Category: Korea

New in Writing Past Colonialism

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Mediating Across Difference Mediating Across Difference: Oceanic and Asian Approaches to Conflict Resolution, edited by Morgan Brigg and Roland Bleiker, is based on a fundamental premise: to deal adequately with conflict—and particularly with conflict stemming from cultural and other differences—requires genuine openness to different cultural practices and dialogue between different ways of knowing and being. Equally essential is a shift away from understanding cultural difference as an inevitable source of conflict, and the development of a more critical attitude toward previously under-examined Western assumptions about conflict and its resolution.

To address the ensuing challenges, this book introduces and explores some of the rich insights into conflict resolution emanating from Asia and Oceania.

Writing Past Colonialism
January 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3519-4 / $28.00 (PAPER)

New in Pureland Buddhist Studies

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Immigrants to the Pure LandReligious acculturation is typically seen as a one-way process: The dominant religious culture imposes certain behavioral patterns, ethical standards, social values, and organizational and legal requirements onto the immigrant religious tradition. In this view, American society is the active partner in the relationship, while the newly introduced tradition is the passive recipient being changed. Immigrants to the Pure Land: The Modernization, Acculturation, and Globalization of Shin Buddhism, 1898-1941, by Michihiro Ama, investigates the early period of Jodo Shinshu in Hawai‘i and the United States. It sets a new standard for investigating the processes of religious acculturation and a radically new way of thinking about these processes.

Pureland Buddhist Studies
Published in association with the Institute of Buddhist Studies at the Graduate Theological Union
January 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3438-8 / $47.00 (CLOTH)

Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF Wins Yim Suk Jay Prize

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Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMFShamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF: South Korean Popular Religion in Motion, by Laurel Kendall, has been awarded the Yim Suk Jay Prize.

The prize is awarded by the Korean Society for Cultural Anthropology to a Korean or foreign scholar who has contributed to the development of Korean cultural anthropology by authoring a book-length scholarly work of high quality and originality.

Anthology of Literature by Koreans in Japan

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Into the LightInto the Light: An Anthology of Literature by Koreans in Japan, edited by Melissa L. Wender, is the first anthology to introduce the fiction of Japan’s Korean community (Zainichi Koreans) to the English-speaking world. The collection brings together works by many of the most important Zainichi Korean writers of the twentieth century, from the colonial-era “Into the Light” (1939) by Kim Sa-ryang to “Full House” (1997) by Yu Miri, one of contemporary Japan’s most acclaimed and popular authors.

“This groundbreaking anthology is urgently needed. It will be of particular interest to the growing numbers of English-language readers wanting to know about the experiences of migrants and minorities. The high-quality translations will also be useful in the classroom in a number of fields including Japanese literature and history, comparative literature, gender studies, and diaspora studies.” —Steve Rabson, professor emeritus, Brown University

October 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3490-6 / $22.00 (PAPER)

Korean Adoptees and Their Journey toward Empowerment

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The Dance of IdentitiesKorean adoptees have a difficult time relating to any of the racial identity models because they are people of color who often grew up in white homes and communities. Biracial and nonadopted people of color typically have at least one parent whom they can racially identify with, which may also allow them access to certain racialized groups. When Korean adoptees attempt to immerse into the Korean community, they feel uncomfortable and unwelcome because they are unfamiliar with Korean customs and language. The Dance of Identities, by John D. Palmer, looks at how Korean adoptees “dance,” or engage, with their various identities (white, Korean, Korean adoptee, and those in between and beyond) and begin the journey toward self-discovery and empowerment.

Intersections: Asian and Pacific American Intercultural Studies
October 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3371-8 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

Commodification, Tourism, and Performance

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Consuming KoreanContributors to Consuming Korean Tradition in Early and Late Modernity: Commodification, Tourism, and Performance, edited by Laurel Kendall, explore the irony of modern things made in the image of a traditional “us.” They describe the multifaceted ways “tradition” is produced and consumed within the frame of contemporary Korean life and how these processes are enabled by different apparatuses of modernity that Koreans first encountered in the early twentieth century. Commoditized goods and services first appeared in the colonial period in such spectacular and spectacularly foreign forms as department stores, restaurants, exhibitions, and staged performances. Today, these same forms have become the media through which many Koreans consume “tradition” in multiple forms.

September 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3393-0 / $46.00 (CLOTH)

Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF Now Available in Paperback

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Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF“Laurel Kendall has written a study of contemporary Korean shamans that is both entertaining and enlightening. Most studies of the topic treat shamans as an anachronistic remnant of the past. Kendall challenges that approach, drawing on several decades of close observation of shamans in action to reveal how shamanism is constantly evolving. It is an important work that will appeal to a wide audience.” —Don Baker, University of British Columbia

“With the publication of Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF, Laurel Kendall opens a new chapter in the study not only of shamanism in Korea, but also in many societies undergoing the process of industrialization and modernization. It is distinguished by its rich ethnographic data and novel theoretical approach to the field of Korean popular religion. One of its many merits is that, unlike conventional studies that focus on ‘authentic’ shaman ritual performances, it reveals a wide spectrum of shamans and rituals within a grand system of practice.” —Kwang Ok Kim, Seoul National University

“Laurel Kendall’s sympathetic and lucid writing consistently leads from vivid narratives to penetrating theoretical insights. In her hands the IMF becomes a brilliant trope for the interplay between magical causality and the bewildering modernity which moulds our lives, as it does the lives of her shamans’ clients.” — Piers Vitebsky, University of Cambridge

August 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3398-5 / $24.00 (PAPER)

Discourses of Ch’angguk

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In Search of Traditional Korean OperaIn Search of Korean Traditional Opera: Discourses of Ch’angguk, by Andrew Killick, is the first book on Korean opera in a language other than Korean. Ch’angguk is a form of musical theater that has developed over the last hundred years from the older narrative singing tradition of p’ansori. Killick examines the history and current practice of ch’angguk as an ongoing attempt to invent a traditional Korean opera form to compare with those of neighboring China and Japan. In this, the work addresses a growing interest within the fields of ethnomusicology and Asian studies in the adaptation of traditional arts to conditions in the modern world.

August 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3290-2 / $48.00 (CLOTH)
A Study of the International Center for Korean Studies, Research Institute of Korean Studies, Korea University

New Edition of Integrated Korean: Beginning 2

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KLEAR Beginning 2 TextThis is a thoroughly revised edition of Integrated Korean: Beginning 2, the second volume of the best-selling series developed collaboratively by leading classroom teachers and linguists of Korean. In response to comments from hundreds of students and instructors of the first edition, the new edition features a more attractive two-color design with all new photos and drawings and an additional lesson and vocabulary exercises. Lessons are now organized into two main sections, each containing a conversational text (with its own vocabulary list) and a reading passage. The accompanying workbook, newly written, provides students with extensive skill-using activities based on the skills learned in the main text.

Integrated Korean series
August 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3515-6 / $28.00 (PAPER)

Audio files for both the textbook and workbook may be downloaded in MP3 format at http://www.kleartextbook.com.

New in the Hawaii Studies on Korea Series

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Soldiers on the Cultural Front
Soldiers on the Cultural Front: Developments in the Early History of North Korean Literature and Literary Policy, by Tatiana Gabroussenko, presents the first consistent research on the early history of North Korea’s literature and literary policy in Western scholarship. It traces the introduction and development of Soviet-organized conventions in North Korean literary propaganda and investigates why the “romance with Moscow” was destined to be short lived. It reconstructs the biographies and worldviews of major personalities who shaped North Korean literature and teases these historical figures out of popular scholarly myth and misconception. The book also investigates the specific forms of control over intellectuals and literary matters in North Korea.

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3396-1 / $49.00 (CLOTH)
Hawai‘i Studies on Korea
Published in association with the Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai‘i

UH Press Distributing the Cornell East Asia Series and KITLV Press

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University of Hawai‘i Press is pleased to announce it is now a distributor for the Cornell East Asia Series (excluding North America) and KITLV Press (North America only).

The Cornell East Asia Series is produced by the Cornell University East Asia Program and publishes a wide range of genres on subjects relative to the cultures of China, Japan, and Korea. For the complete list of titles distributed by UH Press, click here.

KITLV Press is the publishing department of the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies and is the publisher of the longest-running anthropological and linguistic journal in the world (since 1851), Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI) / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia and Oceania. For the complete list of titles distributed by UH Press, click here.

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