Public and Private Discourse on Modern Womanhood in the Korea Mission Field

FAIN: FT-52420-04

Hyaeweol Choi
Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ 85281-3670)

The project examines the genealogies of American missionary knowledge and Korean intellectuals' ideas about "modern" woman within the context of the political and cultural turmoil of late 19th and early 20th century Korean society. It argues that Korean "modern" womanhood was deeply intertwined with the reified image of the Christian West and the Korean nationalism emerging in the face of colonization by Japan. The project sheds light on the ways in which competing discourses on modern womanhood actually de-oriented gender in order to put forward either Christian or nationalist goals, reconfiguring patriarchal system adapted to the modern era.