Prof Seongnae Kim's lecture "The Work of Memory: Ritual Laments of the Dead and Korea's Cheju Massacre"

Seong Nae Kim (김성례, 金成禮) is Professor of Religious Studies at Sogang University, Seoul, Korea, and also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Korean Religions. She obtained her Ph.D. (thesis title: “Chronicles of Violence, Ritual of Mourning: Cheju shamanism in Korea,” in Anthropology from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) in 1989. Her research and writing focuses on the anthropology of religion, shamanism, popular religion, death ritual and mourning, memory studies, and gender studies. Her major works are particularly concerned with trauma and ritual healing of anti-communist state violence under the Cold War system of contemporary Korea. She is currently writing a book, tentatively titled “Violence and Cultural Memory in Korea”. She has published articles in academic journals, including Journal of Ritual Studies, Diogene, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Traces, Asian Folklore Studies, Korean Shamanism, Journal of Korean Anthropology, and Journal of Religion. 

Asian Centre UT, Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore