This lecture will examine the origins of the Cold War in East Asia, how early the Cold War came to Korea, how the Korean War transformed the containment doctrine, how it solidified the continuing divisions in East Asia, and how it transformed defense policy in the United States, leading to a far-flung structure of seemingly permanent military bases in South Korea, Japan, Germany, and many more countries that lasts down to 2010.  Professor Cumings will also examine problems of history and memory regarding what most Americans call "the forgotten war."

Bruce Cumings teaches international history, modern Korean history and East Asian political economy at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1987 and where he is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor and the chairman of the History Department.  He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1975. He has taught at Swarthmore College (1975-77), the University of Washington (1977-86), and Northwestern University (1994-97). He is the author of the two-volume study, The Origins of the Korean War (Princeton University Press, 1981, 1990), War and Television (Visal-Routledge, 1992), Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History (W. W. Norton, 1997; updated ed. 2005), Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American—East Asian Relations (Duke University Press, 1999; paperback 2002), North Korea: Another Country (New Press, 2003), co-author of Inventing the Axis of Evil  (New Press, 2004), and is the editor of the modern volume of the Cambridge History of Korea (forthcoming). He is a frequent contributor to The London Review of Books, The Nation, Current History, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Le Monde Diplomatique. The first volume of his Origins won the John King Fairbank book award of the American Historical Association for the best book on East Asia in the previous two years, and the second volume won the Quincy Wright book award of the International Studies Association. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999, and is the recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation-funded Foreign Area Fellows program, NEH, the MacArthur Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford, and the Abe Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council. He was also the principal historical consultant for the Thames Television/PBS 6-hour documentary, Korea: The Unknown War. He recently published Dominion From Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power, which was ranked as one of the top 25 books of 2009 by the Atlantic Monthly. Random House will publish his short book, The Korean War, on the war’s 60th anniversary in 2010. He is also contracted to publish a new, single-volume synoptic edition of The Origins of the Korean War.

Associate Professor Jae-Seung Lee from Korea University, Division of International Studies will be leading the seminar on energy security and cooperation in Northeast Asia (including East Asia).

Professor Lee holds a B.A. in political science from Seoul National University (1991) and an M.A (1993) and PhD (1998) in political science from Yale University. He also earned a certificate from the Institut D'Etudes Politiques de Paris in France in 1995.

Before joining the faculty of Korea University, he had served as a professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. As a scholar in international political economy, he authored a number of books and articles on Korea, East Asia, and Europe. His current research includes energy security and energy diplomacy of Korea, among others. Prof. Lee has directed the Korea Energy Forum (KEF), an interdisciplinary energy research initiative, and conducted a number of energy projects with UNESCAP and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He has taught at Yale University, Seoul National University, and Korea University.

While most Asian economies rode out the recession fairly well, disturbing human development statistics across the region persist. Rapidly increasing wealth is not being shared, and women and minority populations are often the most at risk of falling behind, especially in South Asia.

Barbara Crossette, a former foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of several books on Asia, including So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1995 and in paperback by Random House/

The Shorenstein Journalism Award, which carries a cash prize of $10,000, honors a journalist not only for a distinguished body of work, but also for the particular way that work has helped American readers to understand the complexities of Asia. It is awarded jointly by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University, and the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. This year’s recipient is Barbara Crossette.