"Na Hye-sŏk and Samch’ŏlli: Gender and Travel in a Colonial Korean Magazine"
Dr. Ji-Eun Lee
Associate Professor of Korean Language and Literature
Head of the Korean Section
Washington University in St. Louis
Flyer: 
Ji-Eun Lee Flyer.pdf
Abstract:
This talk will use Na Hye-sŏk (1896-1948)’s essays and serialized travelogue in the monthly magazine Samch’ŏlli (1929-1942) to explore a junction where travelogue, serialization, a popular magazine, and a woman author meet in the socio-cultural space of 1930s colonial Korea. Prompted by a themed conference on serialization, this talk explores the possibility for an extended concept of serialization, and discusses Na’s frequent appearance—“serialization of Na Hye-sŏk”—in Samch’ŏlli as an author and also as an object of gossip that ultimately enables fuller understanding of readership and the cultural scene during the heyday of colonial nationalism. This paper discusses Na’s travelogues as a case study to examine relationships between travelogue as a genre and periodicity, and to explore expansion and redefinition of serialization by reading Samch’ŏlli “horizontally.” (Joan Judge, 2015) The ultimate goal for this research is to propose an alternative view and understanding of the 1930s, of colonial modernity, and of the role of New Woman by assessing print culture through the light of revised concepts of serialization and periodicity.
Bio:
Ji-Eun Lee is the author of Women Pre-Scripted: Forging Modern Roles through Korean Print (University of Hawaii Press, 2015) and is currently an associate professor of Korean Literature and Language in Washington University in St. Louis. She is working on two writing projects: a book-length study on memory and space in post-Cold War Korean literature; and domesticity and travels by Colonial Korean women writers.
This event is sponsored in part by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant for The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center and is free and open to the public.
