Dr. I Jonathan Kief

Office Hours: T 5-6 & R 11-12, In-Person
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Research

I am a scholar of modern Korean and comparative literature specializing in North and South Korean fiction and criticism of the mid-twentieth century. My research interests include global and regional histories of Cold War culture, colonial and postcolonial Korean-Japanese literary and intellectual exchanges, translation studies, the Korean diaspora, and interactions between texts, images, and broadcast sound. I am currently working on a manuscript titled “Toward the Round Horizon”: Cross-Border Reading and Writing in the Cold War Koreas, which explores interactions between North and South Korean literature within broader transnational networks of the 1950s and 1960s.

Awards

My research has been supported by the Korea Foundation, the Academy of Korean Studies, the Fulbright Program, and the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies.

Publications

Monograph in Progress

“Toward the Round Horizon”: Cross-Border Reading and Writing in the Cold War Koreas.

Journal Articles

“'Antagonistic Unity': Kim Oseong, Dialectical Anthropology, and the Discovery of Literature, 1929-1938.” Review of Korean Studies vol. 16 no. 2 (December 2013): 81-124.

Translations

“Liberation-era Street Politics and the Production of Representation.” Translation of Ch'ŏn Chŏnghwan, “Haebanggi kŏri ŭi chŏngch'i wa p'yosang ŭi saengsan.” In A Critical Companion to South Korean Culture and Society, 1945-1980, ed. Theodore Jun Yoo, et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming 2018-2019).
“Red Hill.” Translation of Ha Kŭnch'an, “Pulgŭn ŏndŏk,” with critical introduction. In Korean Stories from the American Empire, ed. Ruth Barraclough, Kim Jae-yong, Jin-kyung Lee, and Lee Sang-gyong (Ithaca: Cornell East Asia Series, forthcoming 2018-2019).
“Trolley Driver.” Translation of Kim Yŏngsŏk, “Chŏnch’a unjŏnsu,” with critical introduction. In Rat Fire: Korean Stories from the Japanese Empire, ed. Theodore Hughes, Kim Jae-yong, Jin-kyung Lee, and Lee Sang-gyong (Ithaca: Cornell East Asia Series, 2013), 377-392.