The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
In Sarah Polley’s 2013 film, “Stories We Tell”, the Canadian filmmaker conducts an exploration of her mother, Diane Polley, who died when the director was 11. Navigating Diane Polley’s history proves more complex and elusive than one might think. “There are many stories to tell, partly because there was nothing neat about Diane Polley, the […]
Read MoreBy Ellie Choi The Visual Experience of Modern Seoul A hyper-focused developmentalism from the Park Chunghee era (1961-1979) onward in South Korea gave rise to the now famous “Miracle on the Han.” It also forged the cosmopolitan expanse of contemporary Seoul, a megapolis of glittering lights, kaleidoscopic signboards, and towering apartment complexes (ap’at’u tanji). […]
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After the Korean War, Seoul, South Korea probably wouldn’t have been listed as an ideal destination for summer travelers. U.S. occupation, the burdens of a civil war that cost nearly 375,000 Korean civilian lives (to say nothing of the 138,000 Korean soldiers who perished), and persistent food shortages amidst the wreckage of conflict did not […]
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By Jieheerah Yun Fast growing metropolises of East Asia, especially those like Shanghai and Shenzhen, are often characterized by forests of skyscrapers and residential towers. For Rem Koolhaas, this development is the future direction of urbanization, and it should be accepted as the condition of “a generic city.”[i] For others, rapid urbanization and the lack […]
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By Russell Burge Images of Seoul filter fitfully into American media, and when they do the city often serves as a backdrop for discussions of foreign policy or North-South Korean relations. More rarely do Americans glimpse another aspect of Seoul that South Koreans know all too well: its venerable history as a site of public […]
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While I’ve always hoped that I’m not the intellectual equivalent of the dullest spoon in your drawer of silverware, I’ve also always known I was not the sharpest blade in the kitchen. The former is aspirational and the latter factual, but the latter also demonstrates a valuable skill: knowing when you don’t know. Bibliographies for […]
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Considering the explosion of interest in Korean cuisine, the ubiquity of K-Pop, and media attention devoted to the recently concluded Winter Olympics, it seems outlandish to think of South Korea, and by extension the megacity of Seoul, as a nation isolated from the developed West. Yet as recently as the mid-1990s, Seoul remained a mystery […]
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By Avigail Oren, with contributions from Kevin Seal, Melanie Newport, and other #twitterstorians I’m spending the month of February living in the bedroom I occupied as a teenager, in the house my parents have lived in for almost twenty years, which is mercifully located in the warm and sunny state of Florida. In the parlance […]
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“What is so detestable about war is that it reduces the individual to complete insignificance,” wrote the English surrealist poet David Gascoyne during World War II. Existentialism, which began with phenomenology prior to World War I and came of age during the Second World War, arose in an era of “extreme ideology and extreme suffering” […]
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By Emily Callaci In the late 1970s, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania was one of the most rapidly growing cities in the world. Each year, thousands of young men and women left their rural homes and made their way to the city, expanding the squatter settlements and the ranks of the city’s youth population. The global […]
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The Metropole 