It is well known that Japanese literati painting of the eighteenth century was inspired by Chinese styles that found their way to Japan through trade relations. However, because Japanese and American art historians have focused on Japanese-Chinese ties, the fact that Japan also maintained important diplomatic–and aesthetic–relations with Korea during the same period has long … [Read More]
Archives: Books (page 91)
Dynamic Korea and Rhythmic Form
Winner of the The Béla Bartók Award for Outstanding Ethnomusicology The South Korean percussion genre, samulnori, is a world phenomenon whose rhythmic form is the key to its popularity and mobility. Based on both ethnographic research and close formal analysis, author Katherine In-Young Lee focuses on the kinetic experience of samulnori, drawing out the concept … [Read More]
Voices from the Straw Mat: Toward an Ethnography of Korean Story Singing
From the publisher’s website: From its humble “straw mat” origins to its paradoxical status as a national treasure, p’ansori has survived centuries of change and remains the primary source of Korean narrative and poetic consciousness. In this innovative work, Chan Park celebrates her subject not as a static phenomenon but a living, organic tradition adapting … [Read More]
Protest Dialectics: State Repression and South Korea’s Democracy Movement, 1970-1979
From the publisher’s website: 1970s South Korea is characterized by many as the “dark age for democracy.” Most scholarship on South Korea’s democracy movement and civil society has focused on the “student revolution” in 1960 and the large protest cycles in the 1980s which were followed by Korea’s transition to democracy in 1987. But in … [Read More]
Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945
From the publisher’s website: Assimilating Seoul, the first book-length study written in English about Seoul during the colonial period, challenges conventional nationalist paradigms by revealing the intersection of Korean and Japanese history in this important capital. Through microhistories of Shinto festivals, industrial expositions, and sanitation campaigns, Todd A. Henry offers a transnational account that treats … [Read More]
Korea Between Empires, 1895-1919
Korea Between Empires chronicles the development of a Korean national consciousness. It focuses on two critical periods in Korean history and asks how key concepts and symbols were created and integrated into political programs to create an original Korean understanding of national identity, the nation-state, and nationalism. Looking at the often-ignored questions of representation, narrative, and … [Read More]
Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910–1945
From the publisher’s website: This remarkable book examines the complex history of Japanese colonial and postcolonial interactions with Korea, particularly in matters of cultural policy. E. Taylor Atkins focuses on past and present Japanese fascination with Korean culture as he reassesses colonial anthropology, heritage curation, cultural policy, and Korean performance art in Japanese mass media … [Read More]
Everyday Life in Joseon-Era Korea: Economy and Society
Winner of the 2014 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award Everyday Life in Joseon-Era Korea shows how the momentous changes of the time transformed the lives of the common people. In twenty-three concise chapters, the book covers topics ranging from agriculture, commerce, and mining to education, marriage, and food culture. It examines how both the spread of … [Read More]
Creative Women of Korea: The Fifteenth Through the Twentieth Centuries
From the publisher’s website: This book introduces important contributions in the humanities by a select group of traditional and modern Korean women, from the 15th through the 20th centuries. The literary and artistic works of these women are considered Korean classics, and the featured artists and writers range from a queen, to a courtesan, to … [Read More]
Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey: A Short History
From the publisher’s website: For more than half of the twentieth century, the Korean peninsula has been divided between two hostile and competitive nation-states, each claiming to be the sole legitimate expression of the Korean nation. The division remains an unsolved problem dating to the beginnings of the Cold War and now projects the politics … [Read More]
Handbook of Korean Vocabulary: A Resource for Word Recognition and Comprehension
From the publisher’s website: Vocabulary learning is the single most important component of second-language acquisition. In cases where the second language is unrelated to the learner’s native tongue, this task presents special challenges because there are typically few clues in a word’s form to assist in learning and remembering its meaning. This book offers a … [Read More]
Kept: A Comedy of Sex and Manners
Judith Lee, an entitled descendant of the Korean royal family, has grown quite accustomed to the privileges of the aristocracy. When her parents cut off her finances upon graduation from Yale, Jude learns that her fancy upbringing has left her unprepared to deal with her monstrous debts. That is, until she is introduced to Madame … [Read More]
The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture
From the publisher’s website: How did a really unhip country suddenly become cool? How could a nation that once banned miniskirts, long hair on men and rock ‘n’ roll come to mass produce pop music and a K-pop star that would break the world record for the most YouTube hits? Who would have predicted that … [Read More]
The Great Enterprise: Sovereignty and Historiography in Modern Korea
In The Great Enterprise, Henry H. Em examines how the project of national sovereignty shaped the work of Korean historians and their representations of Korea’s past. The goal of Korea attaining validity and equal standing among sovereign nations, Em shows, was foundational to modern Korean politics in that it served a pedagogical function for Japanese and … [Read More]
The Korean Popular Culture Reader
From the publisher’s website: Over the past decade, Korean popular culture has become a global phenomenon. The “Korean Wave” of music, film, television, sports, and cuisine generates significant revenues and cultural pride in South Korea. The Korean Popular Culture Reader provides a timely and essential foundation for the study of “K-pop,” relating the contemporary cultural landscape to … [Read More]
Crisis of Gender and the Nation in Korean Literature and Cinema: Modernity Arrives Again
From the publisher’s website: Crisis of Gender and the Nation in Korean Literature and Cinema is about the changing constructs of modernity, masculinity, and gender relations and discourses in Korean literature and cinema during the crucial decades of the colonial and postcolonial era, based on close historical examination and a wide-ranging theoretical foundation that look … [Read More]