Book launch for Quietude: A Musical Anthropology of "Korea's Hiroshima" by Joshua D. Pilzer, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Toronto.
Room 130, Edward Johnson Building, 80 Queen's Park
2 to 4 pm with a reception to follow
Register at uoft.me/Quietude
About the book:
Based on nine years of intermittent fieldwork, Quietude recounts the stories, songs and other arts of survival of Korean atomic bomb survivors and their children in Hapcheon, Korea, offering a corrective to the enduring, multifaceted neglect and marginalization they have faced. Struck by the quiet of many atom bomb victims and their children, many of whom suffer from radiation-related illness and disability, I discuss its many sources: notions of Japanese soft-spokenness, vocal disability, the quiet contemplation of texts, the changes to the human heart as one grows older, the experience of war, social marginalization, traumatic experience, and various social movement discourses. I consider victims’ uses of voice, speech, song, and movement in the struggle for national and global recognition, in the ongoing work of negotiating the traumatic past, and in the effort to consolidate and maintain selves and relationships in the present.
Presented by the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto and sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Korea and the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto.