Month: March 2017

3/31 (F) Journal Publication Roundtable Discussion
With Paola Iovene, Kyeong-Hee Choi, Haun Saussy, Ariel Fox, Thomas Kelly, Brian White, Nicholas Wong
3:00 – 4:45 p.m.
CEAS Room 319

4/12 (W) Theodore Hughes (​Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies in the Humanities​ , Columbia University)
Seminar Visit, RSVP required
Location and Time TBA

4/14 (F) Nicholas Lambrecht (PhD Candidate, University of Chicago)
Title: “Long Repatriate Postwars: Memory and Postmemory in Contemporary Japanese Repatriation Literature”
2:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Wieboldt 301N

4/28 (F) Daniela Licandro (PhD Candidate, University of Chicago)
Title: “A Puzzling History of Mistakes: Wei Junyi’s Recollections of Pain”
3:00 – 5:00 p.m.
CEAS Room 319

5/12 (F) Robert Tierney (Associate Professor of Japanese Literature, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Co-sponsored with the Midwestern Japanese Studies Workshop and the East Asia: Transregional Histories Workshop
Time: TBD
CEAS Room 319

5/19 (F) Brian White (PhD Student, University of Chicago)
Title: “Race and the Cyborg Subject in Japanese Science Fiction”
3:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Wieboldt 301N

6/2 (F) Hyunjeong Lee (Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, University of Seoul)
Title: “Against the Bamboo Curtain: Ri Yŏng-hŭi’s Writings on China in the 1970s”
3:00 – 5:00 p.m.
CEAS Room 319

Friday, March 10, 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. in CEAS 319 (1155 E. 60th St.)

Sohye Kim, “The Divided Nation and Korean Diasporic Filmmakers’ Bittersweet Return”

Please join us this Friday as we host Sohye Kim (PhD Candidate, EALC). Sohye will present a draft of the third chapter of her dissertation. She summarizes the chapter as follows:

This paper explores the notions of home, homeland, and homecoming in Korean diaspora films. By following Korean diasporic filmmakers’ cinematic journey between the divided homeland and host country, it questions how the medium of film delivers the experience of homecoming. The notion of “homecoming” is applied not only to human subjects’ return to their homeland in the film texts but also to the diasporic filmmakers’ incorporation into the homeland’s film industry. By examining the homecoming in this dual sense, the paper aims to illuminate the relationships between the diasporic films and human subjects and the audience of both homeland and host country.

To be specific, this paper deals with works by ethnic Korean filmmakers active in Japan that either feature the issue of homecoming or were produced in South Korea. My analysis centers upon two second-generation Korean residents in Japan—one male and one female—and relatively established directors in Japan, namely, Sai Yoichi and Yang Yong-hi. I focus on Blood and Bones (2004) by the former and the documentaries Dear Pyongyang (2005) and Sona, the Other Myself (2010) as well as Our Homeland (2012), a feature film, by the latter. My main concern in this paper revolves around the directors’ unstable and shifting positions between the host country, Japan, the home country, divided Korea, and spectatorship in both countries. On the basis of historical contextualization, I comparatively explore the relationships among representations, audience reactions, generations, and gender.

The paper is available at this link. If you have not received the password for the post, or if you have questions about accessibility, please feel free to contact Alex Murphy at murphya1@uchicago.edu.