Week 09: The Colonial Period

Submit a blog post that is a 5-15 report. Your “Reading Journal” comprises the texts you read for the previous week’s classes and Spring Break, and anything you are reading for your Pressbooks Chapter project.

Remember to also add any tasks that are on your to-do list (not those scheduled for the whole class, but for you individually, e.g. sorting out a blog-related issue), and any open questions or issues you want to flag up for follow-up with me. These weekly reports are extremely useful for me to get an insight in how you’re working, what you make of the course and the materials, and how I can best support your learning and adjust the course.

TIP: for anything you’re not comfortable putting in a blog where others can read it, you can just drop me a message on discord OR post anonymously on the Padlet!

Please prepare before class! Time estimate: 2-3hrs mins to prepare, 75mins meeting.

• Background: if you want to get up to speed with how Japan ended up colonizing Japan, and what all happened: reach for the textbook
  • Seth, Michael. “9. Korea in the age of Imperialism” and “10. Colonial Korea”. In A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present, third ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019.
  • ebook Trexler or your own copy

Prepare for class:

• Horner, Laura. “The Colonial Period in Korea: A Handy Overview.” In Korean History: A student-authored textbook, edited by T. D’Haeseleer. Muhlenberg College, 2022. https://open.muhlenberg.pub/koreanhistory/chapter/colonial-period/
  • A “cheat sheet” of some of the most important events to get you up to speed real quick.
• Kang, Hildi. Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910–1945. Cornell University Press, 2001.
  • ebook Trexler
  • Pick one of the interviews (more if you are interested is fine, of course)
  • These are interviews with Koreans who lived through the colonial period. The interviews are organized chronologically; use our textbook or Seth’s chapter 10 to guide your selection.
  • Questions: What did people think of the Japanese? In which ways do these interviews help you to understand Japanese-Korean relations? Be prepared to share a short summary of the section you read (2-3 sentences) to bring us all up to speed with the contents of your selection in class
• Habitual Sadness. Directed by Byun. Young-Joo. New York, NY: Filmakers Library, 1999.
  • Documentary via Trexler library
  • During WWII many young Korean women were forced to work as “comfort women” –– little different from enslaved sex workers. The shame surrounding their plight stopped many of them from coming forward until much later in life; first Japan denied the facts (many Japanese still do), then maintained that they voluntarily took part, and were paid a good wage (more about this in the below). This documentary maker follows a group who created a shared community.
  • Warning: contains descriptions of sexual violence; strong language
  • Question: There are snippets of the past peeking through the daily life and the conversations: what does this tell you about the story the documentary maker wants to tell?
• Stanley, Amy, Hannah Shepherd, Sayaka Chatani, David Ambaras, and Chelsea Szendi Schieder. “‘Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War’: The Case for Retraction on Grounds of Academic Misconduct.” The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 19: 5 (March 2021), https://apjjf.org/2021/5/ConcernedScholars.html
  • Opening section only (stop at heading “The evidence”, but read on if you want).
  • This is an open letter in response to an article that caused furore among historians, because the author did not use proper historical methods and cherry-picked his evidence or misrepresented the issues. I want to highlight how contentious the topic still is: the authors of the letter still get threats and a barrage of insults on social media, from Japanese right-wing extremists, even if Japanese scholars keep finding more and more evidence of the original scholar’s bad scholarship in recent weeks.
• Optional extra: should you have time and be interested in reading more about the “Ramseyer case”
  • Cathcart, Adam. “Reading the Absences in Ramseyer’s “Comfort Women” Provocation.” Feb. 19, 2021. https://adamcathcart.com/2021/02/19/reading-the-absences-in-ramseyers-comfort-women-provocation/
  • It contains copious links to others who have helped to debunk the original article, and a thoughtful critique of how the “supporting” evidence was used. Worth a read to see how historians do that nitty-gritty kind of thing.

Time estimate: 30-45mins (a generous estimate I think)

Below you find links to four blog posts from your fellow students. If one of the websites is your own, or it is twice the same person’s, refresh the page, and you should get new sites. [UPdated links coming on Tuesday.]

• Post 1:
• Post 2:
• Post 3:
• Post 4:

Leave feedback, questions, thoughts, insights about the contents of the posts of your fellow students, using Hypothes.is group HST259. You can ask for clarifications, point out similarities and differences with the material you covered, or with your interpretation. This should encourage you to nose around in the other materials you did not read in the first round.

Use the “Architect’s Model” of giving feedback, and engage with concrete issues. Go beyond “Yeah, I agree,” “I like” or “I think the same”, and instead explain why you have that reaction, or if you disagree, you can try to persuade the original poster of your idea or interpretation.

Remember that Hypothes.is allows for hyperlinks, e.g. to materials that support your argument, or you can include pictures (memes! [yes, there she is again]), videos etc. that help the original poster to learn more.

TIP: It’s all random, and it’s all good, so if you return to this page after commenting, you will see four different posts. As long as your comments are on four different posts in total, you’re fine! OR you can right-click and ask your browser to open the link in a new tab/window.

Time estimate: Refresh memory on readings (30mins) + 75 mins for the meeting

Check Tue for details, we’ll discuss and explore the Colonial Period through these texts:

• Kang, Hildi. Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910–1945. Cornell University Press, 2001.
• Habitual Sadness. Directed by Byun. Young-Joo. New York, NY: Filmakers Library, 1999.
• Stanley, Amy, Hannah Shepherd, Sayaka Chatani, David Ambaras, and Chelsea Szendi Schieder. “‘Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War’: The Case for Retraction on Grounds of Academic Misconduct.” The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 19: 5 (March 2021), https://apjjf.org/2021/5/ConcernedScholars.html

+ Mini-editorial meeting to think about our chapters’ line-up, and time to work on your project –>

A Google Doc with a first stab at your textbook chapter. Email to me, and make commenting available to Muhlenberg community (so your peers can comment)

Warts, nuts and bolts, lousy footnotes, weird references you don’t know how to deal with, and a structure that doesn’t make sense because you’re struggling with all the things? Send it in! We will collectively help to make it better by asking questions, pointing out paths forward, and making suggestions for improved flow. “Hot mess of a draft” is 👌

• Add in comments what the points are you would like to receive feedback on
• Add what sections or content you still would like to add (but haven’t had a chance to do so)
• Add a list of works/sources your working with and/or still plan to use

Submit a blog post that is a 5-15 report. Your “Reading Journal” comprises the texts you read for class the previous week, and anything you read in addition, e.g. for your Pressbooks Chapter project, or optional extras.

Details to follow soon! Help your fellow writers to make their chapter better by sharing how you perceive the chapter as a reader, and by answering questions from the writer and from a worksheet [coming soon].