A New Modern History of Women in Korea:
A Transnational Approach
Principal Investigator: Hyaeweol Choi (ANU, Department of Korean Studies and the Korea Institute)
This research team seeks to investigate the ways in which Korea's interactions with
the West and Japan transformed gender images and bodily practices from 1876 to the
end of Korea's colonization by Japan in 1945. Much of the previous research on the
history of women in Korea during this period has centered on the category of nationstate
and has been framed by the grand narratives of nationalism, colonialism and
modernity. This project re-examines that modern history from a transnational
perspective by focusing on the dynamic flow of ideas, images, and people that enabled
different groups to envision new modern selves based on local particularities and
global trends. More specifically, during the duration of the AKS grant, we have
identified one key site of investigation to understand the transnational nature of
gendered modernity in Korea within a broader Asian and global context.
We will explore the locus of American Protestant missionary women in the history of
modern womanhood in Korea, China, Japan and the Pacific. One of the key linkages
that explains gendered modernity within a transnational context is the role that
Western women missionaries played in challenging, reinforcing or transforming
gender practices in Asia and the Pacific. While there have been significant research
studies focusing on individual countries, very little research has systematically
examined the complex relationship between Western missionary women and women
in Asia and the Pacific. Our team will bring together scholars of Asian and Pacific
Studies to conduct a comparative investigation with focus on some key concepts,
such as domesticity, motherhood and selfhood as analytical nodes, teasing out both
the shared and the distinctive experiences Asian and Western women had in their
interactions within their particular context of local and global circumstances.
Some of the research questions center on:
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the legacy of mission schools in the history of modern womanhood
tensions between colonial powers and missionary forces in their vision of the new ideal woman
evolution of the idea of domesticity.
