• Royce Fellowship
Karis
Ryu

Concentration 

History, East Asian Studies

Award Year 

2020
Making Memories: Life During the Cold War at Seoul American High School

U.S. military dependents are not frequently addressed in military and war histories, and yet their lives are profoundly impacted by and intertwined with the operations of the U.S. Armed Forces. Karis’s project looks at how American identity was defined, taught, and implemented in the overseas high school education of U.S. military dependents in Yongsan Garrison, Seoul during the Cold War. Through interviewing former Seoul American High School faculty and students and examining local, community-based artifacts as primary sources, she seeks to illuminate how Americanness was constructed and taught to a budding generation in an interstitial space.