[KS] AAS Korea panels announcements

[Michael Robinson]

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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