Jiwon Shin, Assistant Professor, received her Ph.D. from the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University in 2003. She specializes in Korean literature and culture from the late Chosôn period through the modern era, focusing on issues of space and identity. Her research interests include: intersection of literature and cartographic imagination; conceptions of urban culture and literary coteries; early modern print culture; nationalist aesthetics. She is working on a book manuscript on late 18th and 19th century literary culture in Seoul . She also translates cultural theories and feminist criticisms as well as literary works from contemporary South Korea .

Although the Chinese writer Su Shi had always been considered an important model cultural figure in Korea , the early nineteenth century fascination with him is distinctly linked to the way in which material possession became a crucial means of fashioning the literati selfhood, particularly among the emerging urban elite in Seoul . The paper examines the manners in which the early nineteenth century Korean writers used their private collections of Su Shi’s poetry, calligraphies, and portraits, as well as the domestically produced duplicates of such texts, toward substantiating their literati self-image, while imagining themselves as distinct from other urban consumers. With a case study of these early nineteenth century writings on collecting Su Shi, the paper aims to consider the broader, underlying issue of the role of material culture in formulating the late Chosŏn articulation of Chinese literary tradition as property whose ownership can be transferred and claimed, as it was reproduced and re-performed in Korea .

Sponsored by the UW Center for Korea Studies.