The 28th Hahn Moo-Sook Colloquium in the Korean Humanities

About the Event

Co-organized by the GW Institute for Korean Studies, and co-sponsored by the Korea Foundation,GW Sigur Center for Asian Studies, and GW East Asia National Resource Center

Reflecting the current social injustice and the Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S., this year’s Hahn Moo-Sook colloquium will examine the myriad ways that race impacts Korean/Korean-American and African-American and the African diasporic communities related to the important conversation on racism and social injustice. In doing so, we begin examining from the 1992 LA riots and how the two communities have evolved since then. The speakers will examine Black-Korean tensions, what it means to be Korean-American in relation to multicultural politics and race, how we can situate Asian/Korean American experiences within the context of black-white paradigm, how the music genre of R&B and hip hop has brought the two communities closer through K-pop, and how the collaboration of cultural production influence and interrogate their respective cultures.

Virtual Event via Zoom

Program

Welcoming Remarks

3:00 p.m. – 3:05 p.m.
Jisoo M. Kim (Director, GW Institute for Korean Studies)

3:05 p.m. – 3:10 p.m.
Caroline Laguerre-Brown (Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement, the George Washington University)

Main Session

3:10 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Kyeyoung Park (Professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles)
How Has Black-Korean Relations Evolved since the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest?

3:30 p.m. – 3:50 p.m.
Edward Chang (Professor & Founding Director, Young Oak Kim Center for Korean American Studies, University of California, Riverside)
Confronting Sa-I-Gu: Beyond Black-Korean Conflict  

3:50 p.m. – 4:10 p.m.
Crystal S. Anderson (Affiliate Faculty in Korean Studies, George Mason University)
Groovy Everywhere: Korean R&B/Hip-Hop as a Site of Cultural Community  

4:10 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Aku Kadogo (Chair of Department of Theater and Performance, Spelman College)
Confluence: Where the Mississippi Meets the Han

General Discussions

4:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
This event is on the record and open to the public.

The Hahn Moo-Sook (HMS) Colloquium in the Korean Humanities series at the George Washington University provides a forum for academic discussion of Korean arts, history, language, literature thought and religious systems in the context of East Asia and the world. The colloquium series is made possible by an endowment established by the estate of Hahn Moo-Sook (1918-1993), one of Korea’s most honored writers, to uphold her spirit of openness, curiosity, and commitment to education.