Sonia Ryang
Associate Professor and
International Studies C. Maxwell and Elizabeth M. Stanley Family and the Korea Foundation Scholar of Korean Studies
Office: 215 Macbride Hall
Phone: (319) 384-3255
sonia-ryang@uiowa.edu
- Selected Publications/Projects (PDF)
- Curriculum Vitae (PDF)
Background:
I combine British Social Anthropology with American Cultural Anthropology as my intellectual asset. My training was in the heart of British social anthropology, while my teaching career has taken place in the US, first at Johns Hopkins University, and then, now here at the University of Iowa. This has given me interesting and unique experience, in addition to having grown up in Japan as a member of Korean minority.
My current project is a book tentatively entitled “Explorations in the Political: Ethnological Study of North Korea.” Using literary sources – as fieldwork in North Korea continues to be difficult to impossible – I try to capture cultural logic behind a society like North Korea, which is usually known as totalitarian society, although we tend to use this term, totalitarianism, without carefully thinking about what it is that it really means. The book has four body chapters: Love, War, Self, and Play. I explore the way human beings are made extremely political in that society, yet in this society, the political is at the same time made almost meaningless.
My one other project is entitled “At Risk in Iowa: Healthcare Disparities among Iowans of Asian Heritage.” I have received the Vice-President’s funding for social research for this project (to be completed in 2009). The statistics has it that, despite higher educational and professional qualifications that Asians in Iowa have as opposed to the mainstream population in the state, their cancer mortality rate is much higher. I consider this to be related to the extreme diversity and stratification internal to the Asian population in Iowa on one hand, and the lack of adequate channel to disseminate information about healthcare services among this population, on the other.
My teaching interest is diverse, spreading in area-focused topics (Japan, Korea, Asian America) and thematic topics such as ideology, love, war, disability, and ethnographic writing.
I am also serving as the Director of Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, University of Iowa, starting from August 2008. The CAPS website link is: http://international.uiowa.edu/centers/caps/ I hope those of you that are interested in exploring teaching and research opportunities in Asia and Pacific will contact CAPS for further information.
Courses Taught: Anthropology and Contemporary World Problems Disability and the Ethics of Care Anthropology of Love Korean Diaspora in the World North Korea and Totalitarianism Japan and Our Other Cultural Constructs Ethnography and Auto/Biography
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