The American Ethnic Studies Department is proud to announce that AES' very own, Professor Jang Wook Huh has been awarded a 2023 ACLS Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The ACLS Fellowship supports exceptional scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences that has the potential to make significant contributions within and beyond the awardees' fields.
Jang Wook Huh has been recognized as one of 60 early-career scholars selected through a multi-stage peer review from a pool of nearly 1,200 applicants. ACLS Fellowships provide between $30,000 and $60,000 to support scholars during six to 12 months of sustained research and writing.
Huh's book project, "Afro-Korean" Encounters: The Literary Intersections of Black Liberation Struggles in the US and Anticolonial Movements in Korea, 1910-1953" examines the literary and cultural connections between Black liberation struggles in the United States and anticolonial movements in Korea during Japanese colonization from 1910-1945 and U.S. military intervention from 1945-1948 and 1950-1953.
This cross-racial history manifested in a variety of contexts, ranging from literary works and jazz songs to state apparatuses such as the U.S. Army and an industrial school that could be considered “Tuskegee in Korea.” This project draws on a wide range of archives, including American missionary documents, declassified government files, and military records, as well as literary and cultural texts. In doing so, it investigates the ways in which African American and Korean writers compared U.S. racial discrimination and Asian colonial subjugation to challenge the Japanese and U.S. Empires. By exploring issues of “racial uplift,” shared notions of dispossession, male friendship and homoerotic desire, and Cold War propaganda, this study aims to highlight a little-known legacy of Black internationalism and the creative roles of Koreans in disseminating Black culture.
“With higher education under sustained attack around the country, ACLS is proud to support this diverse cohort of emerging scholars as they work to increase understanding of our connected human histories, cultures, and experiences,” said ACLS President Joy Connolly. “ACLS Fellowships are investments in an inclusive future where scholars are free to pursue rigorous, unflinching humanistic research.”
To learn more about ACLS and Jang Wook Huh, click here.