Soyoung Suh – CKR Workshop

Co-sponsored by Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, Academy of Korean Studies; Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University

The talk series will explore how material, cultural, ideological, and political changes that took place during Korea’s transitions from Japanese empire to U.S. military occupation to postwar Korea influenced and were influenced by people’s lives; how these changes constructed multiple identities from gender, family, and class; and how indigenous and modern elements were selected and used in constructing these new individual and collective identities in Korea during the first half of the 20th century. In doing so, the talk series will revisit the tensions, compromises, and conflicts of diverse identities in both the colonial and postcolonial contexts through the three scholars’ respective analyses of family civil law cases, medical practices, and Korea’s transwar society.

Dr. Suh’s first book, Naming the Local: Medicine, Language, and Identity in Korea since the Fifteenth Century (Harvard University Asia Center, 2017), traces the rise of an indigenous identity in medicine, which was intertwined with regionalism, nationalism, and colonialism. Dr. Suh is currently working on the transnational history of breast cancer, investigating the origins of gendered medical culture in post–World War II Korea.