The Cultural History of Korean Modernity
Michael Kim: mkim@yonsei.ac.kr
017-398-7116
Office: 613 New Millennium Hall
Tuesdays: 3:00pm -6:00pm
The concept of modernity can elicit multiple definitions. Modernity may be equated with development, industrialization and capitalism. Modernity may also give rise to institutions of control and distinct forms of social and political interaction like the public sphere and the nation-state. Modernity may also provide a host of new individual and collective identities that emerge from the transformation of the everyday.
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 conceptions of modernity and examine their potential applicability to Korean history. Students will gain a more comprehensive view of Korea’s encounter with modernity, and they will be encouraged to engage modern Korean history from different theoretical perspectives.
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, Attendance:
Midterm:
Final Paper and Presentation:
(Double spaced, 12-15 pages)
20%
40%
40%
Week One: Introduction and the Practice of Cultural History (3/6)
V. Bonnell and L. Hunt, Beyond the Culture Turn . 1-32.
Georg Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century, p. 97-133.
Week Two: Multiple Modernities (3/13)
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. 163-194.
Week Three: Modernization as Theory (Sat. 3/17 1:00pm-4:00pm, Make up session for 3/27)
Appleby, Hunt, & Jacob, “Scientific History and the Idea of Modernity,” Telling the
Truth about History , 52-90.
Michael Latham, Modernization as Ideology , 1-19.
Week Four: Anderson and the Modern Nation (3/20)
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities 1-46.
Andre Schmid, Korea Between Empires 1895-1919 , 1-54.
Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity , p. 1-40.
*No Class on 3/27*
Week Five: Habermas and the Public Sphere (4/3)
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, 11-35.
Week Six: Consuming Modernity and the Colonial City(4/10)
Ben Fine, “The World of Commodities,” in The World of Consumption , 27-57.
Barbara Sato, The New Japanese Woman , p. 45-77.
Week Six: Seven: Colonial Modernity (4/17)
Gi-Wook Shin and Michael Robinson, “Rethinking Colonial Korea,” in Colonial
Modernity in Korea, 1-18.
Chulwoo Lee, “Legality and Power in Korea under Japanese Rule,” in Colonial
Modernity, p. 21-51.
Todd Henry, “Sanitizing Empire: Japanese Articulations of Korean Otherness and the
Construction of Early Seoul, 1905-1919,” Journal of Asian Studies (August
2005), p. 639-675
Week Eight: Midterm (4/24)

Week Nine: Total War, Total Mobilization and Colonial Collaboration (5/1)
Carter Eckert, “Total War, industrialization and social change in late colonial Korea,” in
The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931-1945 ,“ p.3-39
Leo Ching, “Give Me Japan or Nothing Else!” Post Coloniality, Identity, and the Traces of Colonialism, The South Atlantic Quarterly, (Fall 2000), 763-788.
***One Page Paper Proposal and Bibliography Due***
Week Ten: Remembering and Forgetting the Pacific War (5/8)
Hyun Ok Park, “Korean Manchuria: The Racial Politics of Territorial Osmosis,” The
South Atlantic Quarterly (Winter 2000), p. 193-215.
Utsumi Aiko, Korean “Imperial Soldiers”: Remembering Colonialism and Crimes against Allied POWs,” Perilous Memories , p. 199-217.
Week Eleven: The Regime of Modernity and Modernity in Print and Reading
(5/15)
Charles K. Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 , 166-214.
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 Twelve: Gendered Modernity and Final Discussion(5/22)
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.
Fredric Jameson, “Globalization and Political Strategy,” New Left Review (Jul/Aug
2000), 49-68.
Week Thirteen: Paper Presentations (5/29)
Week Fourteen: Paper Presentations (6/5)
Week Fifteen: Papers Due (6/11)