Ksenia Chizhova

Ksenia Chizhova works on the history of emotions and scriptural practices in Korea, from the late eighteenth to the twentieth century. Her nearly completed manuscript, Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea (under contract with Columbia University Press), looks into the development of the so-called lineage novel (kamun sosŏl), which narrated the interstices of Korea’s kinship system and foregrounded the genealogical subject—a structure of identity defined by kinship obligation and understood as socialization of the emotional self.

Chizhova’s ongoing interest in vernacular Korean calligraphy prompted her to explore the embodied aspect of elite women’s scriptural practices in Chosŏn, and the reconceptualization of these practices as they transitioned through various institutions and ideologies in the twentieth century. Ksenia’s second manuscript project will look into the script politics and medial versatility of vernacular Korean writing from the late eighteenth century to the contemporary period.

At Princeton, Professor Chizhova teaches a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses that intersect the study of Korea with the theoretical methodologies of cultural criticism.

Prior to joining Princeton in 2016, she spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Korea Institute of Australian National University after receiving her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2015.

Courses taught:

Graduate:

• EAS574 Presentiments: Towards Modern Korean Literature

Undergraduate: 

• EAS216    Writing and Culture of Premodern Korea
• EAS364    Queens, Courtesans, Nuns, and Workers: Korean Women in History
• EAS369/COM 358    Korean Travel Narratives
• EAS300    Junior Seminar
• HUM234/EAS234 East Asian Humanities II: Traditions and Transformations