Tag Archive for dissertation

Dissertation Review: Understanding Korean/American Evangelism

11/15/2011 Writing No comments

Well, here’s some­thing slightly embar­rass­ing, but I should share. My 2009 PhD dis­ser­ta­tion was reviewed by Laura Nelson as part of the online Dissertation Reviews series. It’s titled “Contemporary Korean/American Evangelical Missions: Politics of Space, Gender, and Difference” (obvi­ously in need of a bet­ter title for the book man­u­script). Incredibly, the folks at Dissertation Review informed me that the review was shared over 80 times on Facebook in just two days — “a Facebook phe­nom­e­non,” ha! — which is curi­ous since I could see that only 4 of my friends shared it. Who are all these peo­ple inter­ested in Korean/American missionaries?

Dissreview

In this 2009 dis­ser­ta­tion for the depart­ment of geog­ra­phy at UC Berkeley, Ju Hui Judy Han asks what lies behind the many world evan­gel­i­cal mis­sions under­taken by Koreans and Korean-Americans: What moti­vates the par­tic­i­pants? What enables the mobi­liza­tion of so much human effort? What beliefs under­lie the enthu­si­asm for evan­gel­i­cal work abroad? And, finally, what under­stand­ings and effects are pro­duced through the expe­ri­ence of mis­sion? In explor­ing these ques­tions, Han draws on the­ory, pri­mary tex­tual sources, and a multi-sited ethnog­ra­phy of mis­sion­ary projects. Read more…

AAS/SSRC Dissertation Workshop, Toronto

10/26/2011 FYI No comments

The Association for Asian Studies and the Social Science Research Council have announced plans for the first jointly orga­nized AAS/SSRC Dissertation Workshop, which will be held in con­junc­tion with the AAS annual con­fer­ence in Toronto in March 2012. The work­shop will be orga­nized and led by David Szanton and will fol­low the same basic model used in pre­vi­ous AAS workshops.

The work­shop title is “Rewriting History: Nationalism, Identity, and the Politics of the Past.” Radical and con­ser­v­a­tive schol­ars, nov­el­ists and biog­ra­phers, gov­ern­ments, edu­ca­tion min­istries, and tourist agen­cies are all writ­ing and rewrit­ing national his­to­ries and nar­ra­tives. Attempts to strengthen or legit­i­mate spe­cific inter­ests have entailed the redis­cov­ery, rein­ter­pre­ta­tion and even the rein­ven­tion of val­ues and iden­ti­ties, past social forms, vic­to­ries and defeats, as well as nat­ural and human trauma. Rewriting the past and cre­at­ing her­itage are ancient and seem­ingly uni­ver­sal phe­nom­ena, rais­ing dif­fi­cult ques­tions about what we can know and the pol­i­tics of his­tor­i­cal writ­ing. Issues of rewrit­ing his­tory are not lim­ited to the con­cerns of his­to­ri­ans; they are as salient to anthro­pol­o­gists, polit­i­cal sci­en­tists, spe­cial­ists on reli­gion, cul­tural stud­ies, and oth­ers across the human­i­ties and social sci­ences. Read more

Korean studies dissertation review: “Immigration Challenges and ‘Multicultural’ Responses”

10/07/2011 FYI No comments

Korean Studies Dissertation Review
“Immigration Challenges and ‘Multicultural’ Responses,” by Hui-Jung Kim

It is a plea­sure to announce that the new Korean Studies branch of Dissertation Reviews debuts today with Nadia Kim’s review of Hui-Jung Kim’s 2009 dis­ser­ta­tion, “Immigration Challenges and ‘Multicultural’ Responses: The State, the Dominant Ethnie and Immigrants in South Korea.”

The review can be found at http://​www​.dis​ser​ta​tion​re​views​.org

The sec­ond Korean Studies review will post next week on Wed, Oct 12. Please spread the word among your col­leagues in the field, and let us know if you would like to con­tribute a review, or have your dis­ser­ta­tion featured.

Sincerely,

Tom Mullaney, Director
Nancy Abelmann, Korea Co-Editor
Laura Nelson, Korea Co-Editor

Resource: From Dissertation to Book

06/15/2011 FYI No comments

A help­ful list of tips from the First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies blog.

From Dissertation to Book: Advice for Indigenous Studies Scholars

  • The book’s con­clu­sion should serve, in part, to lay the foun­da­tion for future research (your own or oth­ers’). So, if there is any­thing you weren’t able to ade­quately address in the book, you can raise those issues in the con­clu­sion and high­light oppor­tu­ni­ties for addi­tional research.
  • Limit your his­to­ri­og­ra­phy and lit­er­a­ture analy­sis in the book’s intro­duc­tion. Instead, focus on what con­tri­bu­tions your book will make. Along these same lines, sev­eral of the men­tors warned authors not to “over­si­t­u­ate” them­selves in the lit­er­a­ture. As men­tor Kevin Bruyneel put it, “Don’t sit­u­ate your­self, sit­u­ate them,” mean­ing that the work should sup­port your argu­ment rather than the other way around.
  • Over all, claim author­ity over your own voice and tell a story. Going into the revi­sion process with these goals in mind will help you be a bet­ter writer and should help pro­vide struc­ture for the book.

The blog also rec­om­mends From Dissertation to Book by William Germano. Looks like a must read.