Albert Park, Ph.D.
Department
Areas of Expertise
Biography
Albert L. Park is the Bank of America Associate Professor of Pacific Basin Studies at Claremont McKenna College. His current book project, Entangled Life: Mutuality and the Birth of the Environmental Movement in Modern Korea, focuses on the roots of environmentalism in modern Korean history and its relationship to locality and local autonomy. He is the author of Building a Heaven on Earth: Religion, Activism and Protest in Japanese Occupied Korea and is the co-editor of Forces of Nature: New Perspectives on Korean Environments and Encountering Modernity: Christianity and East Asia. Dr. Park is the Director of EnviroLab that carries out research on environmental issues through a cross disciplinary lens. He is the founder and the Co-Editor of the book series Environments of East Asia--an open-access, multidisciplinary book series on environmental issues in East Asia (Cornell University Press) that is supported by a grant from The Henry Luce Foundation. He is the recipient of four Fulbright Fellowships for Research, an Abe Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC)/Japan Foundation and fellowships from the Korea Foundation and the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. Dr. Park serves on the Advisory Board for the Abe Program at the SSRC and on the Board of Trustees at McCormick Theological Seminary (Chicago, IL).
Education
B.A., Northwestern University; M.A., Columbia University; Ph.D., University of Chicago
Awards and Affiliations
FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS (MOST RECENT)
Japan Foundation--Japan-U.S. Global Partnership--$200,000 grant (July 2023-June 2025) to support a multi-disciplinary project on the relationship between Globalization, demographic changes, the rural and the elderly/elder care technology in Japan, U.S.A., and Asia (Project Director and Co-PI)
The Henry Luce Foundation Grant to Support Environments of East Asia--A Book Series Published by Cornell University Press ($240,000), February 2021
Fulbright Research Fellowship to South Korea (Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant, CIES), 2018-2019
Abe Fellowship (Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership), 2017/18-2022
LIASE Implementation Grant for EnviroLab Asia (Henry Luce Foundation), $1.4 million, 2017-Present
EnviroLab Asia at the Claremont Colleges--Exploration Grant from Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment (LIASE, Henry Luce Foundation), $100,000, 2015-2016
Association for Asian Studies NEAC Korean Studies Grants Short-Term Research Travel Outside North America, Spring 2014
Fulbright Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship, 2010-2011 (Yonsei University, Institute for State Governance Studies)
Korea Foundation Field Research Fellowship, 2010-2011--Awarded
AFFILIATIONS
Founder and Co-Editor, Environments of East Asia--a multidisciplinary book series on environmental issues in East Asia (Cornell University Press)
Advisory Board of the Abe Program at the Social Science Research Council (SSRC)
Associate Editor of Journal of Asian Studies (JAS)
Board Member of McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, IL
Association for Asian Studies Northeast Asia Council (NEAC) Member (2016-2019), Chair (2018-2019)
Award Committee Member for American Historical Association John K. Fairbank Book Award
Steering Committee for Alliance for Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK)
Research and Publications
BOOKS
Forces of Nature: New Approaches to Korean Environments, Co-Edited with Eleana Kim and David Fedman (Environments of East Asia Book Series, Cornell University Press, 2023).
Building a Heaven on Earth: Religion, Activism and Protest in Japanese Occupied Korea (January 2015, University of Hawai'i Press).
Encountering Modernity: Christianity in East Asia and Asian America, Albert L Park and David Yoo, eds. (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2014).
EXHIBITION PROJECT
CiViChon 1.0: City in a Village (Vienna Biennale 2021, MAK, Vienna Austria) Albert L. Park, Kyong Park and Annie Pedret (Project Directors), website: https://civichon.com/
CiViChon 1.0: City in a Village (Catalogue book for exhibition at Vienna Biennale 2021, MAK, Vienna, Austria), Albert L. Park, Kyong Park and Annie Pedret (Project Directors) and Kyong Park (Editor of Exhibition Catalogue)
ARTICLES, PAPERS AND ONLINE ESSAYS (MOST RECENT)
"A Recycling of the Past or the Pathway to the New? Framing the South Korean Candlelight Protest Movement," for the Forum "The South Korean Candlelight Protest Movement and Its Discontents," The Journal of Asian Studies, (February 2022), co-organizer, editor and author.
"Korean Studies in the Global Humanities: A Roundtable Discussion, Stephen Choi, Kira Donnell, Theodore Hughes Albert L. Park, Alyssa Park, Evelyn Shih, Serk-Bae Suh, Christina Yi," The Journal of Korean Studies, October 2019.
"Introduction to a Forum on War and the Environment on the Korean Peninsula" and “The Reshaping of Landscapes: Systems of Mediation, War and Slow Violence,” The Journal of Asian Studies, May 2018.
***Part of the JAS Mini-Forum “War and Environment in the Korean Peninsula, 1598-1965,” Organizer and Editor
“Olympic Do-Over: How Olympic Redevelopment Erased South Korea’s Past, Twice,” Edge Effects (published by the Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE) at the University of Wisconsin), February 15, 2018 (published online).
"Social renewal through the rural: Agricultural cooperatives in South Korea as a form of critiquing capitalism," Global Environment 9 (2016).
ARTICLES IN EDITED BOOKS
"Geographical Introduction: A Biography of the Korean Peninsula in Maps (with Marc Los Huertos)" in Forces of Nature: New Perspectives on Korean Environments. Edited by David Fedman, Eleana J. Kim and Albert L. Park (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023).
"Epilogue: On Everyday Ecologies and Systems of Mediation (with Eleana J. Kim)" in in Forces of Nature: New Perspectives on Korean Environments. Edited by David Fedman, Eleana J. Kim and Albert L. Park (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023).
“The Parallax Visions of Economic Democracy in South Korea—A Critique” in Polarization in Divided Societies: Korea in a Global Context , Edited by Youngmi Kim, Palgrave Macmillan (2018).
"Religion 1876-1910," in Routledge Handbook of Modern Korean History. Edited by Michael J. Seth (London: Routledge, 2016).
SELECTED RECORDED PRESENTATIONS AND INTERVIEWS
The Destruction of Soil: Reading Ecology and Power in Modern Korea, Indiana University, February 2021
Revolutionary Landscapes: Ecology, Power and Anarchism in Modern Korea, University of Michigan, November 2018
PhD GRADUATE STUDENTS (CURRENT AND GRADUATED)