Namhee Lee is an associate professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA. She received her Ph.D. in Modern Korean History from the University of Chicago.
Professor Lee teaches courses on history and culture of Korea from the nineteenth century to contemporary period, North Korea, and Korean cinema. She is currently working on a book project that explores production of historical knowledge outside established academic institutions in the last two decades, examining the debates, tensions, and exchanges generated from historical films, novels, exhibitions, festivals, historical restorations (or destructions), and civic historical movements. Her publications include the following:
The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 2007.
“Yôksa, iron mit minjok kukka: Asia hakûi chôegûn ûi ironjôk tonghyang” [History, Theory, and Nation: Recent Theoretical Development in the Asian Field], in Im Chi-hyôn and Yi Sông-si, eds., Kuksa ûi sinhwarûl nômôsô [Overcoming the myth of national history] (Seoul: Hyumônist, 2004): 423-434.
“Representing the Worker: Worker-Intellectual Alliance of the 1980s in South Korea,” in The Journal of Asian Studies 64:4 (November 2005): 911-938.
“Between Indeterminacy and Radical Critique: Madang-gûk, Ritual, and Protest,” in Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 11:3 (Winter 2003): 555-584.
“The South Korean Student Movement: ‘Undongkwôn’ as a Counterpublic Space,”
in Charles Armstrong, ed., Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy and the State (New York: Routledge, 2002, 2006):132-164; 95-120.
“Anti-Communism, North Korea, and Human Rights in South Korea: ‘Orientalist’ Discourse and Construction of South Korean Identity,” in Mark Bradley and Patrice Petro, eds., Truth Claims: Representation and Human Rights (New Directions in International Studies, Rutgers University Press, 2002): 43-72.