Book Talk with Andre Schmid: 'North Korea’s Mundane Revolution: Socialist Living and the Rise of Kim Il Sung, 1953–1965'

Event description

Academic events
Free
Open to the public

When the crucial years after the Korean War are remembered today, histories about North Korea largely recount a grand epic of revolution centering on the ascent of Kim Il Sung to absolute power. Often overshadowed in this storyline, however, are the myriad ways the Korean population participated in party-state projects to rebuild their lives and country after the devastation of the war. North Korea's Mundane Revolution traces the origins of the country's long-term durability in the questions that Korean women and men raised about the modern individual, housing, family life, and consumption.

Using a wide range of overlooked sources, Andre Schmid examines the formation of a gendered socialist lifestyle in North Korea by focusing on the localized processes of socioeconomic and cultural change. This style of "New Living" replaced radical definitions of gender and class revolution with the politics of individual self-reform and cultural elevation, leading to a depoliticization of the country's political culture in the very years that Kim Il Sung rose to power.

About the speaker

Photo of Andre Schmid

Dr. Andre Schmid, PhD (Columbia University) is a professor of history at the University of Toronto. His research and teaching focus on 19th and 20th century Korea and East Asia, as seen in the broader context of global and comparative history. He is interested in historiography and the uses of public memory, the relation between cultural practices and political economy, gendered social history and popular social movements. His first book, “Korea Between Empires, 1895-1919” (Columbia University Press, 2002), examined the rise of ethnic nationalist discourse in Korea at the turn of the 20th century, and received the John Whitney Hall Award of the Association of Asian Studies.

This event is presented by:

The School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies

The Asia Center @ ASU

Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona