Korea and Okinawa in a Transimperial Perspective: Colonial and Cold War Cultures in East Asia
Drawing on understudied materials including films, photographs, poems, and radio programs, this panel explores spatial and temporal frameworks in transimperial history. Although the field of transimperial history has grown and shed light on the intertwined natures of multiple empires, it tends to focus on “the high age of empire” at the turn of the twentieth century (Hogason and Sexton 2020). Arguably, conceptual distinctions and convergences among different forms of colonialism also remain understudied. Studies of settler colonialism, other colonial formations, postcoloniality, and decoloniality have often developed in disparate scholarly conversations.
By centering on colonial, postcolonial, and Cold War cultures in East Asia and the transpacific spheres, this panel aims to complicate transnational perspectives on the history of empire and colonialism. Through case studies of colonial Korea and its diaspora, US-occupied Okinawa, and Park Chung Hee-era South Korea, we foreground colonial and postcolonial experiences in transimperial cultures. The unexpected, uneven, and frequently violent encounters that unfolded in these spaces force us to investigate connections across the ostensibly closed borders enforced by the US and Japanese empires. Tracing ideas, images, and sound traveled through literature and mass media, this panel questions how decolonial struggles, the discourse of indigeneity, and Cold War cultures shaped, and were shaped by, transimperial politics. In so doing, we will reveal the continuity and specificity of colonial formations across the geographies and temporalities of empire.