MONICA W. CHO

About Me

I am a PhD Candidate in modern Korean literature and culture at the University of California, Irvine in the Department of East Asian Studies with graduate emphases on Feminist Studies and Critical Theory. 


My book project, Reclaiming Our Time: Six Decades of Madness in Korean Women's Writings looks at how madness as a literary device is embraced and developed by Korean women writers to offer a feminist critique of postwar South Korean modernity. I interrogate Korean literature written by women from the mid-1950s to the 2010s with a special attention to portrayals of madness. Madness as a literary device and method of critique offered women writers a powerful way to reclaim memories, experiences, and identities coopted for nationalism, patriarchy, and developmentalism in the postwar era South Korea. Some of the writers I examine include recent Nobel laureate Han Kang, Shin Kyŏng-suk, and Pak Wan-sŏ.


In Korean studies, madness in literature, popular culture, and film has long been accepted as a symbol of the price that society had to pay to survive the war, military dictatorship, explosive economic growth, and the financial crisis. My project argues that madness in women's writings underscores the narratives of lived and gendered experiences that are often considered too intimate, personal, and deviating from homogenized national (often masculine) histories. Moreover, I argue that women writers' discursive feminist practices have developed a space to discuss and imagine alternative feminine realities through the novel form, and that madness is a crucial device that provides for such space and discourse.


In my research, madness is not limited to a single interpretation. In fact, it would be inconceivable to come up with one way to describe what madness is, as madness had taken different roles and connotations in literature across Korean modernity. Despite variances in historical and cultural context at different junctures, what makes this rather ambivalent and archaic term to be dissoluble is not only its vague and imprecise overtone, but also the possibility of transgression, even if it fails to materialize. Within the scope of my research of women's writings, I broadly define madness as somatic expressions in response to one's unbearable experiences and unattainable goals once the subject has internalized said issues and/or desires.

keywords: Korean literature, madness, ecocriticism, feminist critique, gender & sexuality studies, critical theory, resistance literature, political ethics and feminist subjectivity

Contact Info

Please direct all inquiries and comments to mwcho1@uci.edu


Curriculum Vitae

EDUCATION

PhD Candidate, Department of East Asian Studies

Advisor: Serk-Bae Suh
Committee: David Fedman, Margherita Long

Dissertation Title: Reclaiming Our Time: Four Decades of Madness in Korean Women's Writings


M.A. in East Asian Languages and Culture

Advisor: Theodore Hughes

Thesis Title: Memories and Pain of Wŏllam in Yi Chŏng-ho's Umjiginŭn pyŏk and Kŭdŭl ŭn wae kassŭlkka


M.A. in Interdisciplinary Korean Studies (일반대학원 한국학협동과정 석사)

Advisor: Kim Seong-bo (김성보)

Thesis Title: 1960년대 <대한뉴스>의 국가 이미지 형성과 여성성의 표상 (Representation and Regulation of Femininity in 1960s Korea through Taehan Nyusu)


B.A. in Japanese Language and Literature, minor in chemistry

Advisor: Eve Zimmerman


PUBLICATIONS


FELLOWSHIPS & GRANTS (selected)


TEACHING EXPERIENCE

EAS 55/HIST 70A Madness and Society in Postwar Korea  |  Summer 2022

EAS 55/HIST 70A Reading Madness in Korean Society (online)  |  Summer 2021


EAS 55 The Location of Taiwanese Culture  |  Spring 2022

EAS 55 Korean Failures  |  Fall 2021

EAS 55 Introduction to Classical Japanese Literature  |  Spring 2021 (online)

EAS 55 Stories from Korea  |  Winter 2021 (online)

Korean 1A Fundamentals  |  Fall 2020 (online)

EAS 40/HIST 70A Gender & Sexuality in South Korea  |  Summer 2020 (online)

Korean 1A, 1B, 1C  |  Fall 2019, Winter 2020, Spring 2020 (online)

AsAm 55 Asian Americans & The Media  |  Spring 2019

AsAm 52 Asian American Communities  |  Winter 2019

Korean 1A Fundamentals  |  Fall 2018


RESEARCH PAPER PRESENTATIONS (selected)


CONFERENCE PANEL PROPOSALS


PEDAGOGY TRAINING & PROFESSIONALIZATION


RESEARCH EXPERIENCES


MENTORSHIP EXPERIENCES


INVITED TALKS


SERVICES


LANGUAGES


PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS