Mi-Ryong Shim is Assistant Professor of Korean Literature and Culture at the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. A specialist in modern Korean literature and intellectual history, she received her PhD from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University and held the Korea Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Mi-Ryong’s research interests include the aesthetics of nativism, comparative colonialism, and globalization in twentieth century Korea. She is currently working on a manuscript that examines discourses of conversion, imperialization, and Pan-Asian regionalism during the Asia-Pacific War as continuations of earlier discussions regarding the problematic nature of modernity in colonial Korea. Her translations of modern Korean literature have been published as part of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea’s 20th Century Korean Literature series, and she is currently completing a translation of Yi Hyo-sŏk’s seminal novel Pollen (Hwabun). Mi-Ryong’s teaching interests include modern and contemporary Korean literature, cultural history, film, and popular culture.
Award Information
My dissertation examines the role of colonial intellectuals in producing regional identities during the Asia-Pacific War period. From 1931 to 1945, Korean colonized elites, writing in both Korean and Japanese, depicted Manchuria as a new frontier in the history of East Asia. Through an analysis of texts ranging from Korean and Japanese writers’ literary works and essays to the imperial government’s official rhetoric and state-sponsored propaganda films, my dissertation situates the role of colonial intellectuals within the larger rhetoric of Pan-Asian regionalism, and explores how their writings about Manchuria symbolized the changing relationship between colonizer and colonized alike.