Gyewon Kim: Self-Introduction

To begin with, I’m very pleased to be involved in this weblog. Thanks, 미치 (K. M. Lawson)!
My name is Gyewon Kim. I’m doing my PhD in art history in McGill University at Montreal. I recently completed all of my course work and exams last semester and may now begin with my own research. (What a relief!) I’m interested in discourses and practices of landscape in the Meiji period. In particular, I’m examining maps and photographs produced by Japanese geographers by addressing their workability in the creation of a particular geographical imagination in colonial Korea.

My academic background is bit complex. I did my BA in Education at Yonsei University, and continued to do my MA in the history of photography at Chung-Ang University (and now in art history ^^;;). I used to take a lot of my own photographs but now prefer to look at them and talk about aspects invisible on the surface level: the complex web of social contexts, histories, political struggles, power relations, etc. As Park Noja sunsaengnim said to me, the contents of art history is not as bloody as that of history more generally speaking. However, I think images are always already entangled with ideological conflicts, something I find difficult but interesting when I face the images myself. Perhaps I can address some aspects of this with examples in my next posting. In addition to my research in art history I’m also currently studying Japanese quite intensively. It’s really interesting! とても面白いですよ! These days, however, I’m doing my archive research at Seoul National University almost every day. I have a personal blog, too. You can find it here. I use the blog for academic purposes, so it might or might not be interesting to you. Hope that we can meet up somewhere in and out of the internet space. じゃ、またね！★