In this talk, Professor Grace Cho (CUNY College of Staten Island) explores the following questions: How do we bring forth stories that have been silenced or suppressed? Where do we look for evidence of that which has been erased? And how do we expand our understanding of the archive?
Tracing the trajectory of her research and writing—from Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War (2008)and Tastes Like War (2021)to her new book project We Will Go to Jinju: A Search for Family and the Hidden Histories of the Korean War—Professor Cho will examine the creative methods we can use to make sense of violently suppressed social histories. By paying attention to phenomena that are often disavowed by the social sciences—such as dreams, ghosts, and hallucinations—she invites us to imagine new ways of knowing and remembering.
About the speaker: Grace M. Cho is the author of Tastes Like War (Feminist Press, 2021), a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award in nonfiction and winner of the 2022 Asian Pacific American Literature Award in adult nonfiction. Her first book, Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), received a 2010 book award from the American Sociological Association. Her writings have appeared in The Nation, Catapult, The New Inquiry, Poem Memoir Story, Contexts, Gastronomica, Feminist Studies, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and Qualitative Inquiry. She is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the College of Staten Island, CUNY.
