Seoul Under Construction: Politics, Memory, and Urbanism in Korea

This conference explores varied meanings of the construction of Seoul from multiple disciplinary, thematic, and methodological approaches. How has the city of Seoul become what it is today? More specifically, the conference explores how the constant construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction shaped the uneven landscape today; and how individual and collective memories and imagination reflect and recreate the city’s unique urbanism.
 
Papers examine the built form of statues, buildings, and infrastructure as well as trace physical and discursive processes of development, renewal, and preservation. Paper also include the construction of social and literary space, examining how Seoul has been imagined and socially produced through art, film, and literature. Ultimately, the conference will shed light on Seoul as a temporal and spatial montages and the contradictions and irony it imposes to the understanding of a city.
 
Further, it situates these multiple layers of construction of Seoul in a broader historical and geopolitics of South Korea and East Asia.
 
In order to promote discussions from comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives, we are inviting 15 speakers from North America, Asia, and Europe, covering a wide range of disciplines such as history, literature, art history, geography, architecture, and urban planning. As the first of its kind, the conference aims to create a unique working platform for scholars whose work evolves Seoul across temporal and disciplinary boundaries, and promote Seoul studies as a field of interdisciplinary study in North America. 
 
Official conference website: 
 
https://web.sas.upenn.edu/seoul-under-construction/