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Colonial Modernity in Korea

From the publisher’s website:

The twelve chapters in this volume seek to overcome the nationalist paradigm of Japanese repression and exploitation versus Korean resistance that has dominated the study of Korea’s colonial period (1910–1945) by adopting a more inclusive, pluralistic approach that stresses the complex relations among colonialism, modernity, and nationalism. By addressing such diverse subjects as the colonial legal system, radio, telecommunications, the rural economy, and industrialization and the formation of industrial labor, one group of essays analyzes how various aspects of modernity emerged in the colonial context and how they were mobilized by the Japanese for colonial domination, with often unexpected results. A second group examines the development of various forms of identity from nation to gender to class, particularly how aspects of colonial modernity facilitated their formation through negotiation, contestation, and redefinition.

Gi-Wook Shin is Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center; founding director of the Korean Studies Program; Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and Associate Professor of Sociology at Stanford University.

Michael Robinson is Associate Professor of Korean History at Indiana University.

Contents

Introduction: Rethinking Colonial Korea [Gi-Wook Shin and Michael Robinson]

I. Colonial Modernity and Hegemony

1. Modernity, Legality, and Power in Korea Under Japanese Rule [Chulwoo Lee]
2. Broadcasting, Cultural Hegemony, and Colonial Modernity in Korea, 1924–1945 [Michael Robinson]
3. Colonial Corporatism: The Rural Revitalization Campaign, 1932–1940 [Gi-Wook Shin and Do-Hyun Han]
4. The Limits of Cultural Rule: Internationalism and identity in Japanese Responses to Korean Rice [Michael A. Schneider]
5. Colonial Industrial Growth and the Emergence of the Korean Working Class [Soon-Won Park]
6. Colonial Korea in Japan’s Imperial Telecommunications Network [Daaqing Yang]

II. Colonial Modernity and Identity

7. The Price of Legitimacy: Women and the Kunuhoe Movement, 1927–1931 [Kenneth M. Wells]
8. Neither Colonial nor National: The Making of the ‘New Woman’ in Pak Wanso’s ‘Mother Stake 1’ [Kyeong-Hee Choi]
9. Interior Landscapes: Yi Kwangsu’s The Heartless and the Origins of Modern Literature [Michael D. Shin]
10. National identity and the Creation of the Category ’Peasant’ in Colonial Korea [Joong-Seop Kim]
11. Minjok as a Modern and Democratic Construct: Sin Ch’aeho’s Historiography [Henry H. Em]
Epilogue: Exorcising Hegel’s Ghosts: Toward a Pastnational Historiography of Korea [Carter J. Eckert]

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