CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -Among the UI campus’s largest non-white ethnicities, Korean American students arrive at college hoping to realize the liberal ideals of the modern American university, in which individuals can exit their comfort zones to realize their full potential regardless of race, nation or religion. In her new book “The Intimate University: Korean American Students and the Problems of Segregation” (Duke University Press, 2009), Nancy Abelmann, a professor of anthropology and of East Asian languages and cultures, explores the tensions between these liberal ideals and the particularities of race, family and community in the contemporary university.
“I am an anthropologist of the Koreas by training,” Abelmann said. “But I became more and more interested in the Korean Americans I met in my classes. I grew interested in their (and their families’) encounters with our university.”
Abelmann feels that their hopeful ideals are compromised by their experiences of racial segregation and stereotypes, including images of instrumental striving that set Asian Americans apart.
“Korean American college students bear the burden of their own sometimes segregation. Namely they worry that it is their fault for not integrating better. I suggest that race still matters on American campuses and I examine the particular ways in which this one Asian American group grapples with that.”
Racially hyper-visible and invisible, Korean American students face particular challenges as they try to realize their college dreams against the subtle, day-to-day workings of race. “They frequently encounter the accusation of racial self-segregation,” Abelmann said. “This charge is accentuated by the fact that many attend the same Evangelical Protestant church even as they express the desire to distinguish themselves from their families and other Korean Americans.”
Abelmann said the experiences and insights of the Korean Americans featured in the book are truly compelling. “I intended for all American college students to be able to think about their own college years through the lens of the experiences of this group.”
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