CEAS Lecture Series ft. Kornel Chang

THIS IS AN IN-PERSON EVENT AND WILL NOT BE LIVE STREAMING.

LECTURE ABSTRACT

With the collapse of the Japanese Empire in August 1945, the Korean peninsula erupted with hopes and dreams that had been bottled up for nearly forty years. Kornel Chang's new book, A Fractured Liberation: Korea under U.S. Occupation (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2025), tells the story of how Koreans—from political leaders and activists to ordinary peasants, workers, and women—experienced the shock of liberation, what they thought it might bring, the great expectations, and the opportunities and challenges they faced as a newly emancipated people. The book also looks at how the entry of American forces complicated, and ultimately, narrowed possibilities for liberation. U.S. officials fought over how to best fulfill Korean aspirations and how they should be prioritized among competing objectives in Korea. An eclectic group of American and Korean reformers—New Deal liberals, Christian socialists, and trade unionists—proposed an agenda of democratization and reform as an alternative to the rigid anti-communism of the military high command. Their stories reveal the paths not taken. In telling them, A Fractured Liberation restores contingency to a narrative that looks ahead to war and division as an inevitable endpoint.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Kornel Chang is Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Rutgers University-Newark. He is a scholar of U.S. immigration and foreign relations, focusing on U.S.-East Asian relations. His newest book, A Fractured Liberation: Korea under U.S. Occupation (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2025) is a narrative history of southern Korea in the aftermath of World War II, when the collapse of the Japanese Empire ushered in an extraordinary moment of promise and possibility that ultimately ended in tragedy. He is currently working on a comprehensive history of U.S.-North Korean relations, from the Korean War to the present, examining why peace and unity have been elusive and why the Cold War continues to rage on the Korean Peninsula as an anachronism that refuses to die.

CEAS LECTURE SERIES

The CEAS Lecture Series is an initiative that advances the University of Chicago's Center for East Asian Studies' mission in fostering dialogue and interdisciplinary collaboration. This annual public lecture series presents eminent scholars who concentrate on the study of East Asia in a variety of disciplines. For more information on the series, follow the link here: https://ceas.uchicago.edu/events/ceas-lecture-series

SPONSORSHIP

This event is co-sponsored with the University of Chicago Library.

PHOTOGRAPHY/VIDEOGRAPHY

Please note that there may be photography taken during this educational event by the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies for archival and publicity purposes. By attending this event, participants are confirming their permission to be photographed and the University of Chicago’s right to use, distribute, copy, and edit the recordings in any form of media for non-commercial, educational purposes, and to grant rights to third parties to do any of the foregoing.