Lecture: Children's Literature in Modern Korea

April 7, 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Mānoa Campus, Center for Korean Studies

Dafna Zur, Assistant Professor in the East Asian Languages and Cultures Department at Stanford University, will deliver a presentation titled “Figuring Korean Futures: Children’s Literature in Modern Korea.” In her talk, Zur will explore the emergence and development of writing for children in modern Korea.

Zur’s research for a forthcoming book examined children’s periodicals against the political, educational, and psychological discourses of their time. She found that the figure of the child was particularly favorable to the project of modernity and nation-building, as well as to the colonial and post-colonial projects of socialization and nationalization.

Her research shows how Korean children’s literature has built on a trajectory that begins with the child as an organic part of nature and ends, in the post-colonial era, with the child as the primary agent of control of nature. The figure of the child became a driving force of nostalgia that stood in for future aspirations for the individual, family, class, and nation.


Event Sponsor
Center for Korean Studies, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Merclyn Labuguen, (808) 956-7041, merclyn@hawaii.edu, http://bit.ly/2nWe95h

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