Transpacific Aspiration toward Modern Domesticity in Japanese Colonial-era Korea

Workshop on Korean Studies

Sponsored by:
Korean Studies Programme
Committee on Gender Equality and Diversity
Department of History

Time: 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm
Date: April 13 (Friday)
Venue: CRT-4.36 Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus

Presenter:
Professor Hyaeweol Choi
Professor of Korean Studies
School of Culture, History and Language
College of Asia & the Pacific
Australian National University

Discussant:
Dr. Elizabeth LaCouture
Assistant Professor
Department of History
The University of Hong Kong

Moderator:
Dr. Paul Cha
Korea Foundation Assistant Professor
Korean Studies Programme
The University of Hong Kong

Abstract:
This talk is part of a larger research project that reexamines the gender history of modern Korea from a transnational perspective. The project focuses on the dynamic flow of the ideas, discourses and people across national boundaries that have triggered new gender norms, reformed domestic practices, fostered a sense of locality and the world and helped women claim new space in the public sphere. In this presentation, I specifically focus on the impact that a transpacific network facilitated by US Protestant missionary societies had on the formation of modern domesticity in Japanese colonial-era Korea (1910-1945). Aiming to go beyond the simple binary framework of the colonizer and the colonized, I illustrate how the transpacific network played a central role in transmitting, interpreting and performing modern domesticity. Taking the idea of “modern home” as a point of convergence for national, colonial and missionary projects, I demonstrate how the intimate private sphere became one of the most dynamic sites for uncovering the interactions between the local, the national and the global.

Bio:
Hyaeweol Choi is ANU-Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies at the Australian National University. Before she joined the faculty at ANU in 2010, she taught at Arizona State University, Smith College and the University of Kansas. Her research interests are in the areas of gender, religion, modernity, colonialism and transnational history. She is the author of Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea: New Women, Old Ways (2009) and New Women in Colonial Korea (2013). She also co-edited the book, Divine Domesticities: Christian Paradoxes in Asia and the Pacific (2014) and co-authored the book,Gender in Modern East Asia (2016), among others. She has been playing a leadership role in the fields of Korean Studies, Asian Studies and gender studies in Korea, the U.S and Australia, serving in a variety of capacities for various professional organizations, including the Association for Asian Studies, the Korean Studies Association of Australasia, the Journal of Asian Studies and the Journal of Korean Religions.