(January 24, 2006)
Young-Key Kim-Renaud, Ph.D., Chair
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
Professor of Korean Language and Culture and
International Affairs
The George Washington University
Washington, D. C. 20052
U.S.A.
1. Introduction and
Mission Statement
The
George Washington University is located in the heart of Washington, D.C., just
blocks from the White House, the World Bank, and the Kennedy Center. The
National Mall is just a short walk away and houses, among other attractions,
the world-renowned Asian collections of the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur
M. Sackler Gallery. The Library of Congress, just a short Metro ride away, has
some of the world's richest and most extensive collections of Asian materials.
Washington is, of course, also home to numerous research institutions and
non-profit organizations, many of which focus on Asian issues. All of these
resources are easily accessible to students, faculty and visitors alike.
The rapid
ascendance of Northeast Asia has made each country of the area a more distinct
entity. Korea is now regarded as an integral and significant part of East Asia
both from historical and contemporary points of view. In particular, Korean culture and civilization is no longer
considered a mere subset of the Chinese or Japanese for lack of direct
knowledge, as was the case in the 1950s.
Historically, Korea, being in the heart of the Northeast Asia where
Mahayana Buddhism and Confucianism flourished, has contributed to the
development of the East-Asian culture and civilization.
Today, Korea's strategic location and active participation in world economic,
political, intellectual and cultural life as well as a significant number of
diasporic Koreans living throughout the world have made the study of Korean
language and culture a new subject of practical importance and worthy
intellectual pursuit. What happens in one area of East Asia affects scholars in the other areas. In fact, as far as academic standards are concerned, no East
Asian language and culture/literature department can be considered first-rate
today if it does not include a Korean language program. Experience shows that increases in one
language offering seem to increase interest and "traffic" in all East
Asian language offerings.
The George Washington University (GWU) is one of the institutions of higher learning
that decided to strengthen their East Asian studies programs by formally including the Korean studies component in the early 1980s. However,
GWU’s relationship with Korea is long and significant. Suh Jae-pil (also known by his American name of Philip Jaisohn), a renowned leader in the fight for independence and
modernization of Korea, graduated from Columbia Medical College (now GWU’s
School of Medicine and Health
Sciences) in 1892, becoming the first Korean and one of the fist Asians to earn a
Doctor of Medicine degree in the United States (Theodore T. Suh,
http://www.ncneighbors.com/media/documents/261.6.doc). Syngman Rhee, the first
President of the Republic of Korea, received his B.A. degree from GWU in 1907,
a Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award in 1949, and an honorary degree
(LL.D.) in 1954 (http://www.gwu.edu/gelman/archives/almanac/recip.html). Roh Tae Woo, the 13th President of the Republic of Korea (1988-1993), received an honorary degree in 1989 (http://www.gwu.edu/gelman/archives/collections/verticalfiles.html). Executives of the
largest Korean companies, such as Hyundai, Dae Woo and Samsung either studied
at GWU, earned degrees, or were recipients of honorary degrees.
At program levels, various
parts of the University have established close relationships with the Republic
of Korea also. Over the
years, students have come from Korea to study at GWU. GWU has been a favorite destination for many
distinguished visiting scholars from Korea and others who are Korea
specialists. The GWU community has been greatly enriched by
their relationship with Korea and Korea specialists. Being in the center of the nation’s capital, where many
different nationalities come together, GWU has
constantly emphasized international and cross-cultural education.
One of the Elliott School's most recent initiatives
has been the construction of a network of partnerships with other outstanding
graduate programs in international affairs around the world. The purpose of this network is to
enable exchange of both graduate students and faculty. The network now has more than a dozen
partners, including the London School of Economics, Sciences Po (Institut d'Etudes Politiques) in Paris, the Free
University of Berlin, Waseda University, Fudan University, the National
University of Singapore, the University of Sydney, and Hong Kong University. In
Korea, GW’s Elliott School has established a thriving joint degree program for
a Master of International Studies (M.I.S.). with the Graduate School of
International Studies of Ewha Womans University in Seoul (http://www.gwu.edu/~elliott/academicprograms/studyabroad/Ewha.cfm).
This exchange relationship, which began in 2001 and was renewed in 2004, is
part of a broader graduate student exchange program specifically with the
Graduate School of International Studies at Ewha. Many students go for study in
Korea for only a semester, although some indeed take the one-year dual degree
program. They also have other exchange relationships with two other prestigious
universities in Korea, Seoul National University and Yonsei University.
The Elliott School’s interest
in Korea and
Korean affairs goes beyond the walls of
GWU and Universities with exchange relations. Various research centers within
the Elliott School have individual connections with counterparts in Korea. The Sigur Center for Asian Studies, in
particular, has a strong relationship with various scholars and institutions of
higher learning. In December 2005, the Sigur Center and Stanford University’s
Korean Studies Program signed with the POSCO TJ Park Foundation a Memorandum of
Understanding for a “POSCO NGO Fellowship Program” “to provide the opportunity
for key personnel of Korean non-government organizations to spend time at
leading North American universities gaining knowledge and experience that will
further the development of NGOs in Korea.”
The Center for International
Studies at Yonsei University, and the Center for International Science and
Technology Policy (CISTP) has a relationship with the Science, Technology, and
Economic Policy Institute and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology
Evaluation and Planning. Dr. Oh-Kab Kwon, Chairman and CEO of the Korea Science
and Engineering Foundation, is an alumnus of the CISTP’s M.A. program and
currently serves as the President of the GW Alumni Association in the Republic
of Korea, the largest GW alumni association outside of the U.S. The strong
connection between CISTP and Korean organizations was further reaffirmed in
2005 by the appointment of Prof. Nick Vonortas, director of the Center and
professor of economics and international affairs at GW, on the Board of
Directors of the Korea-U.S. Science Cooperation Center, which promotes Korean
research and development in cooperation with U.S. research institutions.
The Elliott School’s frequent talks, conferences, and other meetings on Korea are well attended. Other colleges and
professional schools have also been
interested in Korea, as manifested in Professor Yoon-shik Park’s activities in the financial
sector noted above.
There
are basically two complementary and mutually cooperating parts to Korean
studies at GWU, one in the Korean humanities taught in the Department of East
Asian Languages and Literatures (EALL) of the Columbian School of Arts and
Sciences, concentrating on language, literature and culture, and the other in
the social sciences with the study of history, anthropology, education,
political science, business and economics, by various faculty affiliated with
the Elliott School of International Affairs (ESIA). GWU is the only university in
the Washington, DC metropolitan area, which has a degree program in a
specifically Korean field, offering a minor in Korean language and
literature. More broadly, Korea is
an integral part of the Asian Studies
Program, which is a multidisciplinary undergraduate and graduate
academic program within the Elliott School. The Sigur Center for Asian Studies (SCAS), one of the Elliott School’s research and support centers, functions as the effective institutional
department for the Asian Studies Program.
The Asian Studies Program with a
Korean emphasis (“Korean Studies Program”
hereinafter) shares a joint mission with the Sigur Center
for Asian Studies “to increase the quality and broaden the scope of scholarly
research and publications on Asian affairs, promote U.S.-Asian scholarly
interaction and serve as the nexus for educating a new generation of students,
scholars, analysts, and policymakers prepared to deal with the rapidly
expanding role of East Asia and the Pacific Rim in world affairs.”
GW has one of the oldest international studies
programs in the country, having been engaged in instruction in international
affairs since 1898. But the
quality of our program has grown most rapidly since the establishment of a
separate school of international affairs in 1987. Three times in succession, GW has been awarded the status of
a National Resource Center in International Studies by the U.S. Department of
Education in the triennial competition.
During the most recent round of competition, in 2002-03, GW was the only
university in the Washington area to receive such a grant. It was also one of only eight
universities in the United States to receive the full range of funding -- funds
for both academic programs and graduate fellowships -- under this program. This award confirms the quality of our
teaching and research in international affairs, which is based on the
combination of both area studies and functional studies into a single
integrated program.
For our
students we strive to offer an education which will change their lives by not
only offering them special linguistic and cultural experiences but also by
training them to function more wisely and competently in the increasingly
globalizing world. The East Asian Languages and Literatures Department prepares
students for significant careers in East-Asian affairs and related fields, by
helping them develop leadership qualities through rigorous academic and
practical training. Careers in East Asia related fields offer very diverse
opportunities in a world in which Asia plays an increasingly important role.
The students in our program go into government, diplomacy, business, academia,
intelligence, medicine, and the legal profession, etc.
For our faculty, we endeavor to foster an
atmosphere in which dynamic research and teaching projects can be carried out,
to benefit each other as well as our students. Many of our faculty members
count among the prominent scholars in East Asian studies. At the University
level, the EALL Department works to complement and support the disciplinary
study of East Asia in a number of different departments and programs in the
Humanities, Social Sciences, and professional schools, including Anthropology,
Art History, History, Linguistics, Philosophy, Religion, Political Science,
Business, International Affairs, Law, and Women’s Studies. The EALL
Department also complements, while being its integral part, the Sigur Center
for Asian Studies, which has recently been selected as one of seven areas of
academic excellence by the University. The Sigur Center’s main
interest is in current affairs, but without knowledge of cultural and
historical background of the region, a true understanding of the present is
impossible.
The Korean
studies program also responds to the needs of the larger Washington, DC
community. The Hahn Moo-Sook Colloquium in the Korean Humanities series organized by EALL for
students, faculty members, and friends of GWU helps to promote interdisciplinary
and international dialog. The media—not only the mainstream ones such as Washington
Post, NPR, News Channel 8, but also ethnic Asian print and broadcast
media--often seek advice of our faculty members on Korean and East-Asian
and Asian-American affairs.
The Korean and East
Asian programs maintain close relations with the Freer-Sackler Galleries and the Asian
Pacific American Program of the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest
museum complex, which are minutes away from the GWU campus. We work
closely also with the area’s various research libraries and the Asian
Division of the Library of Congress as well as with the East-Asian studies
faculty in other universities in the area. Various embassies from East Asian
countries including Korea and their cultural centers are frequent
supporters or our academic and cultural activities. Curators, visiting faculty, and advanced
graduate students from all over the world that does research at those
institutions could be and are invited to help with guest teaching here at GWU.
The
Washington, D. C. metropolitan area is one of the most culturally diverse in
the nation and one of the world's most cosmopolitan urban areas. Maryland and
Northern Virginia have a large and growing population of people of East-Asian ancestry,
including a very significant number of ethnic Koreans, Chinese and Vietnamese.
The rapid growth of these Asian ethnic populations is increasingly reflected in
GWU's enrollment figures. GWU, like few other educational institutions of
higher learning in the United States, is strategically situated geographically
and demographically to further the research and teaching of East Asian
societies and cultures as well as their current affairs.
In what follows, we present
the state of the Korean Language and Literature program, closely following the GWU Guidelines and Format for Self-Study Report. We will specify our plans to continue
our strength, while reviewing where some of the problems might have originated
and how we may avoid them in the future. We also make a modest proposal for the
way the EALL Department and the University could help to make the Korean
component of the East Asian Languages and Literatures Department healthy and
prosperous. In the Appendix, we will list GW courses on Asia and Korea-related
topics.
2.
A Brief History
The
history of the Asian Studies program at GWU reflects the changes in the global situation since the
early 1960s. During the peak of the Cold
War in the aftermath of the Second World War, colleges and
universities in the United States realized that they were miserably lacking in
scholars doing research on Eastern European and East-Asian countries, the
majority of which belonged to the Communist block. They were naturally ill prepared to educate their students and the public at
large or to advise government leaders on policy toward these emerging
regimes.
GWU’s
renowned Institute for Sino-Soviet
Studies was thus
born in 1961 with the goal to help fill this gap by
promoting and supporting scholarly research, policy analysis and undergraduate
and graduate-level teaching in Soviet, Central and East European and East Asian
affairs. It was under these circumstances that,
in 1963, the first Chinese language courses were offered at GWU. They were taught by Beverly Fincher out
of the then Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. In 1965, a formal Chinese language
program was established, still within the Slavic Department. An independent
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures was created as a part of the
then School of Public and International Affairs, under the Chairship of Dr. Chung-Wen
Shih in 1972, offering a full battery of Chinese language and literature
courses. Japanese language was
added shortly thereafter.
Korean-language instruction at
GWU began with two courses technically first offered in the academic year of 1982-83,
but actually in the summer of 1983, with six students enrolled. At that time, GWU was the only university in the
Washington, DC, metropolitan area, formally offering Korean language courses as part of
its regular curriculum. Since then, other universities in the
area began offering Korean courses, too.
However, steady growth in the number of course offerings made GWU’s
Korean program the leader not only in this area but definitely one of the most
comprehensive language programs in the world. Only a small portion of the Korean language programs offer a
four-year language education. The Korean program began to offer Korean
literature courses during the academic year 1999-2000, and GWU is the only
university in the area regularly offering Korean literature courses. These
courses, first taught as an experimental “700 series,” which consists of “experimental or special courses that are on the
cutting edge of the academic endeavor,” became part
of the regular course offerings of the Department of East Asian Languages and
Literatures. With the
establishment of these courses as part of the regular curriculum, a Minor in
Korean Language and Literature could finally be instituted. Before, those who wanted to concentrate
on Korean studies did it only through the Elliott School of
International Affairs, as East-Asian Studies majors with a Korean focus. The
Korean Minor now can be and is chosen as a secondary field of study also by the
students of the Elliott School of International Affairs and the Columbian School
of Arts and Sciences.
Korean
language was introduced in the academic year of 1982-83, and the first two
courses were taught by Dr. Young-Key Kim-Renaud, a linguist by training but
with a broad research interest, in the summer of 1982, starting with six
students. The Japanese program was
expanded to include literature in translation in 1980-81. Soon the EALL Department began offering
majors and minors in Japanese Languages and Literatures, too.
In the academic year
1999-2000, the EALL
Department crossed an important threshold
by adding two crucial new courses: Korean Literature in Translation I & II,
and with them making it possible for students to minor in Korean Language and
Literature. In
the academic year 2003-2004, we began offering another Korea course, entitled
“Korean Culture through Film,” initially as part of GWU’s experimental 700
series. This is a very popular
course, and in the first semester it was offered, the enrollment reached the
cap of 30 students. We now offer
it every semester as part of the regular EALL course offerings.
After the Cold War, the Institute changed its name to The Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, and the new Sigur Center for Asian Studies was established in the Elliott School for International Affairs. Recently the Sigur Center was chosen as one of seven areas of academic excellence
in
GWU’s effort to focus its
priorities on areas that have gained or have the potential to gain national and international recognition. The role of the EALL
Department in the Asian Studies Program housed in the Sigur Center is thus
enhanced. The establishment of the
EALL Department as an independent entity in the early 1970s makes GWU one of
the elite in the group of U.S. universities to recognize the historical and
future importance of East Asian languages and literatures in Asian
Studies. Pioneered in the
nineteenth century by such distinguished scholars as F. Max Muller and James
Legge, the Asian studies field has developed into one of the most rigorous and
challenging in the humanities.
The
Asian Studies Program derives particular strength from its association with the
Sigur Center of Asian Studies. The Sigur Center sponsors research projects, study
groups, conferences, and lectures on political, social, economic, and security
issues in Asia. The Center also hosts the Visiting Scholar and Visiting
Research Associate Programs, bringing eminent scholars and top policy planners
from universities and government organizations around the world to the Elliott School
to teach and pursue their own research.
As
the institutional home of the Asian Studies program, the Sigur Center also
coordinates undergraduate and graduate instruction in Asian affairs throughout
the university. This program is one of the nation's leading programs for the
study of modern and contemporary Asia. It boasts an internationally recognized
faculty with particular strengths in East Asia and policy issues and with
coverage of South and Southeast Asia as well. This faculty is the largest of any
university in the Washington, D.C., area.
3. Current State of Korean
Studies at GWU
3.1. Faculty
In
terms of Korean Studies at GWU, a major turning point was the creation of an
endowed professorship in Korean studies.
During the academic year of 1997-1998, in the midst of the Korean
financial crisis, GWU was successful in winning a Korea Foundation endowment
grant of $1 million, which was matched by GWU’s President Stephen Joel
Trachtenberg. The grant was the
Foundation’s formal recognition of GWU’s initial achievement in implementing a
solid program in Korean Studies, and of its sound common vision shared by the
faculty, students and administrators.
Equally important, the matching grant was an indication of the
University’s seriousness of wanting to strengthen the Korean Studies Program at
the highest level. The Elliott School Dean Harding and Young-Key Kim-Renaud worked hard to raise the
endowment fund. However, the one critical basis for Korea Foundation’s positive
response to GWU’s application for an endowment grant apparently was the report
by the Foundation’s site-visit team, which found our Korean program offered in
the EALL Department of the highest caliber.
That
GW is viewed as an important place to do Korean studies was evidenced by the
number of qualified candidates who applied for the newly created tenure-track position and endowed chair in Korean
studies. Kirk W.
Larsen, then a recent Ph.D. in History from Harvard University, was selected
from an impressive pool of more than 40 highly
qualified candidates.
There are now two full-time
professors, who are devoted to Korean Studies one hundred percent of the time,
as shown below:
Young-Key
Kim-Renaud is a
tenured full Professor of Korean Language
and Culture and International Affairs and Chair of the Department of East Asian
Languages and Literatures at The George Washington University. She is a
theoretical linguist with a broad interest in the humanities and Asian affairs.
She is a past President of the International Circle of Korean Linguistics and
of the Washington Linguistics Society. Kim-Renaud is currently serving as the
Korea Book Review Editor for the Journal
of Asian Studies, and as Editor of Korean
Linguistics and of the International Journal of Korean
Studies. Before joining George
Washington in 1983, she worked as Assistant Program Director for Linguistics at
the U.S. National Science Foundation. She also taught at Harvard University as
a visiting lecturer (1986–87). She is the initiator and co-convener of the
annual Hahn Moo-Sook Colloquium series in the Korean Humanities at GWU (1992–).
Kim-Renaud teaches Korean language courses at all levels, Korean literature
courses, and a course in Asian Humanities. She is also a member of the GWU Linguistics faculty. She is frequently invited to give
lectures at other universities, at the State Department’s Area Studies
programs, and at other private and public organizations.
Kim-Renaud’s
research activities combine language teaching and linguistic research, which
she finds mutually beneficial. Her dissertation, Korean Consonantal Phonology, has been one of the most cited works
in Korean linguistics over the last 30 years, and has been pivotal to numerous subsequent
phonological articles and dissertations.
She has also done research in the fields of historical linguistics,
sociolinguistics, syntax, pragmatics, and second-language acquisition.
Kim-Renaud has edited a volume presenting a comprehensive overview of
contemporary theoretical studies in all aspects of Korean linguistics. In
addition, she edited a book on the Korean writing system, the first
comprehensive scholarly treatment of han’gûl
published in English, with chapters by diverse and leading scholars in Korean
linguistics and history. As a backdrop that explains the creative scientific
and philosophical environment behind the invention of what has been called “one
of the great intellectual achievements of humankind,” she has also edited a volume
on the culture and society of 15th-century Korea, the era of the sage King
Sejong, inventor of the Korean alphabet, for general audiences as well as
Korean-studies specialists.
Kim-Renaud’s interest in second-language acquisition has grown over the years,
as she has been engaged in teaching foreign languages now for more than three
decades. Mistakes as well as students’ novel sentences reveal much about
linguistic structure, both in universal and language specific senses. She
believes that these complementary activities are helpful as they provide a
constant check on the existing theories, which need continual
modification. She has also been actively engaged in research on the history and
governance of Korean-language instruction in America. As a Korea specialist, she has also
researched Korean education and studied the history and current social and
political status of the Korean peninsula and of the immigrant Koreans in the
United States for a broader audience.
Kim-Renaud has also been involved in literary translations, and her English
translation of Hahn Moo-Sook's Korean original long novel, Yoksanûn hûrûnda, under the title of And So Flows History, is currently in press by the Univeresity of Hawaii Press. Her experience with translation has directed her
attention to the relationship between language and culture. She is keenly
interested in language change reflecting sociocultural change, in particular as
a mirror of rapidly changing values, customs, and class structure.
Kim-Renaud has received various
awards and grants, including three Fulbright awards (Korea, 1986, Jordan, 1994,
and Korea, 1997–98). She is the author or editor of eight books: And So
Flows History, an English translation of Hahn Moo-Sook’s Korean original,
entitled Yŏksanŭn hŭrŭnda, Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press and the Center for Korean Studies, University of
Hawaii, Honolulu
(2005), Studies in Korean Syntax and
Semantics by Susumu Kuno with Young-Joo Kim, Soo-Yeon Kim, Young-Key
Kim-Renaud, Ik-Hwan Lee, Ken-Ichi Takami, and John B. Whitman [co-editor with
John B. Whitman], Washington, DC: International Circle of Korean Linguistics
and Seoul: Pagijong Press (2004), Creative Women of Korea: The Fifteenth through the Twentieth Centuries (2003), The Korean
Alphabet: Its History and Structure (1997), Theoretical Issues in Korean Linguistics (1994), King Sejong the Great: The Light of
15th-Century Korea (1992/97; Korean tr. 1998; German tr. 2002), Studies in Korean Linguistics (1986),
and Korean Consonantal Phonology
(1975/95).
Kim-Renaud has been actively
engaged in various committee works at GWU, and currently serves as a member of
the Promotion and Tenure Committee.
She has served as a panelist in various scholarship and fellowship
committees within and outside GWU, and recently finished a three-year term as a
member of the Fulbright Senior Scholar Review Committee for Japan/Korea.
Kim-Renaud’s outreach
activities are diverse and far-reaching.
She has organized numerous
academic and cultural activities not only for GWU students and faculty but also for
the whole Washington Metropolitan area community. She
has been interviewed as an expert in Korean studies and Korean-American affairs
by various media including the U.S. National Public Radio, the New York
Times, and the Washington Post. She has also testified in court as an expert witness as a
cultural specialist. She also devotes her time to
community services, and has been a long-term board member of the Korean
Community Service Center of Greater Washington, Inc.
Kirk W. Larsen
is Korean Foundation Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs
at the George Washington University. After completing graduate work at Harvard
University and working for one year as a visiting lecturer at the University of
Texas—Austin, he arrived at GWU in 2000. Since then, he has worked to increase
and improve Korean studies in the arenas of teaching, scholarship, and public
service.
Kirk Larsen teaches courses on the
history and culture of Korea at both the graduate and undergraduate level. His
undergraduate Korean history course is always filled to capacity (40+ students)
and his graduate seminar on Modern Korea consistently attracts a number of
graduate students from various disciplines (8-10 students). The demand for
Korean history courses at GWU has grown to the point where Professor Larsen
will expand the range of course offerings potentially including undergraduate
courses on traditional Korea, the Korean War, and North Korea, and adding a
special topics graduate seminar in the near-term future. Professor Larsen also
incorporates Korea into other courses he teaches on East Asia and International
Affairs more generally. In addition to courses, Professor Larsen also advises
and trains History Ph.D. students, four of which selected Korea as either a
major or minor field in their comprehensive examinations in the academic year,
2003-4. Beginning in the fall 2005, he will be
director of the Elliott School's undergraduate program in international affairs
-- the largest major in the University.
Larsen has presented papers at
conference venues ranging from P’ohang and Yanbian to Berlin and the
Association of Asian Studies annual conference. In addition, he has presented
papers or given invited talks at Harvard, Princeton, Duke, and Georgetown
universities. Professor Larsen has published reviews of Korea-related books in The Journal of Asian Studies and in Business History Review. Additional
reviews in the JAS and in Pacific Affairs are forthcoming.
Professor Larsen has also published an article on Sino-Korean trade in Chinese Business History and was a
co-editor of the widely used Harvard
Korean Studies Bibliography. He has written numerous entries on Korean and
Asian history for ABC-CLIO’s World
History subscription website. Four submissions to edited collections on a
variety of historical topics are due to be published in the near future. He is
presently co-editing a volume on Chosôn Korea’s reception of international law.
Finally, he is soon to complete a monograph titled Tradition, Trade and Empire: Qing Imperialism in Chosôn Korea,
1876-1910.
Professor Larsen, to a degree unusual for a historian,
has been an
active participant in policy dialogue in Washington, bringing an acute
historical perspective to the analysis of contemporary developments on the
Korean peninsula. He
has been often consulted by the Washington DC policy community and in various
Korea- and Asia-related outreach efforts. He is a regular participant in the
Korea Current Affairs Roundtable and has spoken at Korea-related conferences at
Duke University, the School of Advanced International Studies (Johns Hopkins),
and at The George Washington University. He has also lectured on various
aspects of Korean history and culture at the Area Studies division of the U.S.
Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute and also at the Korean Culture
and Information Service. He is frequently consulted by local and national media
on Korea-related issues, appearing and/or being cited in a range of media
including CBS’s The World at Six, Hardball with Chris Matthews, the Washington
Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Miami Herald, and Agence France-Presse. He has also
participated in a number of briefings, symposia, and panels organized by
various local schools, universities and organizations. One recent example is
his lecture on Tuesday,
October 4, 2005, at the Korea Culture and Information Service, entitled, “Korea and China’s Relations: Yesterday and Today,”a discussion of traditional
relations between Korea and China, how modernization impacted both nations and
the exchanges between the Korea and China today.
There
are three part-time faculty members, who teach Korean language and culture
courses within the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. Two are ABDs nearing the completion of
their doctorates. Both Ki-tae Kim and YiYoung Kim are doctoral candidates in
Linguistics at Georgetown University. John Finch has a Ph.D. in Anthropology and
has taught courses in Film Studies in the Department of Comparative Literature
at the University of Maryland. We
have also hired various drill instructors over the years, drawing mainly from
the pool of graduate students in the Elliott School of International
Affairs.
GWU
has also been fortunate in getting faculty members in various departments, who
are interested in Korean studies, although they were hired as experts in other
areas. These include Gregg
Brazinsky in History, Susanne Francoeur in Art History, R. Richard Grinker in
Anthropology, and Shoko Hamano in Linguistics, Harry Harding, Henry Nau and Mike Mochizuki in
Political Science, Tom Michael in Religion and Honors, and Yoon-shik Park in
Business Administration, whose brief introductions appear below.
Gregg Brazinsky
is a historian of U.S.-East Asian relations. His current research is on
American Cold War Nation Building in South Korea. He received a Fulbright
Scholarship to do research in Korea in 1999-2000 and has studied at the Yonsei
University Korean Language Institute. His publications include
"Koreanizing Modernization: South Korean Intellectuals and Modernization
Theory," in Michael Latham et al eds., Staging Growth (2003) and "From
Pupil to Model: American Economic Assistance Policies and Korean Development,"
forthcoming in Diplomatic History. He
has recently received a Kluge Fellowship from the Library of Congress where he
is completing his manuscript on U.S.-Korean relations.
Susanne Francoeur teaches Korean art
as part of courses on East Asian art and Buddhist Art of Asia. Her course on
the art of East Asia, which is offered in the fall semester, includes four to five sessions dealing with the art of
Korea. The material is organized chronologically starting with
the Neolithic period and ending with the Chosôn dynasty. In each period she concentrates on the most
prominent and most accomplished aspects of the art of Korea, which includes ceramics, metal work, painting (early tomb paintings,
landscapes, genre as well as Buddhist), sculpture and
architecture (both Buddhist). Francoeur’s seminar on the Buddhist Art of Asia contains a section
on the Buddhist art in Korea with concentration
on painting and sculpture from the Three Kingdoms to the Chosôn dynasty. In both courses she places special emphasis on the larger
regional context in which these art forms developed modeled on certain prototypes such as Chinese, Indian, Central Asian, and
how they in turn were transmitted to Japan shaping the
early production of Buddhist art as well as ceramics (a
point that has been long overlooked).
Francoeur’s seminar is capped at 15 and it is always filled.
There are 53 students in her
course on the art of East Asia in fall 2003,
somewhat higher than in the past years. Students are from across the board with a strong concentration on International Affairs, Fine Arts, Art
History, and Museum Studies.
Roy Richard
Grinker, Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs and Human Sciences
at GWU, has conducted fieldwork in South Korea since 1992 on
unification issues, and is the author of numerous publications on Korea. These
include:
1995a "The Real Enemy of the Nation: Exhibiting North Korea at the
Demilitarized Zone." Museum
Anthropology. 19 (2). Reprinted in C. B. Steiner, ed., in press. Museums
of Display/Museums on Display. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1995b "Mourning the Nation: Ruins of the North in Seoul." Positions:
East Asia Cultures Critique, 3 (1): 331-352.
1996 "Imagining the North: Unification and Colonial Discourses in
a South Korean Exhibition." (A revised and personalized
version of Grinker, R.R. 1995b, "Mourning the
Nation.") In Cho Hyong, ed. T'ongildoen
ddangaeso toburo sanun yonsup (Learning to live together in a unified
land), pp. 189-207. Seoul: Ddo Hanaui Munhwa. Trans. Yu Seung Hee. In Korean.
1996 Op-ed ("Shiron"): "Understanding 'Difference' in
North-South Korean Relations." Joong-Ang Ilbo, June 19, 1996: 6.
(circulation: approximately
2.5 million). In Korean.
1997 "T'ongilhankuksahoe: miriponun koulinka" [Korean
Unification Society]. Sindonga (circulation, approximately 500,000). April, 1997:
136-145. In Korean.
1997 Prepared Testimony before the United States House of Representatives,
February 26, 1997. Engaging the Hermit Kingdom: U.S. Policy toward North
Korea." House International Relations Committee, Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office. Other Witnesses: Assistant Secretary of State for
East Asian Affairs, Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asian Affairs,
Ambassador James Lilley, Robert Manning (Progressive
Policy Institute).
1997 “Interview
with Roy Richard Grinker.” In Yoo Dong Hee, ed. Nampukhanuit'onghapkwapangsong
[North-South Unification and Broadcasting], pp. 89-96. Munhwa Broadcasting
Company, Seoul, Korea. In Korean.
1998 "Learning to Hate Communism: Elementary School Textbooks and the Construction of Nationhood in South Korea" Social
Analysis (special issue on divided nations), ed. Gautam Ghosh. Vol. 57, 88-110.
1998 “South Korea, North Korea, and the
Idea of Unification: Mutual Perceptions.” Chae-jin
Lee, ed. Inter-Korean Relations. Sejong Institute, Republic of Korea.
1998 Interview with Roy R. Grinker. T’ongil Hanguk.
September, pp. 36-39. In Korean.
1998 “Unification and the Economy,” Korean Economic Daily. In Korean. July 29, 1998: 6.
2002 Kim-Renaud, Young-Key, Kirk Larsen, and Roy Richard Grinker, eds., Korean Music.
Sigur Center for Asian Studies Working Papers, 10.
2000 Kim-Renaud, Young-Key and Roy Richard Grinker, eds., Creation and Re-Creation in the Korean Humanities.
Sigur Center for Asian Studies Working Papers, 8.
R. Richard
Grinker is currently engaged in a
long-term project on disability in general, and autism, in particular in Korea.
He is conducting research with families in Seoul, Chinju, and Sunch'ang County
(Cholla puk-do) and has done extended interviews with 60 families to
date. He is working with Korean psychiatrists to modify a Developmental Expectations
Questionnaire to make it appropriate for Korean society. In addition, he is
planning the first ever prevalence study of autism in South Korea in
collaboration with two child psychiatrists in South Korea. He has received a
grant for researching “Prevalence of Autism Spectru Disorders among Korean
School-Aged Children” from the National Alliance for Autism Research (NAAR). He
will be working with researchers from Yale, McGill, University of Chicago and
Yonsei University in Seoul.
Grinker is co-convener of the Hahn Moo-Sook Colloquium in the
Korean Humanities. He advises numerous students on topics in Korean culture,
Korean international affairs, and unification issues, and serves as a grants
reviewer on Korean international affairs for the United States Institute of
Peace.
·
Shoko Hamano
Professor
Shoko Hamano received her Ph.D. in Anthropological Linguistics in 1986 from the
University of Florida. She teaches lower and intermediate level Japanese
language courses. She was the 2004 recipient of the Oscar and Shoshana
Trachtenberg Teaching Award. She received her B.A. in Cultural Anthropology
from the University of Tokyo in 1976 and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropological
Linguistics from the University of Florida. Prior to coming to GW, Hamano
taught at the University of California Santa Cruz and served as acting director
for the Japanese Language Program at Harvard University.
Her written
work includes: The Sound-Symbolic System of Japanese (CSLI, 1998);
"Voicing of Obstruents in Old Japanese" in the Journal of East
Asian Linguistics (July 2000); and Making Sense of Japanese Grammar
(University of Hawaii Press, 2002). Dr. Hamano is currently involved in a
research project concerning a northern dialect of Japanese.
Shoko Hamano is a Japanese linguist, who has studied Korean and who has
been doing contrastive analysis between Japanese and Korean. She has been doing pedagogical research
on teaching Japanese to Korean students.
Harry
Harding is presently the Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs.
After he steps down from the deanship at the end of June 2005, he will become
University Professor of International Affairs, with an office in the Sigur
Center for Asian Studies. He received his B.A. in public and international
affairs from Princeton, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from
Stanford. A specialist on Asian affairs with a particular interest in China, he
is the author of A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China Since
1972 (1992), China and Northeast Asia: The Political Dimension
(1988), China's Second Revolution: Reform after Mao (1987), and Organizing
China: The Problem of Bureaucracy, 1949-1976 (1981). His edited volumes
include The India-China Relationship: What the United States Needs to Know
(2004), Sino-American Relations, 1945-55: A Joint Reassessment of a Critical
Debate (1989), and China's Foreign Relations in the 1980s (1984). He
has published articles in a wide range of scholarly and policy journals, from China
Quarterly to Foreign Policy to World Politics, and serves on
the editorial boards of the China Quarterly and the Journal of
Democracy.
Dean
Harding maintains a research interest in his areas of expertise: Chinese
domestic politics, Chinese foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, and the
international relations of the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, he is
conducting informal research on two other topics: the expression of political
ideas in civic architecture, and the cross-cultural relations between Asia and
America. Most of his courses include coverage of Korea.
Dr.
Harding joined the Elliott School in January 1995. He had previously been a
Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings
Institution (1983-94), and had served on the political science faculties of
Stanford University (1971-83) and Swarthmore College (1970-71). He has also
been a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, directed the East Asia
Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and held
visiting or adjunct professorships at the University of California at Berkeley,
the University of Washington at Seattle, Georgetown University, the George
Washington University, and United College of the Chinese University of Hong
Kong.
Dr.
Harding received the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching from
Stanford University in 1975. His first book, Organizing China, was
awarded the 1986 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize, which honors outstanding books
on subjects concerning the Pacific Rim. A subsequent book, A Fragile
Relationship, was named an "Outstanding Academic Book" by Choice
magazine, and received the honorable mention award in the competition for the
"Best Book in Government and Political Science" conducted by the
Association of American Publishers.
Dr. Harding is a trustee of the Asia Foundation, a director of the Asia Foundation in Taiwan, a director of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, a director of the U.S. Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, a director of the Atlantic Council of the United States, and a member of the Committee on International Security Studies of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He has previously served as a fellow of the