Nan Kim

Associate Professor, History
Public History Co-Director, History
Affiliated Professor, Anthropology

Education

PhD, University of California, Berkeley, Sociocultural Anthropology
MA, University of California, Berkeley, Sociocultural Anthropology
AB, magna cum laude, Princeton University, English Language & Literature
- Edwin H. Tumin Memorial Prize

Office Hours

Tuesdays, 2:30-4:00pm, and by appointment

Teaching Schedule

Course Num	Title	Meets
ANTHRO 720-001	History and Theory of Museums	M 5:30pm-7:10pm
HIST 132-001	World History Since 1500	TR 11:30am-12:45pm

Courses Taught

Current/recent teaching:

HIST 841 Colloquium in Modern Studies: Science Controversies, Historical Futures, and Digital Publics
ANTH 720 History and Theory of Museums
HIST 372 Topics in Global History: Water and Environment in the Nuclear Age*
HIST 132 World History from 1500

Courses taught in the past:

DAC 788 Practicum in Digital Cultures
DAC 700 Core Seminar in Digital Cultures
HIST 700 Public History Seminar
HIST 399 Honors Seminar: Emotions in History
HIST 372 Topics in Global History: The Korean War
HIST 176 East Asian Civiliization Since 1600
HIST 141 History of the Family, Gender, and Sexuality

*Course development supported by the Title VI National Resource Center (NRC) for International Studies

Teaching Interests

Modern and Contemporary World History
Nuclear and environmental history
Science and Technology Studies (STS)
Museum Studies
Public History and Digital Humanities
The Global Korean War

Research Interests

Contemporary history and the interpretation of contested events
Historical trauma, protest memory, long-term dissent movements
Oceans and the nuclear Anthropocene
Political economy of energy and water
Science and Technology Studies (STS)
Museums and art activism
Public digital humanities
Korea in global history

Related Activities

Regional Editor and Editorial Board Member, Critical Asian Studies
Affiliated Professor, Department of Anthropology, Honors College, and Women’s & Gender Studies
Advisory Board Member, Graduate Certificates in Museum Studies and Digital Cultures
Faculty Lead/PI, Working Group on Science & Technology Studies, Center for 21st Century Studies

Biographical Sketch

Nan Kim is Associate Professor of History and Affiliated Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she teaches as part of the core faculty for programs in Public History, Museum Studies, and Digital Cultures. An interdisciplinary scholar of contemporary history with formal training in cultural anthropology, she is the faculty lead for the Science & Technology Studies Working Group at UWM's Center for 21st Century Studies, and she currently serves on the editorial board of Critical Asian Studies and the executive board of the Society for East Asian Anthropology.

Her research interests include historical trauma, protest memory, dissident social movements, visual and material culture, political economy, and the nuclear Anthropocene. Her work has appeared in several publications, including Forces of Nature: New Perspectives on Korean Environments (Cornell University Press, 2023), The Routledge Handbook on Trauma in East Asia (Routledge, 2023), The Journal of Asian Studies, and Arte Internacional. She is the author of Memory, Reconciliation, and Reunions in South Korea: Crossing the Divide (Lexington Books, 2017), which won the Scott Bills Memorial Prize from the Peace History Society, an affiliate of the American Historical Association. In October 2024, she gave the 55th Annual Morris Fromkin Memorial Lecture, entitled "Environmental Crisis and Social Justice in the New Nuclear Age: Contemporary Legacies of Rachel Carson and Jonathan Schell," organized by Special Collections at the UWM Libraries.

In addition to her academic research, she has consulted for museums, historical societies, public projects, and community-based groups in Korea, the US, and the UK. Her applied and engaged work is informed by her background as a scholar-activist, journalist, and editor, while drawing upon prior experience working as a former museum administrator in her native hometown, New York City.

She earned her PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology at UC-Berkeley, and during her doctoral studies, she received Honorable Mention from the Society for Economic Anthropology for its graduate student paper prize, the Harold K. Schneider Prize. She earned her bachelor's degree from Princeton University, where she was awarded the senior-thesis writing prize, the Edwin H. Tumin Memorial Prize, by the Department of English Language and Literature.

Selected Publications

“A New Kind of Tinderbox on the Korean Peninsula,” Current History 123, no. 854 (September 2024): 209-216.

“A Precedent of Success: Pacific Islanders’ Transnational Activism against the Ocean Dumping of Radioactive Waste.” In Environmental Injustice: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Sheik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum, and Prerna Srigyan. 4S Paraconference, Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai’i (November 8-11, 2023).

“South Korea’s Nuclear-Energy Entanglements and the Timescales of Ecological Democracy” in David Fedman, Eleana Kim, and Albert L. Park, eds., Forces of Nature: New Perspectives on Korean Environments (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023), 164-177.

“Commemorative Witness: ‘Gwangju in 1980’ and Unresolved Transitional Justice in 21st Century South Korea,” in Jeff Kingston and Tina Burrett, eds., Routledge Handbook of Trauma in East Asia (London: Routledge, 2023).

“Contemporary History and the Contingency of the Present,” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 5, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 108-113.

“The Color of Dissent and a Vital Politics of Fragility in South Korea,” The Journal of Asian Studies 77, no. 4 (2018): 971-990.

Memory, Reconciliation, and Reunions in South Korea: Crossing the Divide. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. Winner of the Peace History Society’s 2019 Scott Bills Memorial Prize.

“Candlelight and the Yellow Ribbon: Catalyzing Re-Democratization in South Korea,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 15:14, no. 5 (2017).

Kim, Nan. “Democratizing Global Public History: UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme and Transnational Mediations of Contested National Pasts,” Moving Beyond the National: New Perspectives on International and Transnational Public Histories, National Council on Public History. (2017).

"Korea on the Brink: Reading the Yŏnp’yŏng Shelling and its Aftermath" The Journal of Asian Studies 70, no. 2 (2011).

“Otros Hallazgos: Trabajos de Theresa Hak Kyung Cha” [Other Things Found: The Work of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha], Arte Internacional, Museo de Arte Moderno (Bogotá, Colombia) 22, no. 5 (1994), 42-46.