Jinsoo An

Jinsoo An

Jinsoo An

Type
Assistant Professor Fellow
Department
East Asian Languages & Cultures
2013-14

In "Tropes of Colonial Urban Space in South Korean Cinema," part of a book project about South Korean Cold War cinema, Jinsoo An (East Asian Languages and Cultures) examines spatial representation of colonialism in cinematic cityscape. Noticing that colonialism in Korean film has not received sufficient critical attention, An considers urban space as a key concept to problematize South Korean cinema's logic of colonialism and nationalism. An traces the sites and places that are privileged or marginalized in the historical imaginings of the films from 1946 to 2000s. Specifically, these works show a distinctive representation of the network space imposed by the Japanese colonial power, against which the site of nationalist resistance is imaged and imagined. In contrast, the films from the early 2000s show a clear departure in spatial practice from their predecessors. An explores how the new coordinates of spatial representation inform the changing cultural imagining of the colonial past in contemporary South Korea.