The agenda at the Committee on Korean Studies (CKS) General Meeting, which took place at the 2012 AAS in Toronto, consisted of four main items:
- Report on the past year’s activities
- Introduction and discussion of the new CKS website/newsletter
- Discussion on Korean Studies resources (DVD, library)
- Discussion of the future of the CKS
1. Overview of past year’s activities
- After brief self-introductions around the room, the meeting began with an overview of last year’s discussion whether to disband CKS (see 2011 Report). CKS continues to exist, and it was urged that CKS hold elections, collate a membership list, create a website/newsletter, and sponsor panel(s) at AAS that promote intellectually stimulating collaborative work in Korean Studies.
- Members consist of AAS members who designated Korea as their primary area of interest. Hwasook Nam reported that based on information she gathered from the AAS membership list, there were 492 members who were asked to participate in the past year’s nomination and election (late spring to summer) of the CKS executive board (~25% of members cast a ballot). Now, CKS has grown to 546 members. Nomination and elections will be held shortly to replace the three retiring board members.
- Todd Henry reported on this year’s CKS-sponsored panels (2), which were envisioned to provide a trans-disciplinary forum and draw in audiences from other areas. CKS will continue to make calls to its membership to submit panel proposals.
2. Website/newsletter
- It was reported that as the University of Hawaii is no longer supporting CKS paper elections and newsletter, CKS used the funds to create an electronic newsletter/website (www.koreanstudies.org and conduct electronic elections with Survey Monkey.
- Budget for the site:
- $500 for initial design
- $93/year subscription on Bluehost
- $300 to upload the first newsletter
- The new website was then presented to the members with further discussion on how best to utilize the site. This opened to general discussion on how to best disseminate information on CKS to larger Korean Studies audience (facebook? Korean studies listserv?)
- SunJoo Kim expressed appreciation to the Board and especially the Chair for getting the electronic ballot and newsletter established.
3. Korean Studies resources (DVD, library, teaching)
- Joy Kim reported that last year’s support letter from the Korean Studies community that was sent to Korea Foundation to encourage their continued support of the Korean Studies library consortium resulted in promised support for 5 more years
- SunJoo Kim raised a concern that there are some films that would be useful for classroom purposes that are not available in DVD or subtitled format. A suggestion was made that CKS members compile a list of films useful for teaching purposes and send as a petition to KOFIC
- This stimulated further discussion on how best to share teaching resources, such as syllabi. As server space is limited on the CKS website, a suggestion was made to provide useful links to resources and othersites.
- Another suggestion was made to include images (paintings, art collections, etc.) in a list of resources.
- A call for announcement to members to suggest links was made.
4. Future projects?
- Todd Henry raised the issue that a major task facing CKS is the promotion of the institution—to encourage more members to participate in CKS general meeting.
- Part of institution building, it was reminded, is to establish an institutional memory. CKS was urged to produce its own archive—list of past chairs, activities, etc. Joy Kim offered to check with the library at UHI to locate old CKS newsletters.
There were no announcements.
(minutes prepared by Sonja Kim; the general meeting took place on March 17, 8:45-10:00 PM at the Toronto Sheraton Centre)