American Violence, World Literature

Harvard-Yenching Institute Visiting Scholar Talks
Co-sponsored by the Harvard Korea Institute 

Seo Hee Im
Associate Professor, English, Hanyang University; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2025-26

Chair/Discussant: Spencer Lee-Lenfield, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University

Abstract:
In the first half of the talk, I uncover how the convention of resolving class conflict with violent spectacle, which will seem run-of-the-mill to anyone with a Netflix subscription, is a singular legacy of American literary history. In the second half, I consider works by Haruki Murakami and Lee Chang-dong that pay explicit tribute to William Faulkner. For the Japanese and Koreans who experienced modernity as an involuntary state to be overcome, the American modernist’s violent narrative solutions proved compelling precisely because the Americans, having played their own furious games of catch-up with the Europeans, had expertise in managing what Thomas Hardy called “the ache of modernity.” This talk is excerpted from a book manuscript provisionally titled American Violence, World Literature.

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