Faculty

Michael Robinson

Faculty

Phone:855-3635
Email:robime@indiana.edu
Office: Goodbody Hall 248
Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:30-3:30 p.m.


Professor Robinson earned his Ph.D. in history at the University of Washington in 1979. He taught at the University of Southern California for sixteen years after which he moved to Indiana University where he is a Professor East Asian Languages and Cultures and an adjunct Professor of History. He has written extensively on the origins and evolution of Korean nationalism. His first book, Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea focused on nationalist ideology formation during the 1920s. More recently he has become interested in popular culture and the origins and development of modernity in Korea. With Gi-Wook Shin his Colonial Modernity in Korea examined a number of nodes of modernity appearing during the period of Japanese occupation. He has just finished a new book, Korea’s Twentieth Century Odyssey: a Short History  that will be published by the University of Hawaii Press in Spring  2007.  Robinson’s teaching palette is broad. He has offered courses on his specialty, modern Korea, but also thematic courses on war and cultural relations between East Asia and the U.S., Asian American Studies, popular culture and specialized seminars in the Intensive Freshman Seminar program. His LAMP sophomore seminar will be another new course that combines his interest in contemporary and historical East Asia with the issues of development and Capitalism in Asia.