Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

The Mad Historian: The Mission and Responsibilities of History Makers in a Fractured World

Tue, March 8, 2022
Lunch Program
Albert L. Park

Global political, economic, social, and environmental upheavals since the early 2000s have proven that the 21st Century will be full of volatility and uncertainty. People are seeking systems of knowledge and practice to make sense of changes and help guide them through the everyday happenings at the local, national, and global levels. Professor Albert Park, the Bank of America Associate Professor of Pacific Basin Studies at Claremont McKenna College, will speak to the pivotal role history can play in this milieu and how historians should approach the past by being “mad” in order to engage the fractured present. 

Professor Park's Athenaeum presentation celebrates his installation ceremony as the Bank of America Associate Professor of Pacific Basin Studies at Claremont McKenna College.

Albert L. Park is the Bank of America Associate Professor of Pacific Basin Studies at Claremont McKenna College. As a historian of modern Korea and East Asia, his current research project focuses on the roots of environmentalism in modern Korean history and its relationship to locality and local autonomy. His book project is tentatively titled "Imagining Nature and the Creation of Environmental Movements in Modern Korea." He is the author of "Building a Heaven on Earth: Religion, Activism and Protest in Japanese Occupied Korea" and is the co-editor of "Encountering Modernity: Christianity and East Asia."

Park is the co-founder of EnviroLab Asia—a Henry Luce Foundation-funded initiative at the Claremont Colleges that researches environmental issues in Asia through a cross-disciplinary lens. He is the co-founder and co-editor of "Environments of East Asia"—a Cornell University Press, multidisciplinary book series that covers environmental issues and questions of East Asia. He also serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Asian Studies. 

Park is the recipient of four Fulbright Fellowships for Research, an Abe Fellowship (Social Science Research Council and Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership), and fellowships from the Korea Foundation and the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. 

A native of Chicago, he received his B.A. with honors from Northwestern University, an M.A. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago.  

Professor Park's Athenaeum presentation celebrates his installation ceremony as the Bank of America Associate Professor of Pacific Basin Studies at Claremont McKenna College.

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Claremont McKenna College
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Claremont, CA 91711

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