Fulbright Forum Presents...
Kicking the Hanmun Habit: The Dynamics of Language and Power in Late-Choson and
Korea's Long Hanmun Hangover
by Scott Wells
7:00 P.M. on Friday, June 24, 2011
R.S.V.P. by Tuesday, June 21, 2011
The Korean-American Educational Commission warmly welcomes you to our sixth
Fulbright Forum of the 2010-2011 program year with 2010 Junior Researcher Scott
Wells.
Open to all, the Fulbright Forum serves as a periodic gathering for the
Fulbright family at large, including past and present grantees and friends of
the Commission. To R.S.V.P., please CLICK HERE and complete the registration form. You
may also R.S.V.P. via e-mail to Alexandra Anderson (executive.assistant@fulbright.or.kr)
by Tuesday, June 21st. Regrets need not reply.
This month's Forum will be held at 7:00 P.M. sharp on Friday, June 24th on the
6th floor of KAEC's Mapo-gu building. Following the presentation, a light
reception will be held. Please visit the KAEC website for maps and directions (http://www.fulbright.or.kr/xe/map).
To respect both the audience and presenters, guests are asked to please mute or
turn off all cell phones before entering.
Summary
The final thirty-five years of the Chosŏn dynasty—from the opening of relations with Japan following the 1876
Treaty of Kanghwa, to Japan’s ultimate annexation of the Korean peninsula in
1910—were marked by
rapid, thoroughgoing and often difficult transformations in Korean society. As
Koreans encountered Western imperial powers and a rapidly modernizing Japan at
the beginning of this period, Korean society slowly began its own process of
modernization-cum-Westernization, spurring reappraisals within Korean
society of the country’s Sino-centric past and the once-shared knowledge, symbols
and practices of the East Asian cosmopolitan order. A major consequence of this
reappraisal was the demotion of Literary Sinitic (commonly termed hanmun in
Korea today) from its long-held status as the de facto official written
standard of state affairs and its removal from the center of the curriculum of
state-sponsored education to the periphery in the guise of the newly created
classroom subject hanmunkwa.
Helping to bind the region together, the shared use of Literary Sinitic was one
of, if not the most defining forms of knowledge, symbol and practice in
premodern East Asia. Understanding the demise of Literary Sinitic in Korea will
improve our understanding of the disintegration of this formerly vibrant East
Asian cosmopolitanism, and help us apprehend the lingering effects and
influences exercised by such transcultured practices even after those practices
are reimagined and reconfigured to fit new, nationalized frameworks as in the
case of hanmunkwa.
Biography
Scott Wells took a B.A. in Korean and Linguistics from Brigham Young University
in Provo, Utah, and is finishing his M.A. in Korean Studies at The University
of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia. He will begin a PhD at UBC
in September. He and his long-suffering wife Lindsay, who has accompanied him
to Korea, are parents to a lively three-and-a-half year-old daughter Shelby.
