Humanities Program Spotlight:

New B.A. in Korean Enhances East Asian Studies at OSU

Korea has been at the crossroads of cultures in East Asia for more than two thousand years. The richness of its cultural heritage has made it a focus of scholarly attention for centuries. Drawing on the extraordinary resources of the College of Humanities' Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, and adding dimension to existing programs in Japanese and Chinese, a newly-approved B.A. program in Korean will foster enhanced intellectual diversity and interdisciplinarity with programs in the performing arts, folklore, comparative studies, and beyond.

Beginning autumn 2005, the steadily growing number of students at OSU with an interest in Korean culture and society will now benefit from the opportunity to more fully master the language, gain deeper insights into Korea's cultural and literary heritage, and assess Korea's role in the contemporary world. The university draws significant numbers of students who wish to pursue East Asian area studies, including many among the 1,000 students of Korean ethnicity to whom OSU is home. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the Korean OSU Alumni Association is one of the largest of those active overseas, and Ohio State has distinguished itself as the only university of those offering Korean programs across the nation to receive two Korea Foundation faculty development grants. By virtue of its academic standing and status as a priority site for recruitment by major Korean business conglomerates including Hyundai, Samsung, and Daewoo, and through its sister relationship with North Kyôngsang, one of the most prosperous provinces in South Korea, the degree program in Korean at OSU will further the goals of the university's Academic and Diversity Plans and enhance local and national strategies for job creation through international trade.

Chan Park-Miller, associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, with specializations in Korean language, literature and culture, spearheads the program in Korean and has led the effort for development of the new B.A. Park-Miller was selected to receive the Outstanding Artist Award by the Korean American Women Artists and Writers Association in 2000, and she is widely known for her publications on the theory and practice of oral narratology and its interdisciplinary connection with arts and humanities. Her monograph, Voices from the Straw Mat: Toward an Ethnography of Korean Story Singing, was recently published by the University of Hawaii Press.