[KS] The GWIKS Book Talk Series on Chosŏn Korea

[GW Institute for Korean Studies, GW Institute for Korean Studies]

Meet the authors of the recently published books on Chosŏn Korea!
[image: Meet the authors of the recently published books on Chosŏn Korea!]
*Vernacular Eloquence of Chosŏn Korea Beyond the Korean Script*

*Speaker: Si Nae Park*
Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard
University


*Thursday, March 11, 2021 4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time*


In this presentation, Si Nae Park introduces her book *The Korean
Vernacular Story: Telling Tales of Contemporary Chosŏn in Sinographic
Writing (Columbia University, 2020)*, the first book in the English
language on the late Chosŏn literary genre of yadam. The presentation has
two components. First, Park highlights key points of her book: how the
culture of eighteenth-century Seoul as the political, economic, and
cultural center of Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910) gave rise to a new vernacular
narrative form that was evocative of the spoken and written Korean language
of the time, and how yadam narratives spread in the late Chosŏn culture of
texts. Next, Park discusses the book’s implication as a research project
that extricates the genre of yadam from the nation-centered literary
historiography (*kungmunhak*) of the 20th century and puts forward a need
to consider vernacular eloquence beyond the Korean script and
script-focused linguistic nationalism.
RSVP <https://t.e2ma.net/click/4nkd4e/whqzl0c/sykjtt>

*The Diary of 1636 and the Manchu Invasions of Korea*

*Speaker: George Kallander*
Associate Professor of History at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and
Public Affairs at Syracuse University


*Monday, March 29, 20212:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time*

Early in the seventeenth century, Northeast Asian politics hung in a
delicate balance among the Chosŏn dynasty in Korea, the Ming in China, and
the Manchu. When a Chosŏn faction realigned Korea with the Ming, the Manchu
attacked in 1627 and again a decade later, shattering the Chosŏn-Ming
alliance and forcing Korea to support the newly founded Qing dynasty.
Chronicling the dramatic Korean resistance to the attack, the
scholar-official Na Man’gap (1592–1642) recorded the second Manchu assault
in his *Diary of 1636* (*Pyŏngjarok*). Partly composed as a narrative of
the siege of Namhan Mountain Fortress, where Na sought refuge with the king
and other officials, the diary recounts Korean opposition to Manchu and
Mongol forces and the eventual surrender. Based on his new book *The Diary
of 1636: The Second Manchu Invasion of Korea*  (Columbia University Press,
2020), George Kallander will discuss the Korean response to the Manchu
attacks and the relevance of the diary to readers in Chosŏn and
contemporary times.
RSVP <https://t.e2ma.net/click/4nkd4e/whqzl0c/8qljtt>

*Epistolary Revolution in Chosŏn Korea*

*Speaker: Hwisang Cho*
Assistant Professor in Korean Studies at Emory University


*Thursday, April 8, 20212:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time*

While discussing his book *The Power of the Brush: Epistolary Practices in
Chosŏn Korea* (University Washington Press, 2020), Hwisang Cho will give a
survey of the “epistolary revolution” that shaped Korean society from the
sixteenth century to the end of the Chosŏn dynasty and beyond. By examining
the physical peculiarities of new letterforms, the cooptation of letters
for other purposes after their communicative functions, and the rise of
diverse political epistolary genres, this talk will illuminate how
innovation in epistolary practices allowed diverse writers to move beyond
the limits imposed by the existing scholarly culture, gender norms, and
political systems. While emphasizing how the epistolary revolution posed
new challenges to traditional values and already-established institutions,
it will demonstrate that new modes of reading and writing developed in the
seemingly mundane and trivial practice of letter writing triggered a
flourishing of Neo-Confucian moral thought, the formation of new kinds of
cultural power, and the rise of elite public politics.
RSVP <https://t.e2ma.net/click/4nkd4e/whqzl0c/ojmjtt>

*Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea: Between Genealogical Time and the
Domestic Everyday*

*Speaker: Ksenia Chizhova*
Assistant Professor of Korean Literature and Cultural Studies at Princeton
University

*Thursday, April 22, 20219:00 a.m. – 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time*

Violence and bloody family feuds constitute the core of the so-called
lineage novels (*kamun sosŏl*) that circulated in Chosŏn Korea from the
late seventeenth to the early twentieth century. Such subject matter
becomes ever more puzzling when we consider that the main audience for
these texts were elite women of Korea, who were subjected to exacting
comportment standards and domestic discipline. Coeval with the rise and
fall of Korean patrilineal kinship, these texts depict the genealogical
subject—emotional self socialized through the structures of prescriptive
kinship, but kinship itself is treated as a series of conflicts between
genders and generations.
This talk will contextualize lineage novels and the domestic world in which
they were read within the patrilineal transformation of the Chosŏn society
and the emergence of elite vernacular Korean culture, patronaged by elite
women. The proliferation of kinship narratives in the Chosŏn period
illuminates the changing affective contours of familial bonds and how the
domestic space functioned as a site of their everyday experience. Drawing
on an archive of women-centered elite vernacular texts, this talk uncovers
the structures of feelings and conceptions of selfhood beneath official
genealogies and legal statutes, revealing that kinship is as much a textual
as a social practice.
RSVP <https://t.e2ma.net/click/4nkd4e/whqzl0c/4bnjtt>

*Beyond Civilized and Barbarians: Understanding the Settlement of Chinese
Migrants in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century **Chosŏn Korea*

*Speaker: Adam Bohnet*
Associate Professor in History at King’s University College at Western

*Tuesday, May 4, 20213:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time*

Beginning with the Imjin War and continuing through the wars of the
Ming-Qing transition in Liaodong, a significant number of Chinese settled
in Chosŏn along with Japanese defectors and Jurchen refugees. While it has
been common to assume that they would gain advantages from their Chinese
origins, in fact their treatment varied a great deal, and Chinese migrants
were often viewed with suspicion, and they were administered by the state
under the same categories used for Jurchen and Japanese migrants. By
exploring a number of examples of Chinese migrants to Chosŏn, this
presentation will suggest the need to rethink the assumed Sinocentrism of
the Chosŏn state.
RSVP <https://t.e2ma.net/click/4nkd4e/whqzl0c/k4njtt>

Founded in the year 2016, the GW Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS) is a
university-wide Institute housed in the Elliott School of International
Affairs at the George Washington University. The establishment of the GWIKS
in 2016 was made possible by a generous grant from the Academy of Korean
Studies (AKS). The mission of GWIKS is to consolidate, strengthen, and grow
the existing Korean studies program at GW, and more generally in the
greater D.C. area and beyond. The Institute enables and enhances productive
research and education relationships within GW, and among the many experts
throughout the region and the world.
CONNECT *WITH GWIKS*
Website <https://t.e2ma.net/click/4nkd4e/whqzl0c/0wojtt>
gwiks at gwu.edu
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