Epistolary Korea: Letters in the Communicative Space of the Choson, 1392-1910

Lecture | November 4 | 4 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (2223 Fulton), Sixth Floor

Speaker/Performer: JaHyun Kim Haboush, King Sejong Professor of Korean Studies, East Asian Languages and Cultures, and History, Columbia University

Sponsors: East Asian Studies, Institute of (IEAS), Korean Studies, Center for (CKS)

What can we read in and through the codes that govern written expression? From royal public edicts to private letters, the works in this collection - written in both literary Chinese and vernacular Korean - recast relationships between epistolography and concepts of public and private space, between classical and everyday language, and between men and women.

Jahyun Kim Haboush is a cultural historian of pre- and early modern Korea, particularly from the 16th to 19th centuries. Her current areas of interest include Korean literature, political culture, pre-modern nationalism, diglossia, language and ideology, genre, gender, and historiography. Professor Haboush received her MA from the University of Michigan in 1970 and Ph.D. from Columbia in 1978. She is the author and editor of many works, including most recently Epistolary Korea.

Introduced by Clare You, Chair, Center for Korean Studies.

Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510-642-2809