POSTPONED - Global Reception of the Classic Zhuangzi: Song to Ming

This event has been postponed. More information will be forthcoming.

Generously Funded by the American Council of Learned Societies and Washington University's Religious Studies Program, East Asian Studies Program, and Center for the Humanities.

2nd Annual Language Teaching Fair

Interested language faculty across departments are invited to come together to discuss language teaching at WashU and to learn from one another at the Language Teaching Fair. The event, which is co-sponsored by WUSTL Language Departments and The Center for Teaching and Learning.

Major-Minor Fair

I am a Wanderer: Paek Sin-ae (1908-1939) and Writing Travel

Paek Sin-ae (1908–1939) was a socialist activist turned woman writer whose career was cut short by early death. She lived in the era of New Women, typically identified as educated women in public or protestant missionary schools who sought women’s rights in domestic life and in society. But Paek was homeschooled and spent most of her life away from the social network of writers and intellectuals of her time. What made her a modern woman was substantial exposure to European and Russian literature, and her travels to Japan, Russia, and China provided opportunities for youthful fantasy and blind attraction to the exotic to mature into a woman of the colony and world citizen. Unlike conventional images of woman writers in the West whose independence is symbolized in a room of one’s own, the early generation of modern Korean woman writers were more typically on the road, carrying their sense of leadership as a badge of honor for her fellow women and men of Korea. In this way, leaving home and travelling became a hallmark of modern women in Korea. By focusing on Paek Sin-ae and her travel writings, this presentation suggests a more comprehensive and fair consideration of works by Korean women writers in the early 20th century, and reconsiders social and literary categories (including supremacy of fiction and poetry) that were upheld by the hegemonic powers and institutionalized literary networks of the time.

Conversation Between Contemporary Korean Author and Translator: Cho Hae-jin and Ji-Eun Lee

Cho Hae-jin is one of South Korea’s major writers and the winner of several prizes. Translator Ji-Eun Lee is associate professor of Korean language and literature at Washington University.