Meiji Gakuin University
Narita Ryuichi, Japan Women’s University
Yoshihara Yukari, Tsukuba University
Hideto Tsuboi, International Research Center for Japanese Studies
Iwasaki Minoru, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Youngran Ko, Nihon University
Osa Shizue, Kobe University
Naoki Watanabe, Musashi University
Franziska Seraphim, Boston College
Henry Rousso, Columbia University/Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Carol Gluck, Columbia University
Paul Kreitman, Columbia University
Gregory Pflugfelder, Columbia University

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