Jesook Song
Jesook Song (PhD, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Associate Professor, St. George Campus
Graduate Coordinator, WGSI
(416) 946-3587
Office: AP 208
Field: Socio cultural anthropologist of contemporary urban transformation and welfare issues including homelessness, youth unemployment, single women's housing, and psychological health support system; East Asia, particularly South Korea
Jesook Song received her B.A. in Education Science at the Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea. She received her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology with a minor degree in Women's Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA. She is currently writing a book on South Korean housing issues and family independent women.
Major Awards Include:
The Academy of Korean Studies Competitive Research Grant (2012-2013) on Speculative Practices and Their Impacts on Household Management.
The Academy of Korean Studies Distinguished Paper Award (2010) "Between Flexible Life and Flexible Labor: The Inadvertent Convergence of Socialism and Neoliberalism in South Korea" Critique of Anthropology. 29(2): 139-159.
SSHRC Standard Research Grant (2008-2012) on The Psychological Health Care System for People without Family Support in South Korea.
Korea Foundation Advanced Research Grant (2008-2009) for writing a book manuscript on family-independent women and housing in South Korea.
Connaught New Staff Matching Fund (2005-2007) on Family-Independent Women in South Korea.
The Academy of Korean Studies Award on the Encouragement of Research for an excellent journal publication (2007) "Family Breakdown and Invisible Homeless Women" in positions: east asia cultures critique 14(1):37-65.
American Anthropological Association The Sylvia H. Forman Prize, the best graduate essay in feminist anthropology (2002).
Recent Publications:
Accepted (provisional) "Gendered Care Work as “Free Labor” in State Employment: School Social Workers in the Education Welfare (Investment) Priority Project in South Korea" Special issue of "Youth, Labor, and Politics in East Asia" positions: asia critique
In Production, Living on Your Own: Single Women, Rent Housing, Post-Revolutionary Affect in Contemporary South Korea, Albany: SUNY Press
In Press “Governmental Entanglements: The Ambiguities of Progressive Politics in Neoliberal Reform in South Korea” in Global Future in East Asia Stanford: Stanford University Press
2012, "Korea Through Ethnography" Special issue of Journal of Korean Studies, Volume 17, Issue 2, co-edited with Nancy Abelmann
2012 “Positioning Asia in a Global Future?: An Example through Rethinking Finance” in special issue of "Twenty Years After" positions: asia critique 20(1): 173-182
2011 “Situating Homelessness in the Post-Developmental Welfare State: The Case of South Korea” Urban Geography 32(7): 972-988
2010 New Millennium South Korea: Neoliberal Capitalism and Transnational Movements. ed. by Jesook Song London: Routledge.
2010 Gender and Class in Korea and Japan: Sexing Class edited (by Ruth Barrachlough and Elyssa Faison, Routledge, 2009) to Pacific Affairs 83(4): 799-780
2010 Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation (by Anna Marie Smith, Cambridge University Press, 2007) to Feminist Review, 95: 16-18
2010 “‘A Room of One’s Own’: The Meaning of Spatial Autonomy for Unmarried Women in Neoliberal South Korea” Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 17(2): 131-149
2009 "Between Flexible Life and Flexible Labor: The Inadvertent Convergence of Socialism and Neoliberalism in South Korea" Critique of Anthropology. 29(2): 139-159
2009. South Korea in the Debt Crisis: The Creation of a Neoliberal Welfare Society. Durham: Duke University Press.
2008. "The Making of 'Undeserving' Homeless Women: A Gender Analysis of Homeless Policy in South Korea from 1997 to 2001." Feminist Review. 89(1): 87-101.
2007. "'Venture Companies,' 'Flexible Labor,' and the 'New Intellectual': Neoliberal Construction of Underemployed Youth in South Korea." Journal of Youth Studies. 10(3): 331-351.
2006. "Family Breakdown and Invisible Homeless Women: Neoliberal Governance during the Asian Debt Crisis in South Korea 1997-2001" Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 14(1):37-65.
2006. "Historicization of Homeless Spaces: The Seoul Train Station Square and the House of Freedom." Anthropological Quarterly 79(2): 193-223.
