Early Modern

Dorothy Ko

Dorothy Ko

Professor of Chinese History

Office: Milstein 803
Office Hours: T 2-4 PM

Phone: (212) 854-9624
Email: dk2031@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Stanford University
MA: Stanford University
PhD: Stanford University

Classes Taught

HIST BC2861 Chinese Cultural History
HIST BC2865 Gender and Power in China
HIST BC3514 Historical Approaches to Feminist Questions
HIST BC3864 Feast and Famine: Food and Environment in Chinese History

Research Interests

History of China, Gender, History of science, technology and medicine

Professor Ko’s research interest is the everyday lives of women in China –along with the domestic objects they made by hand–as a significant part of country’s cultural, economic and political development. She works at the intersections of anthropology, history, and women’s studies. Ko’s 2005 book, Cinderella Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding, won the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize of the American Historical Association. Recently, she has been turning her attention to the skills of women’s artisans such as embroiderers, stone carvers, and ceramic artists. She is also co-editor of Women and Confucian Cultures in Pre-modern China, Korea, and Japan. Ko’s courses include Chinese cultural history, body histories, women and culture in 17th century China, and Confucian cultures.

Ko earned undergraduate and advanced degrees at Stanford University, including the doctorate. Her honors include lifetime memberships at the Academia Sinica and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2022 she served as the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North at the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress. She has received fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study (2000-2001), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2000-2001), the American Council of Learned Societies (2012-13), and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, among others. Before joining the Barnard faculty in 2001, Professor Ko taught at Rutgers University.

Selected Publications

The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China (Washington, 2017)

Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding (University of California, 2005)

Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-century China (Stanford, 1994)

Jungwon Kim

Jungwon Kim

King Sejong Associate Professor of Korean Studies

Office: 402 Kent Hall
Office Hours: T 4:00-6:00 pm
Email: jk3638@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: Harvard University (’07)

Classes Taught

ASCE UN1363 Introduction to East Asian Civilizations: Korea

HEAS W3862 The History of Korea to 1900

EAAS W4310 Narrating Premodern Korea

HSEA W4860 Culture and Society of Chosŏn Korea, 1392-1910

EAAS W4888 Women and Gender in Korean History

HSEA G8861 Colloquium on Korean History to 1900
EAAS UN3412 Conflict & Culture in Korean History
HSEA GR9860 Korean Historical Texts

Research Interests

Premodern Korean History; Legal History; Gender and Sexuality and Women’s Writing

Jungwon Kim is a historian specializing in premodern Korea, with a focus on the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392-1910). Her research examines gender and sexuality, law and justice, crime and punishment, ritual and emotion, women’s writings, and the history of knowledge. She is the author of Virtue That Matters: Chastity Culure and Social Power in Chosŏn Korea, 1392-1910 (Harvard University Press, 2025). Her other works include co-authoring Wrongful Death: Selected Inquest Records from Nineteenth-Century Korea (University of Washington Press, 2019). She also edited the special issue, “Archives, Archival Practices, and the Writing of History in Premodern Korea” (Journal of Korean Studies, 2019). Her articles have appeared in major journals, including Acta Koreana, Gender and History, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Women’s History, Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture, and Journal of Korean Studies. She is currently completing a book manuscript, tentatively titled Families in Trials: Local Courts and Legal Culture in Chosŏn Korea. She earned her PhD from Harvard University, previously taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton before coming to Columbia.

Selected Publications

“Inscribing Grievances, Litigation, and Local Community in Eighteenth-Century Korea,” Journal of Asian Studies 81.2 (2022)

Beyond Death: The Politics of Suicide and Martyrdom in Korean History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019), co-edited with Charles Kim, Hwasook Nam, and Serk-bae Suh.

“Between Morality and Crime: Filial Daughters and Vengeful Violence in Eighteenth Century Korea,” Acta Koreana (2018)

Wrongful Death: Selected Inquest Records from Nineteenth Century Korea (with Sun Joo Kim, Washington, 2014)

“You Must Avenge on My Behalf: Widow Chastity and Honor in Nineteenth-Century Korea”, Gender and History (2014)