ABSTRACT

Dangerous Women addresses the themes of Korean nationalism and gender construction, as well as various issues related to the colonialization and decolonialization of the Korean nation. The contributors explore the troubled category of "woman," placing it in the specific context of a marginalized and colonized nation. But Korean women are not merely configured here as metaphors for an emasculated and infantilized "homeland;" they are also shown to be products of a problematic gender construction that originates in Korea, and extends even today to Korean communities beyond Asia. Representations of Korean women still attempt to confine them to the status of either mother or prostitute: Dangerous Women rectifies that construction, offering a feminist intervention that might recuperate womanhood.

chapter 1|8 pages

Introduction

chapter 3|34 pages

Begetting the Nation:

The Androcentric Discourse of National History and Tradition in South Korea

chapter 4|52 pages

Men's Talk:

A Korean American View of South Korean Constructions of Women, Gender, and Masculinity

chapter 5|3 pages

Kindred Distance

Photo Essay

chapter 6|18 pages

Re-membering the Korean Military Comfort Women:

Nationalism, Sexuality, and Silencing

chapter 8|28 pages

Yanggongju as an Allegory of the Nation:

The Representation of Working-Class Women in Popular and Radical Texts

chapter 9|19 pages

Working Women and the Ontology of the Collective Subject:

(Post)Coloniality and the Representation of Female Subjectivities in Hyŏn Ki-yŏng's Paramt'anum Som (Island in the Wind)

chapter 10|6 pages

Mother Load

Photo Essay

chapter 11|20 pages

Ideals of Liberation:

Korean Women in Manchuria

chapter 12|42 pages

Re-membering Home

chapter 13|32 pages

A Peculiar Sensation:

A Personal Genealogy of Korean American Women's Cinema