Seoul National University

Soojin Kim is a Lecturer and a Ph. D. Candidate at the Department of Archeology and Art History, Seoul National University, Korea. She has been participating in a project entitled "A Publishing and Digitalizing Korean Biographical Dictionary of Calligraphers and Painters of Korea" organized by the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage. Since receiving her M.A. degree with a thesis on the eighteenth century Korean court painter KIM Hee-song (金喜誠) who gained fame for record paintings to propagate political achievements of Yong-jo (英祖: r.1724-1776), she has published articles on court-patronized art in the second half of the Choson Dynasty, including the period of the Great Han Empire (大韓帝國: 1897-1910). Her academic interests include the following issues: How court paintings visualize the authority and the ruler-ship of royal patrons, how characteristics of court style and iconography were constructed, and how court paintings were used strategically as means of self-fashioning and propaganda. She is currently doing research on the tradition of Japanese academic paintings while working on her subject "Court Painting and Patronage in the period of the Great Han Empire".

An Jee Hyun is Associate Professor of English Literature at Seoul National University. She grew up in Seoul, and received her BA and MA in English Literature from Seoul National University and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2003. Her interests center on African American literature, Early American literature and culture, feminist theory and cultural studies. Her current research project focuses on the representation of African Americans in Korean literature after the Korean War and representation of Koreans/Korean-Americans in the cultural works of African Americans, and how these representations influence the way in which racial/ethnic identifications are formed and transformed.

Cho Young Nam is an Assistant Professor of the Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University, Korea. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Seoul National University.  With his major in political science (comparative politics), he has chiefly studied contemporary Chinese domestic politics and international relations.  While at the Harvard-Yenching Institute from 2006-07, Prof. Cho conducted research on China’s rule of the law policy and the changing state-society relationship.