{"id":13,"date":"2016-09-02T13:02:54","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T13:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christopherlovins.com\/?page_id=13"},"modified":"2023-06-21T12:38:49","modified_gmt":"2023-06-21T03:38:49","slug":"publications","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/christopherlovins.com\/index.php\/publications\/","title":{"rendered":"Publications"},"content":{"rendered":"

King Chongjo, an Enlightened Despot in Early Modern Korea<\/b><\/em><\/a><\/h3>\n

Were the countries of Europe the only ones that were \u201cearly modern\u201d? Was Asia\u2019s early modernity cut short by colonialism? Scholars examining early modern Eurasia have not yet fully explored the relationships between absolute rule and political modernization in the highly contested early modern world. Using a comparative perspective that places Ch\u014fngjo, king of Korea from 1776 to 1800, in context with other Korean kings and with contemporary Chinese and European rulers, I examine the shifting balance of power in Korea in favor of the crown at the expense of the aristocracy during the early modern period. This book is the first to analyze in English the recently discovered collection of 297 private letters written by Ch\u014fngjo himself. These letters were a vital channel of communication outside of official court historians\u2019 scrutiny, since private meetings between the king and his ministers were forbidden by custom. Royal politics played out in an arena of subtle communication, with court officials trying to read the king\u2019s unstated, elliptically hinted at intentions and the king trying to suggest what he wanted done while maintaining plausible deniability. Through close analysis of both official records and private letters, including Ch\u014fngjo\u2019s \u201csecret letters,\u201d I show that, in contrast to previous assumptions, the late eighteenth-century Korean monarchs were not weak and ineffective but instead were in the process of building an absolutist polity.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDown and Out in Eco-Dystopia<\/a>: Class and Gender in Wonderful Days<\/em>.\u201d Korea Europe Review<\/em><\/h3>\n

The film Wonderful Days<\/em> plays out in a science fiction setting the history of Korea\u2019s struggle against dictatorial rule. The plot concerns an attempt to end the exploitation of the oppressed workers. However, the symbolism is muddled and confused because of the reactionary approach to gender. The symbol of the Korean middle class and only female character is a passive observer, which elides the crucial role of the middle class in the struggle against dictatorship. By succumbing to gender roles typical of Korean romantic dramas, the film fails at effectively dramatizing Korean class conflict in its futuristic post-apocalyptic setting. This article brings history into the analysis of this film and by extension to analysis of science fiction and film overall. It offers an example of the integration of historical analysis into scholarly work on popular film.<\/p>\n

\u201cLBJ\u2019s Hessians? Korean Troops\u2019 Dispatch to Vietnam.<\/a>\u201d In The Vietnam War in the <\/em>Pacific<\/em>, edited by Brian Cuddy and Fredrik Logevall. University of North Carolina<\/h3>\n

South Korea was the largest contributor to America\u2019s war effort in Vietnam, maintaining 50,000 troops in South Vietnam for the majority of the war. This chapter argues that the characterization of Korean troops in Vietnam as mercenaries is inappropriate and serves to distract from and obscure our understanding of Korea\u2019s involvement in the war. Rather, President of South Korea Park Chung-hee was concerned with shoring up his legitimacy at home. Sending Korean troops to Vietnam guaranteed US support for his regime, distracted Koreans\u2019 attention from the deeply unpopular restoration of diplomatic relations with Japan, and galvanized anti-Communist fervor that was the legitimizing basis of Park\u2019s coup, greatly strengthening Park\u2019s hand against his domestic opponents.<\/p>\n

\u201cKorea: A Slave Society.<\/a>\u201d In Slavery and Bonded Labor in Asia, 1250-1900<\/em>, edited by Richard B. Allen and Jeff Fynn-Paul. Brill<\/h3>\n

This chapter explores the controversy in Korean academia over the disputed status of the nobi<\/em>, translated in the West as \u201cslave\u201d but often translated by Korean scholars as \u201cservant\u201d, \u201cserf\u201d, \u201ccoerced laborer\u201d, or even transliterated, to avoid the slave label. It further investigates Korea as a \u201cslave society\u201d, with particular attention to comparison with slavery in Southeast Asia and the effects of Confucianism on patterns of slaveholding and on failed emancipation efforts before Korea\u2019s encounter with modern imperialism. Few scholars outside Korea are aware that Korean slaves could own their own property apart from their masters\u2019, including other slaves, and that Koreans enslaved other Koreans, who were linguistically, ethnically, racially, and culturally indistinguishable from their slavers. The Korean case has a great contribution to make to slavery studies, but English-language work in the area remains sorely lacking.<\/p>\n

\u201cMonarchs, Monks, and Scholars<\/a>: Religion and State Power in Tudor England and Chos\u014fn Korea.\u201d Journal of Asian History<\/em> 53:2<\/h3>\n

This article examines two cases of state-initiated, top-down attempts to impose a large-scale religious change on a premodern society, accompanied by large-scale state seizure of monastic lands: Chos\u014fn Korea and Tudor England. This comparison illuminates both generalities in how the seizure was justified and the relationship between politics and royal religious belief and specificities of restoration of the old religion as a succession issue in later reigns.<\/p>\n

“A Ghost in the Replicant<\/a>? Questions of Humanity and Technological Integration in <\/span>Blade Runner <\/span><\/em>and <\/span>Ghost in the Shell<\/span><\/em>.\u201d <\/span>MOSF Journal of Science Fiction <\/span><\/em>3:1<\/span><\/h3>\n

In this world of increasing integration with technology, what does it mean to be human? <\/span>Blade Runner <\/span>(1982) and <\/span>Ghost in the Shell <\/span>(1995) are two artistic works that directly address this question. Blade Runner posits a world in which imitation humans\u2014artificial people\u2014can only be identified through emotional testing. In <\/span>Ghost in the Shell<\/span>, the human mind can be hacked, manipulated, built, and rebuilt like any other computer. This article makes use of a\ufb00ect theory to address the connection between empathy and memory in defining what is human. Using these films\u2014along with <\/span>Blade Runner<\/span>\u2019s source novel <\/span>Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?<\/span>\u2014I conclude that mainstream science fiction is increasingly comfortable with technological integration and less inclined to rigidly demarcate a human-nonhuman boundary<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolute Monarchy East and West<\/a>: Ch\u014fngjo and Louis XIV.\u201d Journal of Asian History<\/em> 52<\/h3>\n

This article examines the function of absolute rule in the reigns of Louis XIV in France and King Ch\u014fngjo in Korea by investigating the nature of absolutism and the conditions of early modern France and Korea. It concludes that, despite the enormous geographic and cultural distances between them, conditions in early modern France and Korea were such that absolutism functioned in each polity in remarkably similar ways, strengthening the case for early modern as a useful periodization throughout Eurasia.<\/p>\n

\u201cRoyal Rage<\/a><\/span>: The Fatal Encounter <\/span>(<\/span>Y\u014fngnin<\/span>) as an Historical Film.\u201d <\/span>Acta Koreana <\/em><\/span>20:2
\n<\/span><\/h3>\n

Examines the 2014 film The Fatal Encounter<\/em> (\u9006\u9c57) as an historical film and concludes it succeeds as a work of history because it engages with historical sources and data, offers a narrative interpretation, and engages in \u201ctrue invention\u201d. The film grounds scholarly writings and artifacts in a moving, living, breathing atmosphere that conveys the time and place, and it presents the stories of non-elite characters that are often left out of the standard historical narratives.<\/p>\n

\u201cShangdi is Watching You: Tasan and Big Moralizing Gods<\/a>.\u201d Journal of the American Academy of Religion <\/em>83:2<\/h3>\n

Examines the moral thought of Korean Confucian philosopher Ch\u014fng Yagyong (Tasan) and the Big Moralizing Gods hypothesis in the cognitive science of religion. Explores these similarities in order both to provide empirical support for Tasan’s argument and to investigate how his work might in turn suggest avenues of future research into Big Moralizing Gods. An example of consilience\u2014that is, the vertical integration of disciplines in the physical and social sciences and the humanities into a single framework in which different levels of explanation are consistent with one another.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking Sense of the Imperial Pivot: Metaphor Theory and the Writings of King Ch\u014fngjo<\/a>.\u201d Korea Journal<\/em> 52:3<\/h3>\n

Draws on conceptual metaphor theory and blending theory to examine King Ch\u014fngjo’s (r. 1776-1800) use of the \u201cImperial Pivot\u201d (\u7687\u6975) metaphor to propagate a royalist political philosophy through which to combat the minister-centered thought of the aristocracy. The Imperial Pivot is a blended space that allows Ch\u014fngjo to invoke the visceral desire for equilibrium provided by the pivot metaphor while leaving behind its connotation of passivity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe King\u2019s Reason: Yi S\u014fng-gye and the Centralization of Power in Early Chos\u014fn<\/a>.\u201d Korea Review of International Studies<\/em> 9:1<\/h3>\n

Examines Chos\u014fn founder Yi S\u014fng-gye’s <\/span>realistic outlook that lead to the establishment of Neo-Confucianism despite his<\/span> deep personal commitment to Buddhism. Concludes his support of Neo-Confucian stemmed from practical rather than ideological considerations.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

King Chongjo, an Enlightened Despot in Early Modern Korea Were the countries of Europe the only ones that were \u201cearly modern\u201d? Was Asia\u2019s early modernity cut short by colonialism? Scholars examining early modern Eurasia have not yet fully explored the relationships between absolute rule and political modernization in the highly contested early modern world. Using … Continue reading “Publications”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-13","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherlovins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherlovins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherlovins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherlovins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherlovins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/christopherlovins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":189,"href":"https:\/\/christopherlovins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13\/revisions\/189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherlovins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}