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The Military Camptown in Retrospect: Multiracial Korean American Subject Formation Along the Black-White Binary

Miller, Perry Dal-nim
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1187385251

Abstract Details

2007, Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, American Culture Studies/English.
This thesis applies theoretical approaches from the sociology of literature and Asian Americanist critique to a study of two novels by multiracial Korean American authors. I investigate themes of multiracial identity and consumption in Heinz Insu Fenkl’s Memories of My Ghost Brother and Nora Okja Keller’s Fox Girl, both set in the 1960’s and 1970’s gijichon or military camptown geography, recreational institutions established around U.S. military installations in the Republic of Korea. I trace the literary production of Korean American subjectivity along a socially constructed dichotomy of blackness and whiteness, examining the novels’ representations of cross-racial interactions in a camptown economy based on the militarized sexual labor of working-class Korean women. I conclude that Black-White binarisms are reproduced in the gijichon through the consumption practices of both American military personnel and Korean gijichon workers, and that retrospective fictional accounts of gijichon multiraciality signal a shift in artistic, scholarly, and popular conceptualizations of Korean American and Asian American group identities.
Khani Begum (Advisor)
116 p.
Asian American; Korean American; Multiraciality; Mixed Race; Consumption; Sociology of Literature; Republic of Korea; U.S. Imperialism; U.S. Military; Gijichon; Sex Work; Prostitution; Women of Colors Feminism

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Miller, P. D.-N. (2007). The Military Camptown in Retrospect: Multiracial Korean American Subject Formation Along the Black-White Binary [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1187385251

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Miller, Perry. The Military Camptown in Retrospect: Multiracial Korean American Subject Formation Along the Black-White Binary. 2007. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1187385251.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Miller, Perry. "The Military Camptown in Retrospect: Multiracial Korean American Subject Formation Along the Black-White Binary." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1187385251

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1187385251
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© 2007, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.