Sheila Miyoshi Jager

  • Professor of East Asian Studies
  • Chair of East Asian Studies
  • Chair of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies

Education

  • PhD, anthropology, University of Chicago, 1994
  • MA, Middlebury College, 1985
  • BA, Bennington College, 1984

Biography

Sheila Miyoshi Jager is a professor of East Asian Studies.

Her teaching and research interests are closely linked. Her courses include Cold War in Asia, Korea & East Asia: From Ancient Times to the Present, The Korean War; The Opening of Korea, 1860-1910, and the Long Great War in East Asia.

She is the author and editor of four books on Korea and East Asia.

Her latest book, The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2023) traces the pivotal role that Korea played in East Asia’s transformation from a Sino-centric Confucian order to a Japan-centric order of modern nation-states at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The book received the 2024 Robert L. Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder Best Book Award from the International History and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.

Her new book project, The Long Great War and East Asia, 1910-1928 tells the story of China’s, Japan’s, and Korea’s experiences of World War One. It examines how the war exacerbated the political divisions within these countries and led to future conflict.

She is also finishing up a coauthored book (with Jiyul Kim) entitled The Korean War: A Local History which is under contract with Cambridge University Press.

She is the Director of the East Asian Studies Program (EAS) and the Russian, Eastern European & Eurasian (REEES) Program at Oberlin.

  • The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2023). In this book, Jager argues that the contest over Korea, driven both by Korean domestic disputes and by great-power rivalry, set the course for the future of East Asia and the larger global order.
  • Brothers At War: The Unending Conflict in Korea (W.W. Norton/Profile Books, 2013). This book offers a  military, political and cultural history of the war, seen as spanning from 1945 to the present, and its global impact told from the American, North and South Korean, Soviet/Russian, and Chinese perspectives. (It was selected for the 2013 National Book Festival and as one of the Best Books on Asia in 2013 by Foreign Affairs)
  • Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia (Harvard University Press, 2007). This edited volume with Rana Mitter explored how the major East Asian states underwent a profound reassessment of their experiences from World War II to Vietnam following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s.
  • Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism (M.E. Sharpe, 2003). This book focused on Korean nationalism and how particular gendered tropes have had a persistent and pervasive life in the fashioning of Korean modernity.

Smith Richardson Foundation International Security & Foreign Policy grant; fall, spring 2020
Senior Scholar Fulbright Fellowship, South Korea, 2014-15

 

  • The Great War and East Asia
  • The Korean War: A New History (with Jiyul Kim)

About Korea and East Asia in the following publications: Public Culture, New Literary History, Journal of Asian Studies, positions; in book reviews and commentary in New York Times Book Review, Boston Globe, Politico

Read the articles

 

Fall 2024

The Great War & Asia, 1914-25 — EAST 328

The Great War & Asia, 1914-25 — HIST 328

Capstone Project — EAST 500

Spring 2025

Brothers at War: The Unending Korean War — EAST 280

Brothers at War: The Unending Korean War — HIST 280

Capstone Project — EAST 500

Notes

Sheila Miyoshi Jager Receives Best Book Award

July 2, 2024

Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager's book (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2023) The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia, received the 2024 Robert L. Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder Best Book Award from the International History and Politics section of the American Political Science Association.

Sheila Miyoshi Jager Book Reviewed by International Institute for Asian Studies

May 22, 2024

Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager's latest book The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013) was reviewed by the International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden, the Netherlands).

Sheila Miyoshi Jager Book Reviewed in "Texas National Security Review"

May 8, 2024

On May 1, 2024, the Texas National Security Review, founded by University of Texas at Austin and War on the Rocks, published a roundtable review by four reviewers of Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager's recent book The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2023).

Sheila Miyoshi Jager Book Reviewed in The Wall Street Journal

January 3, 2024

Stephen R. Platt reviewed Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager's latest book, The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2023), in The Wall Street Journal (22 Dec 2023).

Sheila Miyoshi Jager Book Published

November 8, 2023

The Korean edition of Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager's book, Narratives of Nation-Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism (M.E. Sharpe, 2003; Routledge, 2016), was published by Namu Yonpil publishers in October 2023.

 

Sheila Miyoshi Jager Cited and Quoted in "Korea JoongAng Daily"

September 20, 2023

Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager was cited and quoted by Korea JoongAng Daily in "Incheon landing was turning point for war, nation and world," a story marking the 73rd anniversary of the Inchon landing in the Korean War (September 15). Professor Jager is the author of Brothers At War: The Unending Conflict in Korea (Norton, 2013).

Sheila Miyoshi Jager Interviewed on Podcast

July 25, 2023

Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager was interviewed on her new book, The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia, on the New Books Network podcast.

Sheila Miyoshi Jager Gives a Talk at Stanford

May 30, 2023

Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager gave a talk at Stanford University on May 11, 2023, on her new book, The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern Eats Asia.

Sheila Miyoshi Jager Introduced New Book at the Wilson Center

May 23, 2023

Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager introduced her new book, The Other Great Game, at the Wilson Center through its Washington History Seminar program on Monday, May 22.

Book Review by Sheila Miyoshi Jager Published in the New York Times

September 2, 2022

Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager's review of A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945-1955 (Norton, 2022) by Ronald H. Spector was published in the New York Times.

Sheila Miyoshi Jager Lectures at OSU East Asian Studies Center

April 12, 2022

Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager lectured on "The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea, Wars of Empires, and the Birth of Modern East Asia" at a conference on April 8 marking the 50th anniversary of Ohio State University's East Asian Studies Center.

Sheila Miyoshi Jager Publishes Chapter in The Cambridge History of America and the World

March 31, 2022

Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager published a chapter in The Cambridge History of America and the World, a 4-volume collection published in early March by Cambridge University Press as part of their Cambridge Histories series. The four-volume reference work will cover a 500-year period in chronological order: 1500 to 1812, 1812 to 1900, 1900 to 1945, and 1945 to the present. Jager's chapter, "Competing Empires in Asia," appeared in Volume 3 (1900-1945) and discussed the history of the rivalry between the United States and Japan in Asia-Pacific that began at the start of the 20th century and ended with World War II. The entire series along with other Cambridge histories is digitally accessible through the Oberlin College library system under "Cambridge histories."

Sheila Miyoshi Jager Publishes Dutch Edition of Book

June 26, 2020

The Dutch edition of East Asian Studies Professor Sheila Miyoshi Jager's book Brothers At War: The Unending Conflict in Korea was released on June, 23 2020 from Uitgeverij Omniboek. It joins the U.S. and UK editions, both published in 2013.

Jiyul Kim and Sheila Miyoshi Jager Publish on the Korean War

June 19, 2020

Visiting Instructor of History Jiyul Kim and Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager recently published "The Lasting Legacies of Korean War Special Operations" in the special Summer 2020 issue of the Wilson Quarterly marking the 70th anniversary of the Korean War and a series of posts on "New and Old Sources on Select Korean War Topics & Issues" on The Wilson Center History & Public Policy Program's Sources & Methods site.

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