Foreign Languages, Cultures, and Literatures (FLCL), Dean of the College, and Division of Languages and Literature Present

Yŏdaesaeng Reclaimed: Rewriting Identity and Resistance in 1950s and 1960s Postwar Women’s Narratives

This talk illuminates the troubling figure of the postwar yŏdaesaeng (female college student) in two short stories: Han Mu-suk’s “Abyss with Emotions” (Kamjŏngi innŭn simyŏn, 1957) and Son So-hŭi’s “The Sunlight of That Day” (Kunalŭi haetbitŭn, 1960). Yŏdaesaeng encapsulates the troubling memories of Japanese colonialism and the Korean War, as well as principles of the postwar ideologies within her youthful college-educated body in the two stories. I discuss the yŏdaesaeng by first historicizing her colonial progenitor, yŏhaksaeng (schoolgirl), to historically contextualize the Han and Son’s experiences as yŏhaksaeng. I also touch on how colonial writers have mobilized the yŏhaksaeng figure and their descent into madness as fictional representations of modernity and ethnonationalism. In examining Han and Son’s postwar yŏdaesaeng and their descent into madness as both an escape from censorship and as a method of radical resistance against patriarchy, this talk shows how postwar women writers reclaim the exploited figure of the yŏhaksaeng and their madness by rejecting the very use of national representation by focusing on yŏdaesaeng’s feminine desires and experiences. This kind of writing practice has allowed women writers to recuperate their own autonomy as writers, women, and yŏhaksaeng-pasts in the immediate postwar era.

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For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5

Location: Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium

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