NCKS would like to congratulate Ms. Susan Hwang and Mr. Irhe Sohn on receiving the Korean Foundation Graduate Fellowships for the academic year 2011-2012.

“I am greatly indebted to the Korea Foundation and Nam Center for Korean Studies for granting me the Graduate Fellowship for the year 2011-2012. The generous support of KF and NCKS has enabled me to make further progress in my project on Korean literature of the 1980s, in which I explore the shifting dialectic between literary trends and dissident political voices at a time of radical collective resistance to the State’s disenfranchisement of its people.“ — Susan Hwang

Ms. Hwang came high recommended to the University of Michigan from Columbia University where she had received an M.A. in 2008 and was awarded Rackham Merit Fellowship upon matriculation in recognition of her academic potential. In her dissertation, Susan has decided to focus on the 1980s as a time of creative redefinitions in the field of literature by reinvigorating the question of genre.

Mr. Sohn started his academic career at Seoul National University, where he studied mathematics. After graduating he pursued a master's degree in Film Theory and Film History at Korea National University of the Arts (KNUA). At KNUA, he studied with Kim Soyoung, the top film scholar in Korea. He will start his first year doctoral course at the Department of Asian Languages to continue to study the late colonial era films.