This is a slightly revised version of the text of a talk that I (Seo-Young Chu) gave as part of the Fall 2014 Franke Lectures in the Humanities at Yale University. I’m sharing the text here to make the lecture more accessible. Topics include: North Korea/the DPRK, the “uncanny body politic,” the uncanny valley, “dystopian poetics,” what it means…[Read more]

The Dream Theory in Theaetetus is Plato’s generalised account of Presocratic elements. Evidence for this given from Laws, Phaedo, Timaeus, and through a comparison with Aristotle’s account.

The Gothic clings to Irish and Welsh coasts and finds voice through strange stories. Centuries of accumulated death and tragedy forms a dense web of sorrow with particularly prolific roots in the literature, songs, and stories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These traditions resonate within the longer history of lives and vessels lost…[Read more]

A unique dispute over ownership rights to artwork in the case of the Auschwitz Memorial Museum vs. former camp prisoner Dinah Gottliebova Babbitt illuminates underlying moral questions about the Holocaust and post-Holocaust culture.

War Culture and the Contest of Images analyzes the relationships among contemporary war, documentary practices, and democratic ideals. Dora Apel examines a wide variety of images and cultural representations of war in the United States and the Middle East, including photography, performance art, video games, reenactment, and social media images.…[Read more]

This essay examines select visual representations of refugees and migrants as embodied subjects in photography, art, and video. It focuses on American asylum politics and explores the questions of free movement, the right to have rights, and the ethics and efficacy of border walls. I argue that the catastrophe of global forced displacement makes…[Read more]

“The Bible” does not exist as material reality, and yet as a cultural icon “the Bible” animates institutions and enterprises devoted to it. This article assesses the short history of scholarship on one such institution, the controversial Museum of the Bible (MOTB) in Washington, D.C., in order to highlight and critique the fantasy of “the Bi…[Read more]

“The Bible” does not exist as material reality, and yet as a cultural icon “the Bible” animates institutions and enterprises devoted to it. This article assesses the short history of scholarship on one such institution, the controversial Museum of the Bible (MOTB) in Washington, D.C., in order to highlight and critique the fantasy of “the Bi…[Read more]

“The Bible” does not exist as material reality, and yet as a cultural icon “the Bible” animates institutions and enterprises devoted to it. This article assesses the short history of scholarship on one such institution, the controversial Museum of the Bible (MOTB) in Washington, D.C., in order to highlight and critique the fantasy of “the Bi…[Read more]

Spanish Abstract: Las actuales concepciones de la psicología sobre la interiorización de la interacción deben algo, o mucho, a Sigmund Freud. Hay precedentes muy notables, como Nietzsche, que formulan la constitución del sujeto mediante la interiorización, pero la teoría de Freud sobre la complejidad de la mente se basa en gran medida en la inter…[Read more]

El presente trabajo pretende probar que la fecha de nacimiento de la princesa Juana de Castilla, hija de Enrique IV y de Juana de Avís, habitualmente señalada el 28 de febrero de 1462, no se produjo este día, sino una semana después, el 7 de marzo del mismo año. La fecha de febrero procede de una fuente muy tardía, como son los A…[Read more]

One of the most astonishing scenes in Cervantes’ masterpiece Don Quijote de la Mancha occurs when the priest and the barber, in order to counteract the mental deterioration of their friend Don Quijote, decide to burn his books about chivalry and knighthood, which, in their opinion, were driving Don Quijote to insanity.
The priest and the barber d…[Read more]

Spanish Abstract: En su teoría sobre la interacción estratégica, Erving Goffman muestra cómo las dinámicas de control de la información y de la infiltración de informantes en las líneas enemigas no son únicamente una cuestión de espionaje internacional o de servicios secretos. La vida cotidiana, tal como nos la desvela el análisis de Goffman, e…[Read more]

In this essay, we will explore information-seeking behavior as exhibited by Doja Cat on her 2021 record, Need to Know, using Kuhlthau’s (1993) six-stage Information Search Process.

This paper responds to the question what is the origin and nature of apostolicity and how it is
demonstrated? The investigation examines the meaning of apostolicity found in the New
Testament, its significant transition through the post-apostolic period, and the consequence on
contemporary understanding. The dilemma of the first and second…[Read more]

This paper responds to the question what is the origin and nature of apostolicity and how it is
demonstrated? The investigation examines the meaning of apostolicity found in the New
Testament, its significant transition through the post-apostolic period, and the consequence on
contemporary understanding. The dilemma of the first and second…[Read more]

Tarih boyunca kentler, kültür ve medeniyetlerin doğduğu, geliştiği ve yayıldığı yerler olmuştur. Kentler, tarihsel süreçte insanların çeşitli gereksinimlerinin ürünü olarak sürekli bir gelişme göstermiştir. Bu gelişme sürecinde hem insanlığın birikiminin gelecek kuşaklara taşıyıcısı, hem de taşıdığı uygarlık birikimi ile insanoğlunun geleceğini şe…[Read more]

Book review

In “Hwabyung Fragments” the Korean American poet Seo-Young Chu uses pieces of Korean mythology, family lore, DMZ iconography, speculative lyricism, allusions to Plato’s Symposium (the figure of one’s missing other half), and allusions to chimerism, mosaicism, and twinning to explore generational trauma, Korean division, postmemory han, the…[Read more]