American historian (born 1963)
Sheila Miyoshi Jager (born 1963) is an American historian. She is a Professor of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College, author of two books on Korea, co-editor of a third book on Asian nations in the post-Cold War era, and a forthcoming book on great power competition in northeast Asia at the turn of the 19th-20th century. She is a well-known historian of Korea and East Asia.
Early life
Sheila Miyoshi Jager was born in 1963.[1] She is of Dutch and Japanese ancestry.[2] She graduated from Bennington College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1984.[3] She earned a Master of Arts degree from Middlebury College in 1985, and a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1994.[3]
Career
Jager is a Professor of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College.[3] She is the author of several books about East Asian history.[4]
Her first book, Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism, was published in 2003. In it, Jager analyzes Korea through the axes of history, gender, and nationalism, by using both theory and data.[5] She looks at male identity through the figures of Shin Chaeho and Yi Kwang-su between 1910 and 1945 in the first part; the female body as a metonymy for the Korean body politic in the second part; and the leaders of South Korea (Park Chung Hee, Chun Doo-hwan, Roh Tae-woo) and North Korea (Kim Il Sung) in the third part.[5][6] In a review for The Journal of Asian Studies, Roy Richard Grinker, a Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University, called it "a coherent, well-argued, and well-researched study of Korea nationalism", but he deplored, "This book is not long, yet the scope is so extensive that it demands more detailed and wide-ranging analyses that might complicate her arguments."[5] He also criticized her use of Korean literature as reductive.[5] In a review for Pacific Affairs, Chiho Sawada also criticized the book for being too short (only 140 pages), but he added that it was "an excellent text for courses on not only Korea but postcolonial histories and national/gender identities."[6] In a review for the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Swiss academic Martina Deuchler called it "a sophisticated and well-written study," although she warned "the book is not an easy read."[7] A Korean translation was published by Namu yŏnp'il (도서출판 나무연필) in November 2023.
Her second book, Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia, co-edited with Rana Mitter, was published in 2007. It is a collection of essays by various scholars about the state of Asia since the end of the Cold War.[8] In a review for The China Quarterly, Parks M. Coble, a professor of history at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, concludes that, contrary to Europe, there is no common thread between the Asian nations analyzed in this volume.[8] Nevertheless, in Pacific Affairs, Associate Professor Kerry Smith of Brown University suggests reading the entire book from cover to cover, not just certain chapters relevant to one's personal interests in specific nations.[9] Reviewing it for The Journal of Asian Studies, Erik Harms, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Yale University (then at Duke University), described it as "an insightful collection of expertly researched and theoretically informed case studies from Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Vietnam."[10] He also noted, "We see how apparently local developments emerge within broader international, regional, and global contexts."[10] In The Journal of Japanese Studies, Christopher Goto-Jones of Leiden University highlights Mitter and Jager's "attempt to wrestle the question of war memory away from its near exclusive focus on the singular rupture represented by Japan's defeat in 1945"; instead, they attempt to show how "the continuously shifting international environment impacts the formation (and utility)[clarification needed] of national (and transnational and subnational) narratives."[11]
Her third book, Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea, was published in 2013 simultaneously by Profile Books in the UK and Norton in the U.S.[12][13] It was a selection for the 2013 National Book Festival and featured in a C-Span Book TV After Words interview.[14][15] The book covered the history of the Korean peninsula from its liberation in 1945 to 2012, portraying the confrontation between the two Koreas as a competition for legitimacy. The Economist called it the "most balanced and comprehensive account of the Korean War."[16] Mark Atwood's review for the New York Times remarked it as "superb...elegant and balanced" while Eliot Cohen, reviewing for The Wall Street Journal, wrote "Brothers at War does an exceptionally good job of bringing the conflict to life."[17][18] In a review for Foreign Affairs, Andrew J. Nathan, a Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, who thought the book was a "magisterial history of the Korean War," noted that Jager suggested atrocities were committed not only by the North Korean Army, but also by the South Korean Army and the United States Army during the Korean War, a conflict which formally ended in 1953 but has never been fully resolved.[19] She also suggested that North Korea may have to become a province of China to survive economically.[19] Brothers at War was chosen as one of three Best International Relations Books of the Year in the Asia and the Pacific category by Foreign Affairs.[20] A Dutch translation was published in 2020 by Omniboek under the title Broederstrijd in Korea: Het oneindige conflict tussen Noord en Zuid.[21]
Her fourth book, The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia was published in May 2023 by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. The publisher described it as "A dramatic new telling of the dawn of modern East Asia, placing Korea at the center of a transformed world order wrought by imperial greed and devastating wars."[22] A Korean translation is due out in 2024 from Ghil Publisher (도서출판길)
In addition to academic articles, she has written op-eds, columns, and book reviews for The New York Times, Boston Globe, Politico Magazine, and The New York Times Sunday Book Review.[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]
She has advised and appeared in two documentaries on the Korean War, The Battle of Chosin (WGBH/PBS, 2016) and Korea: The Neverending War (PBS/BBC/ARTE, 2019).[31][32]
Personal life
Jager's Dutch paternal grandparents, Hendrik and Geesje Jager, were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1996. The Yad Vashem online entry reads,
"In order to avoid deportation, the parents of seven-year-old Margaretha Celine (Greetje) de Haas (later Gosschalk) handed her over in August 1943 to a nurse who was active in a nurses’ Resistance group. The Resistance group was connected with an underground movement in the province of Groningen, and Hendrik Jager was one of the people who traveled to Amsterdam to maintain contact between the two groups. Hendrik’s main task was to find families willing to hide Jewish children. He would wait at the train station in Groningen and then escort the children either to the address he had found or, temporarily, to his home until a permanent place could be located. Since he had not found a family who would take her, Hendrik decided to take Greetje in himself and she stayed with him and his wife, Geesje, for three years. Hendrik and Geesje lived in Hoogezand, Groningen, and had two sons, Henk and Bernd, who regarded Greetje as a sister. The family never received any payment for looking after her...Hendrik found hiding places for approximately 50 Jewish children all around the province. After the war, the Jagers applied to become Greetje’s guardians, but in 1946, close friends of her parents were awarded custody. Although they were not related, Greetjeand called her guaridians 'uncle' and 'aunt,' and the Jagers remained close, even after she got married and immigrated to the United States...The Jagers kept in touch with her husband, Eddy, and their son and daughter after Greetje’s untimely death in 1971. On October 10, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Hendrik Jager and his wife, Geesje Jager-ten Brinke, as Righteous Among the Nations."[33]
In the 1980s, Jager lived with Barack Obama, then a community organizer in Chicago.[34][2] In winter 1986, Obama asked her parents if he could marry her, but they objected.[34] Shortly after he entered the Harvard Law School, Obama proposed to Jager a second time, but she rejected him.[2][4] Their relationship was only made public in May 2017, several months after the end of Obama's two-term presidency, in David Garrow's Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.[4] Notably, David Garrow admitted that he had never seen Obama's letters to Sheila Miyoshi Jager.[35][36]
Jager is married to Jiyul Kim, a retired U.S. Army veteran and a history instructor at Oberlin College. They have four children and reside in Ohio.[citation needed]
