MONICA W. CHO

PhD Candidate in Modern Korean Literature & Culture

About Me


I am a PhD Candidate in modern Korean literature and culture at the University of California, Irvine's Department of East Asian Studies with graduate emphases on Critical Theory and Feminist Studies. 


My dissertation titled “Madness in Postwar Korean Literature” surveys Korean fiction from the mid-1950s to the 2010s that employ madness as a literary commentary for individual experiences facing stringent sociopolitical conditions of South Korea (hereinafter Korea) in the aftermath of the Korean War and its perennial influence. Madness appears in miscellaneous forms at different historical junctures revealing the grave problems confronting the Korean society; for this reason, the task of having a single definition of madness is not just difficult, but almost inconceivable. In my dissertation, I broadly interpret madness as physical and/or mental expressions in response to unbearable experiences (i.e., war trauma, patriarchal dominance) and unattainable goals (i.e., political and sexual freedom) once the subject has internalized the matter at hand. Put differently, madness is both a reaction to the subject’s own abjection and the abjection itself in the sense that the subject is estranged from their private history and experience that induce madness, and that madness is regarded a social defect.

keywords: Korean literature, madness, ecocriticism, gender & sexuality, feminism, critical theory, resistance literature, political ethics and subjectivity

Contact Info

Please direct all inquiries and comments to mwcho1@uci.edu


Curriculum Vitae

EDUCATION

PhD Candidate, Department of East Asian Studies

Advisor: Serk-Bae Suh
Committee: David Fedman, Margherita Long

Dissertation Title: Madness in Postwar Korean Literature


M.A. in East Asian Languages and Culture

Advisor: Theodore Hughes

Thesis Title: Memories and Pain of Wŏllam in Yi Chŏng-ho's Umjiginŭn pyŏk and Kŭdŭl ŭn wae kassŭlkka


M.A. in Interdisciplinary Korean Studies (일반대학원 한국학협동과정 석사)

Advisor: Kim Seong-bo (김성보)

Thesis Title: 1960년대 <대한뉴스>의 국가 이미지 형성과 여성성의 표상 (Representation and Regulation of Femininity in 1960s Korea through Taehan Nyusu)


B.A. in Japanese Language and Literature, minor in chemistry

Advisor: Eve Zimmerman


PUBLICATIONS


FELLOWSHIPS & GRANTS (selected)


TEACHING EXPERIENCE

EAS 55/HIST 70A Madness and Society in Postwar Korea  |  Summer 2022

EAS 55/HIST 70A Reading Madness in Korean Society (online)  |  Summer 2021


EAS 55 The Location of Taiwanese Culture  |  Spring 2022

EAS 55 Korean Failures  |  Fall 2021

EAS 55 Introduction to Classical Japanese Literature  |  Spring 2021 (online)

EAS 55 Stories from Korea  |  Winter 2021 (online)

Korean 1A Fundamentals  |  Fall 2020 (online)

EAS 40/HIST 70A Gender & Sexuality in South Korea  |  Summer 2020 (online)

Korean 1A, 1B, 1C  |  Fall 2019, Winter 2020, Spring 2020 (online)

AsAm 55 Asian Americans & The Media  |  Spring 2019

AsAm 52 Asian American Communities  |  Winter 2019

Korean 1A Fundamentals  |  Fall 2018


RESEARCH PAPER PRESENTATIONS (selected)


CONFERENCE PANEL PROPOSALS


PEDAGOGY TRAINING & PROFESSIONALIZATION


RESEARCH EXPERIENCES


MENTORSHIP EXPERIENCES


INVITED TALKS


SERVICES


LANGUAGES


PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS