Peace Corps Volunteers and the Making of Korean Studies in the United States

Peace Corps Volunteers and the Making of Korean Studies in the United States PDF Author: Seung-Kyung Kim
Publisher: Center for Korea Studies Publications
ISBN: 9780295748122
Category : Korea (South)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Among the scholars who have built the field of Korean studies are former Peace Corps volunteers who served in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s before pursuing advanced degrees in anthropology, history, and literature. These scholars, who formed the core of the second generation of Korean Studies scholars in the US, reflect in this volume on their personal experience of serving during Korea's period of military dictatorship, on issues of gender and the Peace Corps experience, and on how random assignment to Korea sparked fascination and led to lifelong professional involvement with the country. Two chapters by Korean studies scholars who were not Peace Corps volunteers (one American and one Korean) assess how Peace Corps volunteers have influenced development of the field"--

Peace Corps Volunteers and the Making of Korean Studies in the United States

Peace Corps Volunteers and the Making of Korean Studies in the United States PDF Author: Seung-Kyung Kim
Publisher: Center for Korea Studies Publications
ISBN: 9780295748122
Category : Korea (South)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Among the scholars who have built the field of Korean studies are former Peace Corps volunteers who served in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s before pursuing advanced degrees in anthropology, history, and literature. These scholars, who formed the core of the second generation of Korean Studies scholars in the US, reflect in this volume on their personal experience of serving during Korea's period of military dictatorship, on issues of gender and the Peace Corps experience, and on how random assignment to Korea sparked fascination and led to lifelong professional involvement with the country. Two chapters by Korean studies scholars who were not Peace Corps volunteers (one American and one Korean) assess how Peace Corps volunteers have influenced development of the field"--

Voices from the Peace Corps

Voices from the Peace Corps PDF Author: Angene Hopkins Wilson
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813129753
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
Based on more than one hundred oral history interviews, [this title] follows the the experiences of Kentuckians who chose to live and work in other countries around the world, fostering close, lasting relationships with the people they served. -- jacket.

A Life Inspired

A Life Inspired PDF Author:
Publisher: Government Printing Office
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Contains a collection of autobiographical reminiscences written by about 28 former Peace Corps volumteers.

Peace Corps Fantasies

Peace Corps Fantasies PDF Author: Molly Geidel
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452945268
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
To tens of thousands of volunteers in its first decade, the Peace Corps was “the toughest job you’ll ever love.” In the United States’ popular imagination to this day, it is a symbol of selfless altruism and the most successful program of John F. Kennedy’s presidency. But in her provocative new cultural history of the 1960s Peace Corps, Molly Geidel argues that the agency’s representative development ventures also legitimated the violent exercise of American power around the world and the destruction of indigenous ways of life. In the 1960s, the practice of development work, embodied by iconic Peace Corps volunteers, allowed U.S. policy makers to manage global inequality while assuaging their own gendered anxieties about postwar affluence. Geidel traces how modernization theorists used the Peace Corps to craft the archetype of the heroic development worker: a ruggedly masculine figure who would inspire individuals and communities to abandon traditional lifestyles and seek integration into the global capitalist system. Drawing on original archival and ethnographic research, Geidel analyzes how Peace Corps volunteers struggled to apply these ideals. The book focuses on the case of Bolivia, where indigenous nationalist movements dramatically expelled the Peace Corps in 1971. She also shows how Peace Corps development ideology shaped domestic and transnational social protest, including U.S. civil rights, black nationalist, and antiwar movements.

Making Peace with the World

Making Peace with the World PDF Author: Richard Sitler
Publisher: Other Places Publishing
ISBN: 0982261985
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
Photo-documentary of Peace Corps volunteers serving communities around the world.

When the World Calls

When the World Calls PDF Author: Stanley Meisler
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807050512
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
When the World Calls is the first complete and balanced look at the Peace Corps’s first fifty years. Revelatory and candid, journalist Stanley Meisler’s engaging narrative exposes Washington infighting, presidential influence, and the Volunteers’ unique struggles abroad. He deftly unpacks the complicated history with sharp analysis and memorable anecdotes, taking readers on a global trek starting with the historic first contingent of Volunteers to Ghana on August 30, 1961. In the years since, in spite of setbacks, the ethos of the Peace Corps has endured, largely due to the perseverance of the 200,000 Volunteers themselves, whose shared commitment to effect positive global change has been a constant in one of our most complex—and valued—institutions.

Unofficial Peace Corps Volunteer Handbook

Unofficial Peace Corps Volunteer Handbook PDF Author: Travis Hellstrom
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0557570980
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description


Living Poor; a Peace Corps Chronicle

Living Poor; a Peace Corps Chronicle PDF Author: Moritz Thomsen
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 9780295969282
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
At the age of 48, Moritz Thomsen sold his pig farm and joined the Peace Corps. As he tells the story, his awareness of the comic elements in the human situation--including his own--and his ability to convey it in fast-moving, earthy prose have madeLiving Poora classic. "Hilariously funny at times, grimly sad at others and elavened with perceptive insights into the ways of the people and with breathtaking descriptions of the Ecuadorian landscape."-St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Learning Peace

Learning Peace PDF Author: Krista Jolivette
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Have you ever come home from a long vacation, or even a short weekend away, and been so focused on your new destination that you forgot to unpack? Perhaps it was just a day of shopping, a time of running errands, anything to get you out of the house for a little while, and you came home with heaping shopping bags, filled with groceries or clothes or all sorts of treasures. Well, my time away was 21 months, and I came home in March with just a suitcase and a hiking backpack that was falling apart to show for it. At the time, I did not know how long I would be living out of my suitcase--or how much time it would take to unpack. Well, here I am, in August, five months later, looking around my childhood bedroom at fragments of my suitcase, scattered around the room. It's taken time to unpack. From the physical articles of clothing, to the memories I carry with me from my time in Ethiopia. Some things I unpacked quickly, like food products and coffee and souvenirs I was anxious to hand off to friends and family. Other items have taken a little longer to unpack--the memories of coffee ceremonies, bartering for hand-woven baskets, at the Axum market, letters from my favorite students tied deeply to my heart. Slowly but surely, I have been approaching the end of my unpacking. And that is what I've done here in this book--gradually unpacked my Peace Corps experience for you (in a way that is hopefully in much better shape than my hiking backpack)--and in a way that is both honest and vulnerable, the stories as uplifting as they were humbling for me. This is not the year I was expecting. I don't think it was for anyone. So let me pause and say that sometimes, in the most unexpected of circumstances, we find true beauty. If you had asked me as a high school or university student what my plan was when I graduated, I can assure you I would not have answered with 'live in the desert of northern Ethiopia and teach hormonal teenagers English grammar.' No way.And yet, it was one of the most invigorating, amazing, awe-inspiring experiences of my life. I didn't expect it to, but it knocked my world upside down and taught me the most important parts of my self, my community, and the world I live in. 550 days of living in a foreign country, serving as everything from an English teacher to a coffee maker to a diplomat for the U.S., and I can without a doubt say I am exhausted. It's a good kind of tired, though. It's the kind of muscle-aching, foot-throbbing, belly-bloating tired that you get when you come home from the adventure of a lifetime and run into the arms of those you love most, to receive a never-ending hug. I'm tired, but I am inspired. I spent 550 days of my young adult life wandering in a desert, both physical and emotional, filling my heart and my head with stories, colors, beauty and pain all at the same time. And I hope the chapters on the following pages do it justice. I first made it a goal of mine to write one page every day of my time in Ethiopia. I did not come close, but I still managed to leave with some pretty good content. Only a fraction of my time was spent journaling about the day--the other 94% was spent building relationships, making new friends, teaching high school level English, learning the language of Tigrigna, and dancing my heart out. Still, I flipped through written pages of lists, highlights, joys and sorrows, and narrowed down the list from over 450 blog posts to a little over 200 pages of stories and quips. I hope you enjoy them.

The Barrios of Manta

The Barrios of Manta PDF Author: Rhoda Brooks
Publisher: Untreed Reads
ISBN: 1611873770
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
In February 1962, Earle and Rhoda Brooks, a young sales engineer and his schoolteacher wife, left home and friends in Illinois to serve as members of the Peace Corps in Manta, Ecuador. This book is an account of their life in the Peace Corps. The first book ever written by Peace Corps volunteers, it is a revealing chronicle of personal involvement, of people from vastly different cultures learning to know one another on the level of their common humanity. Earle and Rhoda begin their story with their decision to enlist as trainees in President Kennedy's people-to-people grassroots aid program. They describe their jubilation at being accepted, the initial testing in Chicago, and the briefings in New York. With warmth and humor, they recount their experiences during the four-month training period in Puerto Rico. This was a time of trials and learning, of physical exertion and mental and emotional challenge. Of the 100 men and women who had formed their original group, 61, including Earle and Rhoda Brooks, graduated from trainees to volunteers. Earle and Rhoda were assigned to a community development project in Manta, a small fishing village on the coast of Ecuador. Here they would spend two years, working with the people, helping them to help themselves. The Brookses' story of Peace Corps life in Ecuador is no simple success story, no tale of triumph over staggering odds, rather it is one of beginnings, as these two young Americans put all their skills, knowledge, compassion, and ingenuity into an effort to provide humanitarian grassroots help in alleviating poverty and disease. Their story also shares what they learned from their humble fisher-people friends and neighbors. From their rich and varied experience emerges a picture of Latin American life far different in focus, and in many respects, far truer, than that of learned economists and political pundits. It is an intimate, human picture of a land filled with paradoxes and beset by problems that yield no easy solutions. It is a picture of a quest for learning and sharing, not on a soapbox or in the press, but in the hearts and minds of the common people. Now, in 2012, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Peace Corps and fifty years after their decision to join the Peace Corps, Rhoda Brooks has created a new Foreward and Afterword, to highlight the intervening years during which she and her husband adopted two Ecuadorian youngsters, ages 2 and 4, and brought them home to Minnesota. She tells of the growing up years of Carmen and Koki (Ricardo) in a suburban community west of Minneapolis, the birth of their biological son and the adoption of a mixed race daughter three years later. Brooks explores the challenges and opportunities presented in the raising of their bi-racial family, the pain and sorrow of the untimely deaths of her husband Earle and their daughter, Josie, as well as the excitement and apprehension generated by the return to Manta for a visit when the children were in their teens. Brooks continues the Afterword with the return to Manta of her five Ecuadorian grandchildren who, then in their teens, went to explore their roots and meet their own biological grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. She concludes the final part of her story with an update into the lives of her seven grandchildren and the arrival of new great grandson, Brooks.