Hyeok Hweon Kang, assistant professor of East Asian languages and cultures, has recently received two awards for his doctoral work. Kang's dissertation Crafting Knowledge: Artisan, Officer, and the Culture of Making in Chosŏn Korea, 1392–1910 (Harvard University) has been awarded the 2021 Turriano Prize for the best book on the history of technology and the 2021 International Convention of Asia Scholars Book Prize in the category for Dissertation Prize English Edition - Humanities.
This work examines craft knowledge as a site for knowledge-making, particularly in science and technology. It argues that before the factory, manufactories taught craft by replicating goods; traces how artisan knowledge rippled out; and follows the creation and life of military objects made by artisans, showing the connections between rote learning and creativity, science and artisanship through the lens of vernacular science.
