Howdy!

It’s always a good idea to get to know about someone before you buy into their crazy schemes, right? So let me give you the nickel tour of my life . . .

I was born to Americans living in Germany, but we moved back to the States when I was too young to be able to do anything but drool. I spent most of my childhood in Portland, Oregon in the Pacific Northwest, which means I have webbed feet (no, not really) and enjoy rainy days. Because both my parents were officers in the Air Force, we did move around a bit but I still consider the Northwest to be my “hometown”. I attended high school at Camas High School, studied abroad briefly at our sister school Seirei Gakuen in Hamamatsu, Japan, and spent most of my junior and senior year of high school taking classes at Clark College through Washington State’s Running Start Program. After graduation I moved all the way to Atlanta, Georgia to attend Agnes Scott College, a small women’s liberal arts school where I majored in Anthropology/Sociology, and minored in History. After attending the Bahrom International Program through a sister school exchange with Seoul Women’s University, I decided to focus my studies on Korea. I also spent a few terms as an exchange student at Ajou University before graduating Cum Laude in 2002.

Following graduation, I spent two years on the ETA (English Teaching Assistant) Fulbright Grant ~ one year at Gyeongil Boys High School in Andong, one at Munwha High School in Gyeongju before returning to the states to begin graduate studies. In 2004 I received my Masters in East Asian Studies from UCLA, and a few months later I returned to Korea on a grant from the Korea Foundation to take language classes at Korea University, which is where I am now.

My academic interests in Korea are mostly related to contemporary pop culture, especially film and fashion. I’m very interested in the use of Oral History, and the way the web can be used as a way of spreading and preserving cultural knowledge and personal histories. On a slightly less scholastic note, I also like to cook, collect fossils, and read trashy historical romance novels in funny accents, and my favorite places to hang out are museums and teahouses.