SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Overview

Name:

Eugene Lee

Thesis title:

Critical Explorations of Late Chosŏn Travel Writing: Othering, Bordering, and Gift-giving

Year of Study:

1st

Internal Supervisors

• Grace Koh

Biography

My long-held interest in literature and literary production, especially in contexts of cultural contact and social change, brought me to SOAS in 2011, where I took up an MA in Korean literature.  It was during this time that I became fascinated with Chosŏn travel literature and began the groundwork for my current research.  My other research interests include premodern Korean poetry, folklore, and East Asian Buddhism.

PhD Research

My research explores Chosŏn Korean perceptions and representations of Qing China by looking primarily at the travel writings of Korean emissaries, known collectively as yŏnhaengnok, from the 17th to the 19th century.  In particular, I am interested in the practices of othering, bordering, and gift-giving encountered in these texts and their implications in the larger context of Chosŏn-Qing relations.   My analyses begin at the textual level, examining how encounters and exchanges between the Chosŏn Self and Qing Other are delineated, negotiated, and re-presented through the act of travel writing, and go on to consider questions of reception, appropriation, and the role of yŏnhaengnok in the formation of a collective memory and identity.   Building on previous studies of Chosŏn-Qing relations, which have tended to focus only on the official discourse of the Chosŏn dynasty, I hope to construct a fuller picture that takes into account this interplay between personal experiences of otherness and formalized responses to it.