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Available From UC Press
Mobile Subjects
Boundaries and Identities in the Modern Korean Diaspora
Mobile Subjects draws attention to modern Korean experiences with mobility, experiences that played an important role in forming Korean constructions of an ethnonationalistic discourse of territoriality. By drawing attention to mobility in subjectivity—to the contested nature of subjectivity in the processes of mobility—this volume seeks to connect the experiences of the Korean diaspora with those of the homeland, thereby enriching an understanding of Korean nationalism from its flip side. The essays in this collection, by focusing on mobility, offer a rich and complex picture of changing circumstances on the Korean peninsula over the course of the past one-and-a-half centuries. They underscore the point that there have been intimate connections between national constructions and spatial mobility. They also demonstrate the intellectual fruitfulness of an approach to the peninsula that brings in the continental as well as maritime dimensions of the Korean diaspora.
Wen-hsin Yeh is professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. She has served as the director of the Institute of East Asian Studies and the chair of the Center for Chinese Studies at Berkeley. She has edited and contributed to many IEAS publications, including Mobile Subjects; Mobile Horizons; History in Images; Cities in Motion; Empire, Nation, and Beyond; Cross-Cultural Readings of Chineseness; Landscape, Culture, and Space in Chinese Society; and Shanghai Sojourners.
Education: B.A., History, National Taiwan University; M.A., History, University of Southern California; Ph.D., History, University of California, Berkeley
"While many scholars have examined the strategic uses of territoriality, the essays in this volume foreground the processes of cultural interaction, dislocation and dispossession as critically important to understanding the actual experiences of Koreans and to shaping understandings of the modern nation. The text sets itself apart from other collections on the Korean diaspora by refusing to define diaspora against nation as a solid reference point, but rather demonstrates how Korean modernity itself has been shaped by experiences of transnational movement and foreign encounter.... Given the quality of original research presented in this volume, it is clear that the authors will have a lasting impact in the field of Korean Studies."—Rachael M. Joo, Middlebury College, Pacific Affairs 89, no. 1 (March 2016): 182–184
“What is fascinating about this book on diaspora is that it includes chapters on Koreans in the homeland….One might suspect “ diaspora” in this book’ s subtitle, then, is a misnomer. To that point, Yeh argues that “ [c]entral to Korea’ s colonial experience was the dispossession of the Koreans— culturally, socially, economically, and politically— in their homeland” (p. 6) and that this experience of colonial or neocolonial displacement was what rendered Koreans in the homeland still diasporic. These chapters on Koreans in the homeland seem somewhat misplaced at times, but Yeh’ s attempt to reconceptualize the notion of diaspora is certainly thought-provoking.”—Young-A Park, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Journal of Asian Studies 74, issue 3 (August 2015): 770-771
“What is fascinating about this book on diaspora is that it includes chapters on Koreans in the homeland….One might suspect “ diaspora” in this book’ s subtitle, then, is a misnomer. To that point, Yeh argues that “ [c]entral to Korea’ s colonial experience was the dispossession of the Koreans— culturally, socially, economically, and politically— in their homeland” (p. 6) and that this experience of colonial or neocolonial displacement was what rendered Koreans in the homeland still diasporic. These chapters on Koreans in the homeland seem somewhat misplaced at times, but Yeh’ s attempt to reconceptualize the notion of diaspora is certainly thought-provoking.”—Young-A Park, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Journal of Asian Studies 74, issue 3 (August 2015): 770-771