Re-claiming the Ruins of “Japan’s” Imperial Antiquity: Colonial Archaeological Surveys and Heritage Tourism in the Korean Peninsula (1900-1943)

This lecture addresses the politics of Japanese tourism and how imperialistic and nationalistic cultural policies have influenced archaeological heritage management practices, preservations and ranking of monuments, and classifications of museum objects in East Asia.
Hyung Il Pai was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea. After graduating from Sogang University with a BA in history, she entered the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Harvard University. Professor Pai has conducted research at the Seoul National Museum, participated in excavations by Seoul National University throughout the Korean peninsula and studied at East Asian archives at Tokyo University, the Toyo Bunko (Oriental Library) and the International Center for Japanese Studies. Her work focuses on how the politics of nationalism, colonialism and identity formation have affected the fields of archaeology, ethnography, and cultural heritage management in Korea and Japan.

Sponsored by the Archaeology Research Focus Group of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UCSB.