INTERACT Postdoctoral Fellow
Modern Japanese history; higher education; class
Jamyung received his doctorate in history at the University of Pennsylvania in 2014. He works on higher education and the social construction of a middle class in Japan and its empire. His dissertation, titled “Cultivating Class: Tokyo Imperial University and the Rise of a Middle Class Society in Modern Japan,” highlights how educators, bureaucrats, and social aspirants institutionalized the formation of middle-class citizens at Tokyo Imperial University. In the academic years of 2010-2011 and 2012-2013, Jamyung held a position as a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo funded by the Japan Foundation and the Japan-Korea Cultural Foundation respectively. He held a lecturer position in the College of Liberal and Professional Studies (LPS) at Penn in summer 2013 and spring 2014. At Columbia, he is exploring the impact of Tokyo Imperial University on the expansion of college education in Japan and its empire.
Jamyung has previously published his work in the Asia Pacific Journal of Sports and Social Science. He also has contributed a book review to the Dissertation Reviews (online). He presented his work from 2011 to 2014, including “Manufacturing a Middle Class: Tokyo Imperial University as Educational-Employment Pipeline in Modern Japan” at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies in March 2014. Jamyung received his M.A. in Japanese history in 2007 and B.A. in Asian history in 2003 both from Seoul National University.
Email: jc4411@columbia.edu
