Heejeong Sohn, PhD

Director, Center for Korean Studies

Advanced Senior Lecturer, Department of Asian and Asian American Studies

Director, Korean Studies Program
Director, NSLI-Y Korean Language and Culture

Ph.D. Stony Brook University, 2014

Geographical Areas:Korea, East Asia, Korea-US

Topic Areas:Modern & contemporary history of Korea; photography and visual studies; American missionaries in Korea; gender and sexuality; history of Korean language; Korean language pedagogy; digital humanities

Office: N5520 Center for Korean Studies; 1122 Humanities

Email: heejeong.sohn@stonybrook.edu

Please e-mail or call in advance if you would like to make an appointment.

• Biography
  Heejeong Sohn, PhD, is Advanced Senior Lecturer in Asian & Asian American Studies, where she directs the Korean Studies Program. Since 2011, she has significantly expanded the program through innovative curriculum design and global study-abroad pathways. Trained as a historian of modern Korea, her research focuses on late Chosŏn and early modern Korea, with particular interests in visual culture, gender, religion, and the making of modernity. She also examines language practices and the cultural and political dynamics of division between North and South Korea. An accomplished grant writer, she has secured multimillion-dollar funding, including major federal awards and Academy of Korean Studies initiatives, advancing both scholarship and institutional growth of Korean Studies at Stony Brook University. 
• Courses Taught
   

  An Introduction to Korean Culture

  Modern Korea thru Visual Culture

  Language and Society in Korea

  Language and Society in North Korea

  Senior Seminar in Korean Studies

  Korean Language from Elementary to Intermediate Levels

  Advanced Korean III in Social Studies

  Advanced Korean IV in Humanities

• Publications
   

  2018   “Revisiting the Mission Subject: The First Protestant Women and Photography in Korea between 1880 and 1910” in Christianity and the Modern Women in East Asia, edited by Garrett Washington, Leiden: Brill

  2016   “Book Review,” Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method, by Joan Kee. 2013 (Pacific Affairs, Volume 89, No. 4, December 2016)

  2015a  “Gendering Modernity: Korean Women Seen through the Early Missionary Gaze,” a photo essay (Cross-Currents E-Journal: East Asian History and Culture Review, NO. 16, September 2015)

  2015b  “Building Innovative Online Korean and Japanese Courses: A Pilot on Technology-enhanced Curriculum Development,” co-authored with Eriko Sato, et al. (Journal of Educational Technology Systems44.2: 171-202, December 2015)

  2011   “Book Review,” North Korea Caught in Time: Images of War and Reconstruction, by Balazs Szalontai and Chris Springer, 2010 (Pacific Affairs, Vol. 84, Number 1, March 2011)