Bio: Nancy Abelmann

Nancy Abelmann is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and East Asian Languages and Cultures, and is a teaching faculty member of Asian American Studies. She has published books on social movements in contemporary South Korea (Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A South Korean Social Movement, 1996); on Korean America (Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots, with John Lie, 1995); and on women and social mobility in post-colonial South Korea (The Melodrama of Mobility: Women, Talk and Class in Contemporary South Korea, 2003). Her current book project, Korean Americans go to College: Education Across the Border, based on 4 years of transnational ethnography on the educational trajectories of Korean American public college students (in Illinois) as they articulate with the educational histories of their émigré parents, was one of the initial inspirations for the CAS initiative. She was also inspired to co-organize this seminar because of her teaching experience with ethnographic assignments on the University of Illinois.