The Cultural History of Korean Modernity
Michael Kim:
michael.kim@post.harvard.edu
017-398-7116
Thursdays: 4:00-7:00
The concept of modernity can elicit multiple definitions. Modernity may be equated
with industrialization and capitalism. Modernity may give rise to institutions of control
and distinct social forms of interaction like the public sphere and the nation-state.
Modernity may also provide a host of new individual and collective subjectivities that
emerge from the transformation of everyday modern life.
This course will examine the question of modernity in Korean history primarily from
the view of the cultural historian. The readings will focus on different theoretical
conceptions of modernity and examine their potential applicability to the Korean case.
Students will gain a more comprehensive view of the Korea’s encounter with modernity,
and they will be encouraged to engage modern Korean history from a globalist
perspective.
Course Requirements: Students will be required to attend all classes and participate in
class discussions. Students will give a short presentation on
their paper topics and submit a 10-15 page research paper that
applies some of the themes discussed in the class.
Grading for the course: Class Participation and Attendance: 40%
Paper Presentation: 20%
Final Paper (Double spaced, 10-15 pages): 40%
Week One: Introduction (3/3)
Week Two: The Practice of Cultural History (3/10)
Lynn Hunt, The New Cultural History, 1-22.
V. Bonnell and L. Hunt, Beyond the Culture Turn. 1-32.
Michel de Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, xi-xxiv.
Week Three: Multiple Modernities in the Global Ecumene (3/17)
Marshall Sahlins, “What is anthropological enlightenment? Some lessons of the
Twentieth Century.” Annual Review of Anthropology (October 1999), i-xxiii.
Stanley Tambiah, “Transnational Movements, Diaspora, and Multiple Modernities.”
Daedalus (Winter 2000), pp. 163-191.
Arif Dirlik, “Modernity as history: post-revolutionary China, globalization and the
question of modernity” Social History (January 2002), 16-39.
Week Four: Modernization as Theory (3/24)
Walter Rostow, Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto.
Michael Latham, Modernization as Ideology, 1-19.
Hermann Kreutzmann, “From modernization theory towards the ‘clash of civilizations’:
directions and paradigm shifts in Samuel Huntington’s analysis and prognosis
of global development” GeoJournal (1998), 255–265,
Week Five: Anderson and the Modern Nation (3/31)
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities 1-46.
Andre Schmid, Korea Between Empires 1895-1919, 1-54.
Week Six: Habermas and the Public Sphere (4/7)
Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1-56.
Bruce Cumings, “Civil Society in West and East,” in Korean Society: Civil society,
democracy and the state, 14-35.
Michael Kim, “Giving Reason to the Unreasonable: Philip Jaisohn and The
Independent,” Comparative Korean Studies.
Week Seven: Consuming Modernity (4/14)
Ben Fine, “The World of Commodities,” in The World of Consumption, 27-57.
Peter Stearns, “Consumerism in East Asia,” in Consumerism in World History: the
Global Transformation of Desire, 83-100.
Peter Carroll, “Refashioning Shuzhou: Dress, Commodification, and Modernity,”
Positions (Fall 2003), 443-478.
Week Eight: Living in Modern Times (4/21)
Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1-35
Harry Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity, 3-33,
Walter Benjamin, “Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” (Exposé of 1939) in
The Arcades Project, 14-26.
Week Nine: Colonial Modernity (4/28)
Gi-Wook Shin and Michael Robinson, “Rethinking Colonial Korea,” in Colonial
Modernity in Korea, 1-18.
Kyeong-Hee Choi, “Impaired Body as Colonial Trope: Kang Kyǒng’ae’s
“Underground Village” Public Culture (2001), 431-458.
Michael Kim, “The Aesthetics of Total Mobilization in the Visual Culture of Late
Colonial Korea,” (Forthcoming).
Week Ten: Holiday (5/5)
Week Eleven: Gendered Modernity (5/12)
Sheila Jager, “Woman and the Promise of Modernity: Signs of Love for the Nation in
Korea,” New Literary History (Winter 1998), pp. 121-134
Kyeong-Hee Choi, “Neither Colonial nor National: The Making of the ‘New Woman’
in Pak Wanso’s ; Mother Stake 1’” in Colonial Modernity in Korea, 221-247.
June j. h. Lee, “Discourse of Illness, Meanings of Modernity: A Gendered Construction
of Sǒnginbyǒng,” in Under construction: the gendering of modernity, class
and consumption in the Republic of Korea, 55-78.
***One Page Paper Proposal and Bibliography Due***
Week Twelve: The Regime of Modernity (5/19)
Chulwoo Lee, “Legality, and Power in Korea under Japanese Rule,” in Colonial
Modernity in Korea, 21-51.
Charles K. Armstrong “Surveillance and Punishment in Postliberation North Korea” in
Formations of Colonial Modernity, 323-347.
Chong-myǒng Im, “Violence in the Representation of the Yǒsun Incident” International
Journal of Korean History(Dec.2001), 279-308.
Week Twelve: Modernity in Print and Reading (5/26)
Leo Lee, “The Cultural Construction of Modernity in Urban Shanghai: Some
Preliminary Explorations, in Becoming Chinese, Passages to Modernity and
Beyond, 31-61.
Jeong Hwan Cheon, “The Process of the Formation and Diversification of the Readers
of Korean Prose Fiction in the 1920’s and 1930’s,” Seoul Journal of Korean
Studies (December 2002), 29-74.
Week Fourteen: Paper Presentations (6/2)
Week Fifteen: Final Discussion (6/9)
Carter Eckert, “Koreas Transition to Modernity, A Will to Greatness,” in Historical
Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia, 121-151.
Fredric Jameson, “Globalization and Political Strategy,” New Left Review (Jul/Aug
2000), 49-68.
Week Sixteen: Papers Due (6/15)