This December the Department will be celebrating our 50th Anniversary with a banquet to be held at the Renissance Hotel downtown, join us for a night of more...
Each year the department offers a variety of topics under the course numbed 360B. This year we are offering courses in Modern Japanese Literature, Cultures of Manga and Anime More...
Dr. Donald L. Baker, Professor
Major Research Interests
Don Baker studies the cultural and religious history of Korea.
He received his Ph.D. in Korean history from the University of Washington and has taught at UBC since 1987. He teaches the department's introduction to Asian civilizations for first-year students as well as undergraduate and graduate courses on Korean history and thought (religion, philosophy, and pre-modern science). In addition, he teaches a graduate seminar on the reproduction of historical trauma in Asia, in which he leads graduate students in an examination of how traumatic events in Asia in the 20th century, such as the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the bombing of Hiroshima, partition of India, China's Cultural Revolution, and the killing fields of Cambodia have been reproduced in eyewitness accounts, historiography, fiction, and film.
He was a co-editor of the Sourcebook of Korean Civilization and is also the author of Joseon hugi yugyo wa cheonjugyo eui taerip (The Confucian confrontation with Catholicism in the latter half of the Joseon dynasty). His most recent book is Korean Spirituality (University of Hawaii Press, 2008). In 2008, he was awarded the Tasan prize for his research on Tasan Chŏng Yagyong, a writer and philosopher in Korea in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Courses Taught
ASIA 100 - Introduction to Traditional Asia
ASIA 101 - Introduction to Modern Asia
ASIA 200 - Cultural Foundations of East Asia
ASIA 317 - Rise of Korean Civilization
ASIA 337 - The Korean People in Modern Times
ASIA 377 - History of Korean Thought
ASIA 405 - Interaction of Science, Religion, and Philosophy in East Asia
ASIA 466 - History of Christianity in Asia
ASIA 477 - New Religious Movements of East Asia
ASIA 484 - History of the Choson Dynasty
ASIA 561 - Problems of Modernization in Eastern and South Asia, focusing on the reproduction of traumatic events in the 20th century.
ASIA 581 - Directed readings in Korean Studies
Publications
Books
Korean Spirituality (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008)
Choson Hugi Yugyo wa Chonju-gyo ui Taerip (The ConfucianConfrontation with Catholicism inthe Latter Half of the Choson Dynasty (Seoul: Iljogak Publishing Co., 1997).
Translation
Heo Gyun, Korean Gardens: Harmony with Intellect and Nature (London, UK: Saffron Books, 2005)
Co-Edited Book
Sourcebook of Korean Civilization , Volume II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996) (Also available in paperback as Sources of Korean Tradition, II)
Recent Book Chapters and journal articles
From Pottery to Politics: The Transformation of Korean Catholicism," in RELIGION AND CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY IN KOREA, edited by Lew Lancaster and Richard Payne, Institute for East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1998. Pp.127-168.
"Tasan and His Brothers: How Religion Divided a Korean Confucian Family," in Sang-oak Lee and Duk-so Park, ed. PERSPECTIVES ON KOREA (Syndey, Australia: Wild Peony Press, 1998), pp. 172-97.
"Christianity Koreanized." Constructing Korean Identity, ed. Hyung Il Pai and Timothy R. Tangherlini (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1998), pp.108-125.
"A Different Thread: Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy, and Catholicism in a Confucian World," in Martina Deuchler and JaHyun Haboush, ed. Culture and State in Late Choson Korea (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999), pp. 199-230.
"Rebels within Tradition: Thomas Aquinas and Tasan Chong Yagyong," TASAN HAKBO [Journal of Tasan Studies], no 3 (2002), pp.32-69
"Hananim, Hanûnim, Hanullim, and Hanollim: The Construction of Terminology for Korean Monotheism," REVIEW OF KOREAN STUDIES, vol. 5, no. 1 (June, 2002), pp.105-131
"Victims and Heroes: Competing Visions of May 18," Contentious Kwangju: The May 18 Uprising in Korea's Past and Present (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), pp. 87-107.
"Oriental Medicine in Korea," in Helaine Selin, ed. Medicine Across Cultures: History and Practice of Medicine in Non-Western Cultures (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), 133-153.
“The Transformation of Religion in Modern Korea,“ Korea Herald, ed. Insight into Korea (Seoul: Herald Media,2007), pp 312-32
“Introduction” pp.1-31, “Catholic Rites and Liturgy” pp. 376-392(with Frank Rausch), “The Great Transformation: Religious Practice in Ch’ondogyo” pp. 449-463, “The Korean God is Not the Christian God:Taejonggyo’s Challenge to Foreign Religions” pp. 464-475, “Renewing Heaven andEarth: Spiritual Discipline in Chungsan’gyo” pp. 487-496,“Rites of Passage in the Unification Church” pp. 497-507, “Internal Alchemy inthe Dahn World School” pp.508-513, in Robert Buswell, editor. Religions of Korea in Practice Columbia University Press, 2006
“Sibling Rivalry in Twentieth-Century Korea: Comparative Growth Rates of Catholic and Protestant Communities,” in Robert E. Buswell, Jr., andTimonthy S. Lee, ed. Christianity in Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005) pp. 283-308.
“Modernization and Monotheism: How Urbanization and Westernization Have Transformed the Religious Landscape of Korea,"in Sang-Oak Lee and Gregory K. Iverson,ed., Pathways into Korean Language and Culture : Essays in Honor of Young-key Kim-Renaud .(Seoul: Pajigong Press, 2003), pp.471-507.
Email: don.baker(at)ubc.ca