About Seungsook
Seungsook Moon grew up in Seoul, Korea where she received a B.A. in Sociology at Yonsei University. She received her Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1994 and taught in Social Studies, the Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Honors Program, at Harvard University from 1993 to 1995.
Since joining the faculty at Vassar College in 1995, Ms. Moon has taught courses on gender and social change in East Asia, women's movements in Asia, social theory, Asian American communities, and food, culture, and globalization. This wide range of courses are connected by underlying focuses on historical and social forces, and informed by critical inquiries of the power/knowledge nexus and the politics of representation necessary to cross-cultural and transnational studies.
Ms. Moon's research interests lie in political and cultural sociology of gender in East Asia with the specific focus on South Korea. She has published numerous articles on nationalism, militarism, civil society and democratization, and globalization. She is the author of Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea (Duke University Press, 2005) and a coeditor of Gender & Sexuality in the Global U.S. Military Empire (Duke University Press, forthcoming).
Select Publications:
“Women and Civil Society in South Korea” in Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy, and the State, 2nd ed. edited by Charles K. Armstrong (Routledge, 2006): 121-143.
“Cambio social y situación de las mujeres en Corea del Sur: Familia, trabajo y politica” (Social change and women’s position in South Korea: family, work, and politics) in Mujeres asiáticas: Cambio social y modernidad (Asian women: Social Change and Modernity), edited by Amelia Sááiz López. Documento CIDOB-Asia, no. 12. Barcelona: Fundación CIDOB, 2006): 24-48.
“Trouble with Conscription, Entertaining Soldiers: Popular Culture and the Politics of Militarized Masculinity in South Korea” Men and Masculinities 8:1 (July 2005): 64-92.
“Immigration and Mothering: Two Generations of Middle-Class Korean Immigrant Women,” Gender & Society 17:6(December 2003): 840-860.
“Redrafting Democratization through Women’s Representation and Participation in the Republic of Korea” in Korea’s Democratization, edited by Samuel S. Kim (Cambridge University Press, 2003): 107-134.
“Imagining a Nation through Differences: Reading the Controversy concerning the Military Service Extra Points System in South Korea,” The Review of
Korean Studies 5:2(December 2002): 73-109.
“Beyond Equality Versus Difference: Professional Women Soldiers in the South Korean Army,” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 9:2(Summer 2002): 212-247.
“Carving Out Space: Civil Society and the Women’s Movement in South Korea,” The Journal of Asian Studies 61:2(May, 2002): 473-500.
“The Production and Subversion of Hegemonic Masculinity: Reconfiguring Gender Hierarchy in Contemporary South Korea,” in Under construction: The Gendering of Modernity, Class, and Consumption in the Republic of Korea, ed. Laurel Kendall (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), pp. 79-113.
“Overcome by Globalization: The Rise of a Women’s Policy in South Korea,” in Korea’s Globalization, ed. Samuel S. Kim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 126-46.
“Gender, Militarization, and Universal Male Conscription in South Korea,” in The Women and War Reader, eds. Lois Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin (New York: New York University Press, 1998), pp. 90-100.
“Begetting the Nation: The Androcentric Discourse of National History and Tradition in South Korea,” in Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism , eds. Elaine Kim and Chungmoo Choi (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 33-66.
“Eurocentric Elements in the Idea of ‘Surrender-and-Catch’,” Human Studies 16(1993): 305-317.