Mikwi Cho, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies
Phone:765.983.1261
Email:[email protected]
Location: Landrum Bolling Center, Room 229
801 National Road West
Richmond, Indiana 47374
About Me
I was born and raised in Japan as a Korean minority with Korean citizenship. I knew from a young age that my life was somewhat different than that of ordinary Japanese people, but I never questioned my ethnic background, why I attended a Korean school that the public opposed, why I never had a passport but a re-entry permit, nor why my family followed Korean traditions for annual family events. It was when my parents sent me to Canada for my high school education at the age of fifteen that I began to develop curiosity about my family history, my identity, the history of my “imaginary fatherland,” and why I lived in Japan with a special permanent residency status that only a specific category of residents could obtain. Due to interaction with several professors to whom I am forever indebted, this curiosity naturally led me to probe the diversity of historical narratives and memories that compete between individuals, groups, and nations.
As an extension of my special interests in modernity, migration history and theory, colonialism and postcolonialism, and peace studies, I currently offer the following undergraduate courses: *Citizenship and Minority Issues in East Asia*, a course on how citizenship policies and the transnational history of East Asia create minorities and affect their lives; *Peace and Reconciliation in East Asia*, where students are introduced to polarized historical narratives between Japan, the two Koreas, and China, the past and ongoing peace efforts between these nations, and academic and public discussion on reconciliation recipes unique to East Asia; *Modern Japan*, a course on the topics of westernization, imperialism and colonialism, postwar economic, diplomatic, political, and social issues, and challenges of the twenty-first century in Japan; *Modern East Asia*, a course on the modernization, challenges, and activist movements among women of East Asia from the nineteenth century to the present; and core courses for the Japanese Studies majors such as *Introduction to the Study of Japan* and *the Senior Capstone*.
Education
- Ph.D., University of Cambridge
- M.A., University of Alberta
- B.Sc., York University
Research Projects
My research focuses on disentangling divided narratives and memories to understand why people migrate. In recent studies, there has been an increasing awareness that factors for migration are not always as clear as voluntary or involuntary/forced. Migration factors in many cases oscillate between these two ends of the spectrum. I therefore endeavor to seek answers to the following questions: why do migrants abandon their homes, to which many have a deep psychological attachment, for a new destination? What factors drive their decisions? How do emigrants interact with border politics and immigration policies? How do gender, ethnicity, and race play a role in migration? A book I am currently working on interrogates these questions in the context of colonial migration — it examines how labor, education, religion, gender, and class interweave with each other to constitute colonial migration by focusing on the movement of Koreans during Japan’s colonization of Korea.