Samuel E. Perry


Samuel Perry is at Brown University. Having grown up on the East Side of Providence, RI, and attended Moses Brown and Classical High School, he went on to study at Brown University and the University of Chicago. Now a specialist on Japanese and Korean history, culture and literature, he is the author of several books on leftist cultures of activism around the globe, including . He is also the translator of Kang Kyŏng-ae 강경애's novel as well as a collection of stories by Ineko Sata 佐多稲子, aided by a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship.
Perry's latest books, anthologies of Queer Korean literature, were published in 2023 by the Modern Language Association in Korean and English versions under the titles and . He is now working on a book called "Bad Gays: Japan" which explores the intersections of queerness and colonialism in 20th century Japan. Another forthcoming book manuscript is a cultural history of the Korean War in Japan, a book he began writing in 2016 while on an ACLS Fellowship at CRASSH at the University of Cambridge. This book will retell a story of cultural production during the Korean War, which involves the experiences of communist party activists, Japan-resident Koreans, "returnees" from the colonies, former soldiers and sex workers.
According to his, Perry is "interested in the role culture plays in political change"; his academic work "aligns itself with a body of scholarship that has reassessed activist formations around the world, and seeks to understand the strategies by which marginalized people have contested dominant cultures." A full list of his publications is available on his . His most recent research in this area has brought him into conversation about cultural and political connections between Japan, South Korea and Vietnam, where he recently attended Vietnamese language school while on sabbatical.

Life

Perry is the son of a former Rhode Island College Professor of Sociology, Donald Perry, and long-time Rhode Island State Senator, Rhoda Perry. He graduated with an AB from Brown University in 1991 and a PhD from the University of Chicago in 2007. He spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. He also attended universities in Japan, South Korea and Germany, and was for several years a high school teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH.

Translations

  • PARK Sang Young, "Yundo is Back", in Perry's 2023 .
  • YI Seoyoung, "My Queer Year of Junior High", in Perry's 2023 .
  • KIM Bi, "Saltwater Baths", in Perry's 2023 .
  • O Chŏnghŭi, "Traditional Solo", in Perry's 2023 .
  • YU Sŭngjin, "Struggling amid this Despair", in Perry's 2023 .
  • CH’OE Chŏnghŭi, "Spring", in Perry's 2023 .
  • YI Kiyŏng, "Spring", in Perry's 2023 .
  • KIM Sunyŏng, "Dear Sister, I’m Off to the Moon", in Perry's 2023 .
  • YI Kwangsu, "Yun Kwangho", in Perry's 2023 .
  • KIM Chŏnghan, "Letters from Okinawa", in Ruth Baraclough, Jin-kyung Lee, and Lee Sang-kyung, ed., Island Ablaze: North and South Korean Stories about the US Empire..
  • YANG Sŏgil, "In Shinjuku", in John Lie, ed., Zainichi Literature: Japanese Writings by Ethnic Koreans..
  • CHANG Hyŏk-chu, “Hell of the Starving”, in Heather Bowen-Struyk and Norma Field, eds. Literature for Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Writings..
  • KOBAYASHI Takiji, "Letter", in Heather Bowen-Struyk and Norma Field, eds. Literature for Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Writings..
  • SATA Ineko, . Translated and introduced by Samuel Perry..
  • KANG Kyŏng-ae, . Translated and introduced by Samuel Perry..
  • SONG Yŏng, "The Blast Furnace". In Theodore Hughes, Sang-Kyung Lee, Jae-Yong Kim & Jin-kyung Lee, eds., .
  • SATA Ineko, "White and Purple" Translator's Introduction to "White and Purple"