My research lies at the intersection of migration studies, postcolonial urban theory, and science and technology studies. My past and current research projects are largely divided into three categories: 1) transpacific and cross-imperial production of urban knowledge and imaginings; 2) materiality of postcolonial legalities and sentiments; and 3) aesthetics and politics of infrastructure.
Transpacific Production of Urban Knowledge and Imaginings
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What is it that makes urban form move across regions? How does a particular urban form (developed to serve functions specific to a certain locality) cross geographic boundaries and acquire different meaning as it travels? In order to answer these questions, I examine the mobility of urban form as a power-laden process whereby techniques of governing cities circulate across time and space. Taking note of the presence of border-crossing processes that have long existed in and between cities, I focus on how different historical moments have produced different networks of people and ideas, thereby reconfiguring spaces of urban governance and exclusion.
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Related research:
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Sujin Eom. 2017. "Traveling Chinatowns: Mobility of Urban Forms and Asia in Circulation." positions: asia critique 25 (4): 693-716. (Article)
Sujin Eom. 2019. "After Ports Were Linked: Paradoxes of Transpacific Connectivity in the 19th Century." Imaginaries of Connectivity and Creation of Novel Spaces of Governance, edited by Luis Lobo-Guerrero, Suvi Alt, and Maarten Meijer. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 67-87. (Link) Sujin Eom. 2020. "Infrastructures of Displacement: The Transpacific Travel of Urban Renewal during the Cold War." Planning Perspectives 35 (2): 299-319. (Link) |
Materiality of Postcolonial Legalities and Sentiments
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Calling into question the neglect of the material in postcolonial studies, my research in this area investigates how the postcolonial state engages the reproduction of colonial violence in the form of law and urban space. More specifically, I analyze "Chinatown" as a symbolic void in the (post)colonial history of Korea to interrogate the spatiality of postcolonial politics.
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Related research:
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Sujin Eom. 2019. "The Idea of Chinatown: Rethinking Cities from the Periphery." On the Margins of Urban South Korea: Core Location as Method, edited by Jesook Song and Laam Hae. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 21-42. (Link)
Sujin Eom. "Bulldozing the Dead: Chinese, Citizenry, and Cemetery in Postcolonial South Korea." Modern Asian Studies. (Revise and Resubmit) Sujin Eom. "Living with Ruins: The Affective Life of Chinese Shophouses in Korea." (In Preparation) |
Aesthetics and Politics of Infrastructure
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By treating infrastructure as a platform on which state power is manifested through a depersonalized form, my research in this area explores the paradoxical role of technology in the making of modern states. Highlighting the political agency of nonhuman actors in the imagining of modern (or "civilized" as it was understood in the late 19th century) nations, my research delves into the ambiguous nature of technology in statecraft both in colonial and postcolonial contexts. I analyze understudied documents from archives located in Europe, North America, and East Asia and thereby illuminate the hitherto underexplored transpacific and cross-oceanic networks of technology in the construction of urban infrastructure.
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Related research:
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Sujin Eom. "Bridge on Ground: Elevated Highways and the Materiality of Postcolonial Statecraft." (In Preparation)
Sujin Eom. "Governing the Body: Biopolitics, Hygiene, and the Making of Architectural Standards in Meiji Japan." (In Preparation) |