Congratulations to Professor Jesook Song on her appointment as Chair of the Department of Anthropology and Graduate Chair! Professor Song is a scholar of socio-cultural anthropology, transnational Korean studies and critical studies of gender and sexuality. Her research and teaching focus include political economy, discourse analysis and intellectual history. Her scholarship has been supported by two successive SSHRC grants, three successive Academy of Korean Studies awards and a Korea Foundation research fund. It addresses daily processes of social reproduction such as labour, education, housing, finance and welfare; and historical formation of (neo)liberalism, coloniality, Cold War, heteronormativity and gendered violence.
Professor Song is internationally recognized as a leader in anthropology, Asian studies and gender studies. She has been a member of the editorial boards of positions and Journal of Asian Anthropology and on the board of the Korean Society for Cultural Anthropology. She has served in different positions on executive committees for the Society for East Asian Anthropology in the American Anthropological Association. She served as the Acting Director of the Centre for the Study of Korea and was the Graduate Coordinator of the Women and Gender Studies Institute for four years.
Professor Song will take up the position effective July 1st 2024 until June 30, 2029.