[KS] AAS Korea Panels announcements

[G. Cameron Hurst]

Dear List Members:

Over the years, I have served on the AAS program committee several 
times. Most recently I overlapped with Don Baker one year and with 
Ross King another. I was one of the two Japan representatives but 
also asked to help with the Korean panels as well, so I am very 
sympathetic to the comments that so many have made concerning the 
distribution of panels for the meeting this week. There is not a 
great deal I can add, except that to note how much the fields have 
changed in the  almost 40 years I have been an AAS member.

Let me also echo Mike and Ross and others who noted how we bend over 
backwards at Program Committee meetings to select panels with social 
science orientation. The problem is less with the committee than the 
structure of academic disciplines and the tendency of people in 
social sciences not to see AAS as a primary organization. We do 
pretty well with anthropologists and so-so with sociologists, but 
political scientists and economists seem much less interested in us 
an organization these days. We have had constant complaints over the 
past decade from AAS political scientists studying all areas of Asia 
that they feel under-represented in panels at the annual meeting. 
Other social scientist members have also complained. This is 
disappointing, given the very many social science issues that need 
addressing in the Korean Studies field. But the area studies vs. 
disciplinary rift has by no means been healed, and we seem not to be 
able to attract as many specialists from those disciplines as we 
would like.

And it wasn't true in an earlier generation; we had lots and lots of 
panels over the years on Korean politics and economic development. In 
the 1970s we had a large number of  great figures in Korean politics 
who always seemed to have well-attended panels at AAS meetings. In 
fact, it seemed that the Korean field was dominated by political 
scientists. It is no longer true. The field of Korean Studies has 
expanded greatly into other disciplines; political science no longer 
stands out. But I agree with David that the interest among students 
is there. Last year, in Penn's East Asian Humanities and Social 
Science Lectures series, the lectures dealing with Korean political 
issues outdrew everything else.

Ned may be correct about UH having a good  number of political 
science doctoral candidates with interest in Korea (and I would guess 
in China and Japan as well), but that is not often the case any more. 
Here at Penn, for example, even though for many years we had 
Chong-Sik Lee on the Poli Sci faculty,we have attracted few students 
in East Asian politics as a whole and Korean politics particularly. 
And the ones we have attracted are not as likely to be "Korean 
Studies" folk with AAS ties. That is to say, they are often grad 
students from Korea with undergraduate degrees in Political Science 
from SNU or Yonsei or Kodae, and they come here to do IR, usually at 
a relatively theoretical level. Since they have native Korean 
language,  they may choose to do a dissertation focusing on Korea, 
and may even end up somewhere teaching a course or two on Korean (or 
East Asian) politics. But the rest of us in Korean Studies, or the 
broader field of East Asian Studies, at Penn may never see these 
budding Korean political scientists in class or may have little 
interaction with them. So their commitment after graduation is not 
likely to be to the AAS; they share little in common with area 
studies folks who may have taken a broader array of courses on Korea. 
David is right that as political scientists, they may not be as well 
rewarded or regarded for an AAS presentation, just as they are not 
likely to submit a paper to the JAS for publication.

My biggest complaint about the program (even recognizing how hard the 
Program Committee works to try NOT to schedule somewhat similar 
panels in the same time slot) is that there is often more than one 
Korean panel that I want to hear at the same time--and of course at 
that same time slot are three on Japan and another on China I would 
like to attend. The notable success of Korean Studies (40 AAS panels 
is amazing!) means that we now are getting more and more panels every 
year, making it hard to get to all the ones you would like to attend. 
Who'd a thunk it?

Looking forward to  a good time in SF,

Cappy Hurst


-- 
G. Cameron Hurst III
Professor, Japanese and Korean Studies
Director, Center for East Asian Studies
(215)573-4203
Chair, East Asian Languages and Civilizations
847 Williams/6305
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305
(215)898-7466