[KS] AAS Korea panels announcements
Afostercarter at aol.com
Afostercarter at aol.com
Sat Apr 1 03:31:05 EST 2006
Many thanks to Frank and Mike for their enlightenment,
on both theoretical and practical matters. Briefly:
I hadn't thought of all this as being about modernism.
But perhaps it is. (Nor did I use the pomo word!)
Least of all did I mean to criticize anyone. Clearly the
field has changed, as Mike explains. Rightly, AAS
reflects the trend. It's the trend as such that interests me.
I did indeed attend some (all too few) AAS meetings in
the 1980s. That was precisely my implicit comparison.
They were great: right up my street, in a way that is no longer so.
(But is Mike saying that the bias in those days leant the other way,
so that arts topics were - or felt - relatively marginalized?)
I'm all for multidisciplinarity. In particular, in a perhaps
old-fashioned way I still cling to political economy.
There used to be a lot of it about; perhaps too much, and
too unsubtle. Now there is much less of it - or perhaps, as I
speculated and Mike confirms, it has gone elsewhere.
That's a pity - but clearly not AAS's fault, if most people
(self-criticism included) simply don't offer papers in this area.
No doubt intellectual progress will continue (oops, modernism).
Or the tides will ebb and flow as they always do. Inexorably,
new generations will proffer new explanations - while some of
their elders, discomfited, mutter about strange vibrations.
How, I wonder, will AAS frame Korea in 2016, 2026, 2036....?
As British trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton said, when asked where
jazz was headed: If I knew that, I'd be there already.
Have a great meeting!
best wishes
Aidan
AIDAN FOSTER-CARTER
Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea, Leeds University
Home address: 17 Birklands Road, Shipley, West Yorkshire, BD18 3BY, UK
tel: +44(0) 1274 588586 (alt) +44(0) 1264 737634 mobile:
+44(0) 7970 741307
fax: +44(0) 1274 773663 ISDN: +44(0) 1274 589280
Email: afostercarter at aol.com (alt) afostercarter at yahoo.com website:
www.aidanfc.net
[Please use @aol; but if any problems, please try @yahoo too - and let me
know, so I can chide AOL]
In a message dated 01/04/2006 01:36:03 GMT Standard Time, frank at koreaweb.ws
writes:
> Subj:Re: [KS] AAS Korea panels announcements
> Date:01/04/2006 01:36:03 GMT Standard Time
> From:frank at koreaweb.ws
> Reply-to:Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
> To:Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
> Sent from the Internet
>
>
>
> The truth that modernists have to offer has widely been acknowledged
> to be more than deceptive by leading modernist historians themselves,
> also art historians, and others in the humanities. As you know, they
> now prefer different terms such as "Late Modernism" -- that's
> basically a laundered, scaled-down postmodernism that I see there
> sneaking in. Politically a cleaver move. "Modernism pure" has a stale
> taste to it, has become a big no no, is widely seen as a flawed and
> now outdated model because it was to a large extent building on the
> idea of progress (both in capitalist and in Communist societies), and
> this idea pretty much died on us during the late 80s and the whole
> 90s, at least in "the West." The 90s showed more and more that
> modernist truth and progress in all its authoritative models were
> nicely abused by every regime on the planet, and that minorities (=
> non-whites) were not being served well by such models of truth and
> truth finding. What I see at conferences in the U.S. is a settled
> situation with what I just called a laundered and scaled-down
> postmodernism. Postmodernists found out that in the end they are
> operating within the very same modernist framework while modernists
> found that there needs to be a way to get rid of all these huge holes
> in their roof and walls.
>
> QUOTE:
> >> (be sure to wear some flowers in your hair)
>
> So far about modernist truth and illusions :: flowers are fine, but
> as for the hair, please be sure to bring a good rain coat and hat. It
> was cold and has rained for the past six weeks in San Francisco, and
> the forecast predicts more rain to come.
>
> QUOTE:
> >And since we must all now earn our crust in a capitalist
> >marketplace, one does wonder about supply and demand.
> >Can all you bright young things, dizzy with postcolonialism,
> >count on getting jobs? There are so many of you!
>
> As far as "supply and demand" is concerned, in the information
> society that we are living in classical economic ideas are not
> irrelevant but should be applied to new realities. And if your
> analysis sees only "bright young things, dizzy with postcolonialism"
> then I doubt that you applied Samuelson's rules. To be sure, I very
> well understand your emotions, but I doubt that this is still what's
> happening. Other than you I see a new young generation (both in the
> U.S. and in Europe) that never ever had flowers in their hair, and
> that scares me a little -- not that they don't know what they are
> doing but that they know too well too early. Speaking about emotions
> ...
>
> Frank
> --
> --------------------------------------
> Frank Hoffmann
> http://koreaweb.ws
>
>
_______________________________________________
Subj: Re: [KS] AAS Korea panels announcements
Date: 01/04/2006 04:00:15 GMT Standard Time
From: robime at indiana.edu
Reply-to: Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
To: Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Dear Adian:
As member of the AAS program committee I feel compelled to comment. The
Korea panels reflect the applications for panels to the committee last year. We
had a very large number of applicants so we were choosing on the basis of
quality first. Some might find this slate unbalanced by discipline, but then you
go with what comes in. If you are bemoaning the lack of disciplinary balance,
then you might re-think what is going on in academe generally and the Korean
studies field reflects faithfully the same trends. Many of these papers and
panels are new work by people just finishing, or early in their careers. The
questions they are asking of the Korean area reflect the dominant trend toward
multi-disciplinary topics. "Cultural Studies" (whatever that is) is nothing if
multi-displinary. Moreover, the lack of social science panels is not for
lack of trying as the program committee has for that last years actually had our
own affirmative action program for the social sciences at the meetings.
Political science is under-represented because comparativists are now rare in that
increasingly narrowing field. The "hard core" social science scholars who
might be working on Korea are also not well-served by delivering their papers at
the AAS....it is not a conference valued by social scientists....and papers go
first to the refereed SS journals. If you had been going to the AAS 25-30
years ago you would have been astounded at the lack of balance in the direction
favoring the Korean War, Political Science, and development studies. In my
opinion the paper topics this year represent a broad diversity of topics and
approaches that enriches the field. Pure post-modernism has been dead for quite
a while, I don't see much post-modernism in the conference offerings at all.
I'm sorry you won't be there to hold up the subjects of whose absence you
object.
Mike Robinson
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Afostercarter at aol.com
> To: Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
> Sent: Friday, March 31, 2006 4:13 PM
> Subject: Re: [KS] AAS Korea panels announcements
>
>
> Many thanks to Hyung Il Pai for this.
>
> For those of us not going to San Francisco
> (be sure to wear some flowers in your hair),
> this guide to what's going on is very useful too.
> AAS surely offers a unique cornucopia.
>
> That said, the dominant flavours are changing.
> I was at Chicago last year (sort of: I had the flu),
> and formed the same impression that I got from
> reading this packed programme of Koreana too.
>
> Namely: Cultural studies rules! Which is fine. Yet
> unless memory plays tricks, back in the 1980s AAS
> Korean sessions used to offer a more balanced menu.
>
> Isn't it odd, and sad, that in 2006 there are hardly any
> panels on the mainstream politics or economics of
> contemporary Korea? Were it not for independent
> scholars and ASCK, this would look even thinner.
> (Pity about ASCK/ISKS clash on Sat. evening, by the way.)
>
> But maybe I misunderstand the US conference scene.
> Do Korean politics and economics now have their own
> separate circuits? (Anything policy-related is of course
> quite well-served in Washington, if not elsewhere.)
>
> And since we must all now earn our crust in a capitalist
> marketplace, one does wonder about supply and demand.
> Can all you bright young things, dizzy with postcolonialism,
> count on getting jobs? There are so many of you!
>
> As Scott McKenzie (whom I've already quoted)
> put it almost 40 years ago:
>
> "All across the nation
> Such a strange vibration
> People in motion
> There's a whole generation
> With a new explanation..."
>
> Indeed. Have a great conference, y'all.
>
> cheers
> Aidan
>
>
> AIDAN FOSTER-CARTER
> Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea, Leeds
> University
> Home address: 17 Birklands Road, Shipley, West Yorkshire, BD18 3BY, UK
> tel: +44(0) 1274 588586 (alt) +44(0) 1264 737634 mobile:
> +44(0) 7970 741307
> fax: +44(0) 1274 773663 ISDN: +44(0) 1274 589280
> Email: afostercarter at aol.com (alt) afostercarter at yahoo.com website:
> www.aidanfc.net
> [Please use @aol; but if any problems, please try @yahoo too - and let me
> know, so I can chide AOL]
>
>
> _________________
>
>
>
> In a message dated 31/03/2006 20:15:31 GMT Standard Time,
> hyungpai at eastasian.ucsb.edu writes:
>
>
> Subj:[KS] AAS Korea panels announcements
> Date:31/03/2006 20:15:31 GMT Standard Time
> From:hyungpai at eastasian.ucsb.edu
> Reply-to:Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
> To:koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
> Sent from the Internet
Dear Koreanists,I am writing to inform you all that the Korea related panels
( A record of 40 this year) at the S.F. AAS annual meeting (April 6-9) as well
as CKS (Committee on Korean Studies) meetings, KF receptions etc. are all now
all up on on our CKS site at :
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~korea2
I want to thank our web designers Joe and Sue for all their help in making
such neat time-tables printable for everyone. I will be giving a short
presentation on our CKS website and ask for comments and suggestions at our general
meeting. Please come and feel free to make recommendations.
Hyung Il Pai
Associate Professor
East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies,
HSSB Building, University of California, Santa Barbara CA 93106
Fax: 805) 893-3011, Phone: 805) 893-2245
Email: Hyungpai at eastasian.ucsb.edu
Dept. Web-site -http://www.eastasian.ucsb.edu/
=
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