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) transnational mobility of architecture and urban forms; 2) materiality of postcolonial legalities and sentiments; and 3) aesthetics and politics of infrastructure.
Transnational Mobility of Architecture and Urban Forms
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What is it that makes architecture and urban forms 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? How do traveling architecture and urban forms reflect and reconfigure spaces of inclusion and exclusion? Drawing from postcolonial urban theory and science and technology studies, I examine transnational flows of architecture and urban forms with a particular emphasis on cross-imperial circuits of people, things, and ideas. These examples include, but are not limited to, traveling ideas of Chinatown along with the shifting global economy, transoceanic circulations of urban models across port cities, global transfers of urban renewal in the 1960s, and Cold War linkages in the construction of mosques in non-Muslim cities.
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Related research:
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Sujin Eom. "Blood and Oil: The Cold War Exchange of Architecture and Body." (In Preparation)
Sujin Eom. "Ruins of Colonial Violence: Migration, Proximity, and Anti-Chinese Riots in Korea." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. (under review) Sujin Eom. 2020. "Infrastructures of Displacement: The Transpacific Travel of Urban Renewal during the Cold War." Planning Perspectives 35 (2): 299-319. (Link) 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. 2017. "Traveling Chinatowns: Mobility of Urban Forms and Asia in Circulation." positions: asia critique 25 (4): 693-716. (Article) |
Materiality of Postcolonial Legalities and Sentiments
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My research in this area investigates how the postcolonial state reproduces colonial violence in the form of law and urban space. More specifically, I examine streets, houses, and cemeteries as material and affective sites of colonialism that have continued to shape the present.
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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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My research in this area explores the paradoxical role of infrastructure 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 am particularly interested in "elevated highways" as an example of urban infrastructure traveling across geographies while reshaping spaces of inclusion and exclusion in urban space.
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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) |