This Friday 11/27: Evangelizing Development
I'm giving a talk this Friday. I promise it'll be entertaining! 
CENTRE FOR KOREAN RESEARCH
Evangelizing Development: Korean/American Missions and Capitalist Deliverance
Ju Hui Judy Han (University of British Columbia)
Friday, November 27
3:30 – 5:00pm
Conference Room #120, C.K. Choi Building
1855 West Mall
Praise for South Korea's transformation from a "mission-receiving" country to the second largest "mission-sending" country in the world is typically accompanied by applause for Korea's economic growth and advancement in the capitalist world order. In such triumphant narratives, Korea is seen as having successfully progressed from poverty to prosperity as a result of Christianization and capitalist development. How do Christians missions nurture such faith in capitalist deliverance, and what is at stake in this evangelical-capitalist assemblage at the present moment? This talk draws primarily from ethnographic research of missions inTanzania and Uganda where Korean/American missionaries taught economic development seminars based explicitly on Korea's Saemaul Undong, a particularly "leader-centered" and austerity-oriented model of modernization from the 1960s and 1970s. I will discuss how the missionaries offered the model as a blueprint for both economic and spiritual progress, recasting its authoritarian roots in Christian terms and using it as a wellspring for a distinctly Korean/American political theology of capitalist development.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Tags: Academic, dissertation, Personal, presentationAir purifier
Is it possible to die from pollen allergies? Or from irritation due to allergies?
It must be pollen season in Vancouver. I started popping Claritin about two weeks ago, and now I'm doubling the dose. Still... watery eyes, itchy throat, and sneezing continue. And general irritation. It makes sense. With the heat last week, the balcony doors were left open all day and night, and I'm sure lots of pollen & dust flew in. Puca's shedding, too. Love that dog, but I would pluck her if I could.
Anyway, I finally went out and bought my first air purifier. I read this first. The one I bought covers less area than this vertical tower style, but in the end, I was won over by the Hepa filter. Not Hepa-type or Hepa-like, but real Hepa. I don't know, is it worth it?
It's a little loud on the high setting, but pretty quiet on the low setting. I'll see if I can get used to the noise.
Looks like this one may be a better model, but they didn't have it at London Drugs. It's similar, though. We'll see...
Popularity: 1% [?]
Tags: Personal, shopping, vancouverIndex fame
Pretty exciting. A little tiny thing I wrote more than a decade ago got quoted in a new book by Glen Mimura, Ghostlife of Third Cinema: Asian American Film and Video. It was titled "Creating, Curating, and Consuming Queer Asian American Cinema," published in the anthology Q & A in 1998. Like most everything I've written, I think it's totally juvenile and embarrassing, but hey.
And shocker of all shockers, my name actually appears in the index, right near Stuart Hall, Donna Haraway, and Mona Hatoun. Cool beans!
Oh, wait. That should be Mona Hatoum with an M. Uh oh. And further down, I see another typo -- it's Karin Higa with an I, not Karen.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Tags: index, Personal, ReadVancouver Farmer’s Markets
Year-round farmer's markets are one of a handful of things I miss about California. Here in Vancouver, it looks like we have to wait another 2 months for local farmer's markets. The West End market is only 2 blocks away from our place, which is very exciting.
East Vancouver - Saturdays, 9am - 2pm
May 16 - October 10West End - Saturdays, 9am - 2pm
June 6 - October 24Kitsilano - Sundays, 10am - 2pm
June 7 - October 25Station St. (new!) - Wednesdays, Hours 3pm - 7pm
June 10 - October 21For more details, visit Vancouver Market Share
Popularity: 1% [?]
Tags: Personal, produce, shopping, vancouveriTunes survey
Just for fun!
How many songs total: 5632
How many hours or days of music: 16.4 days
Sort by song title
First Song: “Aaj Mausam Bada Beimann Hai (Today The Weather Plays Tricks On Me)” by Mohammed Rafi from the Monsoon Wedding soundtrack
Last Song: “2000 Miles” by The Pretenders
Sort by time
Shortest Song: “More Music” by Consolidated AND "Untitled" by Pete Yorn, both at 0:04
Longest Song: “Mangte Hain Karam” by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
Sort by album
First album: Aaliyah - Aaliyah
Last album: "1979-83 (Disc 1)" by Bauhaus
Top Five Most Played Songs
1. Alone In Kyoto - Air
2. Fool Of Me - Meshell Ndegeocello
3. Laura - Dos Santos
4. She's The One - The Beta Band
5. Fire - Jason Collett
First song that comes up on Shuffle: "History of Lovers" by Iron & Wine
Search the following and state how many songs come up
Death - 26
Life - 80
Love - 264
Hate - 9
You - 442
Sex - 33
Popularity: 1% [?]
Tags: Personal, randomSome updates
After few crazy weeks of applications, colds and flus, presentations, conferences, and departmental exit talk (woo hoo!), I'm finally starting to settle back into a work routine. Which, of course, begins with procrastinating and updating this blog. 
In all seriousness: heartfelt THANK YOU to all of you who turned out for the presentations -- you know who you are. I sometimes get all fluttery and nervous at these public speaking things, and it makes such a huge difference to see friendly, supportive faces in the audience.
I can't wait to hibernate for the winter. After all the noise and rental insanity in the fall then the headache of moving (again!), I'm praying for peace and quiet for at least... SIX months! That's not too much to ask, right?
By the way, the Worst Landlord Ever Award (out of 35 years of renting between me and JC) goes to Debbie Lai and Ngai Lai of Richmond, BC. We hate you, and every idiot-spawn of your stupid family, and wish you the very worst new year EVER.
On a more positive note, it's been a thankfully dry winter so far in Vancouver, so I've been able to enjoy running to the Seawall and Stanley Park, and even discovering some trails to explore with Puca who couldn't be happier about the nearby neighborhood dog park. George, on the other hand, seems to be missing the sterile-clean Yaletown pavements, but he's doing better.
And the two of them are getting along freakishly fabulously. We put them at a doggie daycare place during the move, comforted by their assurance that small dogs (i.e. George) are kept in an entirely separate room from the big dogs. And you know, George often gets suicidal-aggressive towards big dogs, so we thought this was fantastic.
Well, when I went to pick them up, George looked up at me with dogs 10 times bigger than him standing right by him. Rotties, Great Danes, Labs all around him!
As it turns out, George's been there all day! The doggie daycare staff told me that George was so stressed out when I left him there, that they tried (cautiously) putting him near Puca in the Big Dog Pen. And lo and behold, the two of them, George and Puca, the step-sibling pups, stuck to each other all day long, and all was good. Such sweetness -- the two of them have really bonded during the stress of the move.
If I haven't said it already: I love living in the West End!
Popularity: 1% [?]
Tags: dogs, leaky condo, Personal, Tech, vancouver, West EndMe, Right Now
Me, Right Now
The Rules:
1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.
www.flickr.com/groups/merightnow/pool/
Popularity: 1% [?]
Tags: Personalprocrastination techniques
So, I have this thing I should have finished writing by last week. No, not the dissertation -- but it's part of it. I stay up til 3 or 4 working on it, and I wake up every morning thinking about it. It's painfully slow, and I'm starting to wonder if it'll ever get done.
In the meantime, here is a running list of procrastination techniques I've come up with so far. This is in addition to the usual repertoire, e.g. house cleaning, surfing the internet, etc.
- Dye the hair. This was done a month ago -- my first dye job, much too orange, which then needed to be corrected. Kept me busy for a few good days.
- Assemble something from Ikea. This filing cabinet took about 3 hours yesterday, and there's still about an hour's work left to do. Not bad.
- Browser too slow? Speed up Firefox.
- Catch up on friends' blogs -- current and archived entries. Dating back to a couple of years? Even better!
- Watch Korean TV online.
- Blog about procrastinating.
Other ideas for this week: clean up duplicate files on the computer, give the doggies a pedicure, alphabetize all books in the house.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Tags: PersonalCategories
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Recent Comments
- kaguya: omg…. I hate this reality….
- Alexis Martin: last year i was so addicted with the Bejewelled game and i played all night’~.
- dotorious: Very funny! And how surreal that must have been. I wonder if the dude would go back to wherever he came from, and mutter in shock,...
- Bonnie: I always though that the similarities between 원어민 and 원주민 were funny too. It’s startling being in Korea for a while (as a white...
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