Fulbright Forum – November 4, 2021

Dr. Roger Hart

Title: The Global Race for Quantum Supremacy in the Asian 21st Century

Fulbright Forum – November 4, 2021

Dr. Philip Plotch

Title: Teaching Korean Students about American Politics

Fulbright Forum – December 13, 2019

Jean Yoon

Title: Process Notes / Refrains

Presented by Jean Yoon
Junior Researcher
University of Notre Dame

December 13, 2019, 7:00PM at the Fulbright Building
Please RSVP by Thursday, December 12

Abstract

My mother land was a home I had never lived in, and my mother tongue was a language I couldn’t speak. Or barely. I found I felt I was a child again, fumbling drawing after drawing of my mother’s jaguar-shaped pin. If I could describe the exact dimensions of the wound, I could fashion a stent to fit that concavity and thereby resolve the surface–this was the limit to which I aimed my words. But the abyss just kept increasing in dimension and complexity. I wasn’t writing, I was trying to Botox the past. I said I would write a book of essays about mothers and motherhood, but not mothers per se, rather the ways in which we (who?) measure mothers as such, represent them to ourselves, restage the mother-figure in other realms–civic, cinematic, oneiric. On the eve of my departure, Professor Choi said, I think you think you want to find your mother, this mother-relation. But no–you are going to have to make her up on your own.

For this Fulbright Forum, I will read from and discuss my writing in progress. I will also give a brief artist talk contextualizing my research and present a selection of works in-progress, theoretical, unrealized or unrealizable.

(keywords: language attrition, pronouns, lost archives, ancestor communication, divination, saju, calligraphy, inarticulacy, translation, deletion, displacement, distraction, renovation, screen culture, anti-aging, meditation, forgetting.)

Presenter

Jean Yoon is a writer, researcher, and interdisciplinary artist whose work examines the functions of memory and the performance of belonging. Jean’s work has been supported by the Nicholas Sparks Fellowship, University of Notre Dame Creative Writing Program, and Tin House Writer’s Workshop. Their poems and essays have been published or are forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue, Pulpmouth, jubilat, the Kenyon Review online, and Ghost City Press, among others. They hold an MFA in Poetry from the University of Notre Dame and a BA in Linguistics from Reed College.

Fulbright Forum – November 21, 2019

Howard Waitzkin

Title: “Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health: Focus on the USA and Korea”

Presented by Howard Waitzkin
Fulbright Senior Scholar
University of New Mexico

**THURSDAY, November 21, 7:00 p.m.** at the Fulbright Building
Please RSVP by Wednesday, November 20

Abstract: These days, our health and well-being are sorted through a profit-seeking financial complex that monitors and commodifies our lives. In the United States and some other countries with capitalist political-economic systems, our access to competent, affordable health care grows more precarious every day. In contrast, the Republic of Korea, also with a capitalist political-economic system, has constructed a single payer national health program that aims to achieve universally accessible health care. A single payer national health program, known as “Improved Medicare for All,” similar to Korea’s current system, is gaining much wider support in the United States. We need a deeper understanding of the changing structural conditions that link capitalism, health care, and health. Recognizing that such linkages deserve closer study to assist in real-world struggles for change, Howard Waitzkin, in collaboration with the medical professionals, scholars, and activists who comprise the Working Group on Health Beyond Capitalism, wrote Health Care Under the Knife: Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health (2018). Waitzkin will discuss just what’s wrong with the U.S. medical system, how it got this way, and a strategy of moving toward post-capitalist health-care systems and societies, with current examples from the United States and Korea.

Affiliations: Howard Waitzkin is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology and former Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of New Mexico. He practices internal medicine part-time in rural New Mexico and Illinois. For many years he has been active in struggles focusing on health access in the United States and Latin America. He is coordinator, with the Working Group for Health Beyond Capitalism, of Health Care Under the Knife: Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health (2018) and author of Medicine and Public Health at the End of Empire (2011), among other books. Currently he is teaching at Seoul National University School of Public Health, as a Fulbright Senior Scholar.

Fulbright Forum – October 4, 2019

Anat Schwartz

Photo taken by the researcher at a rally organized by Fireworks Femi Action on June 19, 2019, to commemorate the 2016 gender-motivated murder of a young woman at Gangnam station exit 10.

Feminism Reboot: Hashtags and Contemporary Feminist Activism in South Korea

Presented by Anat Schwartz
Junior Researcher
University of California, Irvine

Friday, October 4, 7:00 p.m.** at the Fulbright Building
Please RSVP by Thursday, October 3

Feminism in South Korea has a long and active history. Contemporary feminist activism is a response to an enduring history of misogyny and socioeconomic discrimination, and is complicated by current issues, such as illegal spy cameras, revenge pornography, and biased prosecution. In my dissertation, Contemporary Feminist Activism and Communities in South Korea, I delve into the history of feminism, activism, and community-making in South Korea, paying attention to the ways in which online spaces effect offline activism. In this presentation, I will present from a chapter on the movement against sexual violence, arguing that hashtags are a vital citational tool for information sharing and solidarity.

In this presentation, I focus on feminist activism post-2015. 2015 and 2016 are cited by activists and scholars as the beginning of a “reboot” of feminism by young activists. I will discuss feminist activism, from the controversial radical online feminist community Megalia, the 2015 #IAmAFeminist hashtag (Nanŭn_P’eminisŭt’ŭimnida) and the 2016 hashtag #my_sexual_abuse_in_00 (#00_kye_nae_sŏngp’oklyŏk), to the MeToo movement and anti-illegal spy cam protests at Hyewha subway station in 2018. As the “reboot” of feminism in South Korea is still taking shape, this presentation is an intervention into ongoing activism and relies on fieldwork interviews with Korean feminist activists and participant observation throughout South Korea.

Anat Schwartz is a doctoral candidate in East Asian Studies at the University of California Irvine. As a 2019 Fulbright scholar, Anat is affiliated with Yonsei University’s Cultural Anthropology department.
Anat’s research takes an interdisciplinary approach to contemporary South Korean feminist activism and communities, particularly to the intersections of feminist spaces on and off social media. Anat’s areas of interest include gender and sexuality studies, contemporary South Korean society and culture, feminist epistemology, and cultural theory. Anat’s CV can be accessed at: http://anatschwartz.com/