MONICA W. CHO
Embedded Files
About Me
About Me
I am a PhD Candidate in modern Korean literature and culture at the University of California, Irvine in the Department of East Asian Studies with graduate emphases on Feminist Studies and Critical Theory.
My book project, Reclaiming Our Time: Six Decades of Madness in Korean Women's Writings looks at how madness as a literary device is embraced and developed by Korean women writers to offer a feminist critique of postwar South Korean modernity. I interrogate Korean literature written by women from the mid-1950s to the 2010s with a special attention to portrayals of madness. Madness as a literary device and method of critique offered women writers a powerful way to reclaim memories, experiences, and identities coopted for nationalism, patriarchy, and developmentalism in the postwar era South Korea. Some of the writers I examine include recent Nobel laureate Han Kang, Shin Kyŏng-suk, and Pak Wan-sŏ.
In Korean studies, madness in literature, popular culture, and film has long been accepted as a symbol of the price that society had to pay to survive the war, military dictatorship, explosive economic growth, and the financial crisis. My project argues that madness in women's writings underscores the narratives of lived and gendered experiences that are often considered too intimate, personal, and deviating from homogenized national (often masculine) histories. Moreover, I argue that women writers' discursive feminist practices have developed a space to discuss and imagine alternative feminine realities through the novel form, and that madness is a crucial device that provides for such space and discourse.
In my research, madness is not limited to a single interpretation. In fact, it would be inconceivable to come up with one way to describe what madness is, as madness had taken different roles and connotations in literature across Korean modernity. Despite variances in historical and cultural context at different junctures, what makes this rather ambivalent and archaic term to be dissoluble is not only its vague and imprecise overtone, but also the possibility of transgression, even if it fails to materialize. Within the scope of my research of women's writings, I broadly define madness as somatic expressions in response to one's unbearable experiences and unattainable goals once the subject has internalized said issues and/or desires.
keywords: Korean literature, madness, ecocriticism, feminist critique, gender & sexuality studies, critical theory, resistance literature, political ethics and feminist subjectivity
Contact Info
Contact Info
Please direct all inquiries and comments to mwcho1@uci.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Curriculum Vitae
EDUCATION
University of California, Irvine | June 2025
PhD Candidate, Department of East Asian Studies
Advisor: Serk-Bae Suh
Committee: David Fedman, Margherita Long
Dissertation Title: Reclaiming Our Time: Four Decades of Madness in Korean Women's Writings
Columbia University | October 2017
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
Yonsei University | August 2016
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)
Wellesley College | June 2012
B.A. in Japanese Language and Literature, minor in chemistry
Advisor: Eve Zimmerman
PUBLICATIONS
“Delicate Hands, Tender Voices, and Slender Bodies: Articulating Female Labor through Beauty and Care in the 1960s Taehan News Newsreels”
Korean Studies Journal (Summer 2025). Forthcoming - manuscript accepted with minor revisionsBook Review: Locating translingualism by Jerry Won Lee (Cambridge U, 2022)
Asian Ethnicity (May 06, 2024). DOI: 10.1080/14631369.2024.2352128“Hwa-sŏn Kim,” “Yŏng-ja Kim,” and “Kap-sun Ch’oe”
In C. Choi, H. Yang (Eds.), Voices of the Korean Comfort Women. (Routledge, 2023)
FELLOWSHIPS & GRANTS (selected)
Korea Foundation Scholarship for Graduate Studies, Korea Foundation | 2022 – 2025
Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship for Dissertation Writing, U.S. Department of Education through CCKS | 2023 – 2024
Humanities Center Graduate Student Dissertation Research Grant, UC Irvine | 2023
School of Humanities Graduate Student Research and Travel Award, UC Irvine | 2023
Center for Critical Korean Studies (CCKS) Conference Travel Award, UC Irvine | 2023
Teaching Assistance Fellowship, UC Irvine | 2018 – 2022
Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation (DTEI) Graduate Summer Fellowship, UC Irvine | 2021, 2022
CCKS Graduate Summer Fellowship, UC Irvine | 2022, 2019
CCKS Graduate Student Research and Travel Award, UC Irvine | 2019
Center for Asian Studies Graduate Student Research Grant, UC Irvine | 2019
Regents' Fellowship, University of California, Irvine | 2017 – 2018
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Conference Travel Award, Columbia University | 2017
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Thesis Research Matching Award, Columbia University | 2017
FLAS Fellowship in Korean Studies, U.S. Department of Education through Columbia University | 2015 – 2016
Teaching Assistant Fellowship, Yonsei University | 2012 – 2014
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Lecturer, University of California, Irvine
EAS 55/HIST 70A Madness and Society in Postwar Korea | Summer 2022
EAS 55/HIST 70A Reading Madness in Korean Society (online) | Summer 2021
Teaching Assistant, University of California, Irvine
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)
“Chthulucenic Imaginations in Contemporary Korean Women's Literature”
2023 Korean Literature Association Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, CA, November 11, 2023“Madness, War, and Nation: Feminist Reading of Postwar Korean Fiction, ‘Spirit on the Wind’”
Worldbuilding through Global Asias: An Interdisciplinary Conference in Irvine, CA, April 21, 2023"Rumor Has It: Reading Yi Ch’ŏng-jun’s “Walls of Rumor” through Political Anarchism"
Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference in Boston, MA, March 18, 2023"Becoming Tree, Becoming Girl: Ecocritical Reading of Madness and Violence in Han Kang and Bae Suah"
AAS Annual Conference in Honolulu, HI, March 27, 2022"Her Gentle Hands, Tender Voice, and Slender Body: Shaping of Korean Femininity as Labor Force in the 1960s Taehan News through the Framing of the "Voluntary""
AAS Annual Conference (Online), March 25, 2021"Tracing the Modŏn Ppoi: Bodies of Consumption and Hysteria in Colonial Korea"
"Queering the Straits: Unruly Subjects Across Modern Korean and Japanese Studies," Series One: Remembering the 'Modern Boy': Gender, Empire, and Nostalgia (Online), February 20, 2021"Narratives against Violence: Ecocritical Readings of Han Kang and Bae Suah"
Yonsei University 17th International Conference on Korean Language, Literature, and Culture (Online), January 27, 2021"Contamination of Affect in Tawada Yoko's The Emissary"
ANIMAL ・ LIT Master Class and Graduate Conference on Japanese Environmental Humanities hosted by UC Irvine in Anza Borrego Desert Research Center, CA, December 11, 2018"한국 현대문학 속 광기의 비발성적 언어와 여성 주체: 한무숙의 '감정이 있는 심연'과 손소희의 '그 날의 햇빛은'을 중심으로" (Non-vocal langauge and female subjectivity of madness in Korean literature: focusing on Han Mu-suk's Kamjŏng i innŭn simyŏn and Son So-hŭi's Kŭ nal ŭi haetpit ŭn)
The 3rd RIKS Academy workshop for Korean Studies doctoral students by Korea University in Seoul, Korea, August 10, 2018"Formation of Nation and Portrayal of Women in Korea through the 1960s Taehan Nyusŭ"
2017 AAS-in-Asia Regional Conference hosted by Korea University in Seoul, Korea, June 26, 2017
CONFERENCE PANEL PROPOSALS
"Futures Imagined: Civil Resistance in 1970s and 1980s South Korean Literature and Art”
Panel organized for the AAS Annual Conference, Boston, MA, March 18, 2023"Mad, Liminal, Fragmented, and Horrific: Gendered Manifestations in Postwar Korean Culture”
Panel organized for the 27th Columbia Graduate Student Conference on East Asia at Columbia University, New York, NY, February 24, 2018"Construction of Nation & Self in Post-Liberation Korea”
Panel organized for the 26th Columbia Graduate Student Conference on East Asia at Columbia University, New York, NY, February 25, 2017"The Formation of Minority Identities in Modern East Asia”
Panel organized for the 25th Columbia Graduate Student Conference on East Asia at Columbia University, New York, NY, February 27, 2016
PEDAGOGY TRAINING & PROFESSIONALIZATION
Grant-Writing & Research Development Institute, Humanities Center, UC Irvine | 2023
Summer Teaching Apprenticeship, DTEI, UC Irvine | 2022
Certificate in Inclusive Hybrid Teaching, DTEI, UC Irvine | 2021, 2022
Certificate in Summer Remote Teaching, DTEI, UC Irvine | 2020
Humanities Pedagogical Certificate Program, DTEI, UC Irvine | 2020
Korean Language Pedagogy Training, Institute for Training Korean Language Instructors, Yonsei University | 2019
Course Design Certification Program, DTEI, UC Irvine | 2018
RESEARCH EXPERIENCES
Graduate Student Researcher for Sora Han, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, UC Irvine | 2021-2022
Graduate Student Researcher for Jerry Lee, Global Languages & Communications and Department of English, UC Irvine | 2021
Researcher and Translator, Institute for Gender Research at Seoul National University and Center for Critical Korean Studies, UC Irvine | 2018-2019
MENTORSHIP EXPERIENCES
Graduate Interconnect (GIC) Peer Mentor at UC Irvine for incoming international graduate students | Spring–Fall 2023
Certificate in Mentoring Excellence Program, DTEI, UC Irvine | 2023
INVITED TALKS
"The Vegetarian: An Introduction"
Invited presentation at Celebrating Korean Writer Han Kang, the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature Laureate at UC Irvine, October 25, 2024"Comfort Women & Their Voices"
Guest lecture for "EAS 55: Korean Failures" at UC Irvine, October 14, 2021"Interpreting the Comfort Women Testimonies: Open Discussion as Translators, Educators, and Students"
Panel speaker with Sue Heun Kim and Eun Ah Cho at "War and Women's Human Rights: Testimonies of the Comfort Women" hosted by UC Irvine, June 7, 2019"The Housemaid: A Portrait of Life in the 1960s Korea"
Guest lecture for "EALC/CPLT 236 The Girl in Modern East Asian Culture" undergraduate course at Wellesley College, November 11, 2016
SERVICES
Graduate Student Advisory Board Member (Inaugural), International Center for Writing & Translation (ICWT) at UC Irvine, 2022 – present
Interpreter, "Sympathy and Hospitality toward Overcoming Modernity with Ch'oe Yun" talk hosted by the Center for Critical Korean Studies at UC Irvine, February 7, 2019
Speaker, "Alumnae Panel 2016: Life After Wellesley" hosted by Wellesley College Korean Students Association, November 11, 2016
LANGUAGES
Korean | native
Japanese | advanced
Chinese | novice
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
Association for Asian Studies (AAS)
Korean Literature Association (KLA)
Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE)
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse