Christine Kim

Visiting Assistant Professor, Interim Director of Studies for the Asian Studies Program
Age: 48
Hometown: Born in Evanston, Ill., raised in Seoul, South Korea
Education: B.A. University of Virginia, East Asian Studies (Chinese); M.I.A. Columbia University, International Affairs; Ph.D. Harvard University, History and East Asian Languages
Areas of Research: 20th-century Korea and how policy is translated into cultural representations. Projects include changing polities and their representation in art and social practices as well as ideas about Korea as expressed through art.
Time at Georgetown: 11 years
Courses Taught: “History of Korea,” “Comparative Imperialisms and Colonialisms in East Asia,” “War and Peace in East Asia,” “Pacific World”

How did you come to narrow your focus of research to how policy is translated into art in Korean history?
I love all things royal and bling, and I love artwork and going to museums, and it seemed these were cultural areas that had a lot of resonance but hadn’t really been explored substantively. It combines an intellectual interest with stuff I personally have an interest in exploring.

What is the greatest challenge in your field today?
I would say, specifically for Korean history, there are a lot of nationalist preconceptions. People don’t know who the first president was and it’s not like we’re even going back 200 years. That kind of ideological bias seems to color the way people think about history objectively.

What kind of students do you find are drawn to your courses in East Asian history?
I get a lot of students who have a security interest in Korea, mainly all the international relations types who want to solve the nuclear problem in North Korea but think one of the keys would be to understanding history. I get a lot of contemporary affairs students who want to broaden their base of knowledge, but I also get — and I think this is one of the strengths of Georgetown — a lot of students who have an intellectual curiosity about Asia in general or some place that they’re not familiar with. Korea fits in nicely in the sense that students maybe have exposure to China or Japan, but not necessarily in Korea, and studying Korea also means having connections to those other countries as well. Recently, there’s also been a lot of interest in Korean pop culture. A lot of students seem to come in because they fell in love with, say, a Korean drama or love the pop videos. It’s a great mix.

What’s something you wish more students would take away from your classes?
That nothing in history is inevitable or predetermined, and that there’s a lot of human engineering and social construction that goes into it. It seems the way that history is taught, especially in high schools, is the set of events that need to be known and the dates, and it’s all factual, but I think history is a lot about processes. Once you recognize that, nothing is unavoidable. Everything needs to be understood in context.

What is the greatest challenge you face in teaching?
The ideas people might have about why things are in a certain way. Preconceived notions seem to dominate a lot. Hopefully by the time students have gone through courses, that is, if not completely overturned, at least contested or challenged. The impressions students come in with are sometimes difficult to overturn.

What would you be doing if you weren’t in academia?
Either I’d have a restaurant that I was running, or I’d be surfing.

What would be your ideal course to teach? 
I’d love to teach a course that uses film as the source material for studying history, and here part of the limitation is that on some topics there aren’t very good films available. I’d love to teach a Korean history course that was centered around different films. The other one would be an art appreciation course that also had historical grounding.

Anything you’d like to add? 
In the 10-plus years I’ve been teaching Korean history in particular, I love the fact that the demographic has expanded from mostly heritage students to a broad representation. I wish more students would take it.

Interview by Emma Hinchliffe