The Harvard-Yenching Institute is greatly saddened by the recent passing of Professor Jung Ji Young on August 16, 2024. Professor Jung was a Harvard-Yenching Institute Visiting Scholar during the 2023-24 academic year.
Professor Jung was a professor of Women’s Studies at Ewha Womans University in Korea. She also served as Director of the Asian Center for Women’s Studies, and as the Editor of Asian Journal of Women’s Studies.
She authored books and articles that problematized the category of marginalized women, including widows, concubines, and single and remarried women, by shedding light on their uneven power dynamics in the late Chosŏn and colonial Korea. Her monograph Constructing Order and its Cracks: The Family Registry and Women in Late Chosŏn Korea (질서의 구축과 균열: 조선후기 호적과 여성들) explored the process of gender construction and the unresolved contradictions within the patriarchal regulations in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Chosŏn Korea. As Prof. Jung wrote in her HYI profile, “The belief that my research could bring about actual social change, and the resolve to carry out that kind of research, has been the driving force.”
During her stay at HYI, Prof. Jung was an active participant in the HYI community and made many close friends, as seen in the photos below. During her stay, Prof. Jung also enjoyed attending concerts at the Boston Symphony Orchestra and taking strolls around the Charles River in Cambridge.
She will be greatly missed. The Institute expresses its condolences to Professor Jung’s family, friends, and colleagues in Korea and throughout the world.
Prof. Jung (second from left) with fellow scholars after a workshop
Prof. Jung (fourth from left) with workshop participants
Prof. Jung (second from right) with fellow HYI scholars on a sailboat trip in Newport, RI
Prof. Jung (third from right) with other HYI scholars at a reception
Prof. Jung (left) at a reception for HYI alumni and incoming scholars, held June 2023 in Seoul
Prof. Jung (right) at the HYI Halloween Party, 2023