February 3, 2026 - 4:00pm
HG 1010
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2026-02-03 16:00:00
2026-05-29 16:01:47
The Dwarf (1978) and the Politics of Knowledge in Cold War South Korea
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The Dwarf (1978) and the Politics of Knowledge in Cold War South Korea
Speaker
HeeJin Lee
University of Pittsburgh
Tuesday • February 3 • 4 p.m.
UCI Humanities Gateway 1010
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HeeJin Lee is Assistant Professor and Marianna Brown Dietrich Breakthrough Scholar Chair of Korean Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a scholar of modern Korean literature with research interests in Cold War cultures and the politics of decolonization in comparative contexts. Lee is working on her first book manuscript, which traces how anticommunism in Korea during the early years of the Cold War shaped what we know about modern Korean literature today.
Acquiring knowledge through education has long been considered essential in South Korea, not only for developing the nation but also for improving the lives of individuals—particularly those in the working class, so that they may escape exploitation and live in dignity. In this talk, I show how The Dwarf (1978) by Cho Se-hŭi challenges this understanding by divulging institutionalized knowledge to be a double-edged sword in Cold War South Korea. In doing so, I explore how we may read this novel to present alternative ways of engaging with this knowledge, so as to move beyond the epistemic parameters set by the Cold War.
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