Pacific Voicings: Korean Hymns and Prayers in the Age of Empires, 1884-1945

直到19世纪末，基督教在韩国的传播和实践一直被严格禁止，但到了20世纪末，新教基督教成为这个国家最受欢迎的宗教。从19世纪80年代到20世纪20年代，来自美国的英美传教士进行了长达数月的航行，最终到达了韩国，这是被称为“韩国奇迹”的种子。正如历史学家近年来所证明的那样，在韩国的美国传教士宣扬美国的太平洋扩张主义，并为其做出了贡献。他们的目标不仅是使“原住民”皈依宗教，而且还作为“文明使命”的一部分，推动人类的道德、文化和经济转型。然而，我的研究提出，这种对使命的描述未能捕捉到宗教跨国传播的复杂运作方式，并将在当地行动者中找到中介机构的机会降至最低。虽然该任务在制裁美国在韩国的一系列利益和意识形态方面取得了相当大的成功，但早期当地皈依者中形成的宗教和世俗做法也受到太平洋殖民主义和现有社会文化异质性的当地经历的影响。本研究项目旨在更全面地描述韩国早期的基督教生活。它不仅考察了北美传教士在韩国的文化项目，而且还试图通过歌唱和祈祷的镜头重新评估韩国基督教，探索韩国人经历、挪用和重新谈判“新”宗教的方式。韩国的传教士社区试图重现西方风格的歌曲(例如，赞美诗、儿童歌曲、合唱音乐)和即兴祈祷，作为韩国人的日常宗教实践。对他们来说，唱赞美诗和听得见的祈祷是个人真实性和社会亲密感的标志，是19世纪末美国福音主义的特权价值观。从19世纪90年代到40年代的传教士和韩国基督教著作告诉我们，许多韩国基督徒在参加范围越来越广的宗教和非宗教会议时接受了这些发声做法，包括帐篷复兴、圣经学习、学校集会、音乐音乐会、主日学校会议和互助聚会。我的研究项目将提供在这些活动中唱歌和祈祷的全面记录。更重要的是，它将探讨在这些活动中练习的新声乐形式如何与20世纪初在韩国流传的特定现代性概念相互作用。有充分的理由表明，在20世纪初的朝鲜，祈祷和唱歌与更广泛的意识形态有关。自19世纪末以来，由于两个太平洋帝国--美国和日本的入侵，韩国正在经历激进的社会重组。美国在朝鲜开展了宗教、医疗和人道主义项目，并开放了朝鲜的贸易。日本在朝鲜领土上发动了扩张主义战争(中日战争，1894-1905；日俄战争，1904-2005)，并于1910年正式殖民朝鲜，占领一直持续到1945年。随着这些帝国对韩国(以及亚太地区的其他地方)施加了更多的影响，围绕着作为一个人和一个社区意味着什么的当地话语和做法也发生了变化。因此，我将探索日常宗教仪式、现代太平洋帝国的当地经历和现代性话语之间的关系。总而言之，我的项目将解决以下问题：-美国传教士在朝鲜推行哪些宗教活动？为什么？-不同背景的韩国人是如何经历传教士介绍的适当发声形式的？-我们如何通过建立一个殖民-现代太平洋历史的说明性案例来推论殖民主义和发声之间的关系？

The dissemination and practice of Christianity were strictly banned in Korea until the late nineteenth century, but by the end of the twentieth century Protestant Christianity was the most popular religion in this country. The seeds of what has been dubbed "the Korean miracle" were planted by Anglo-American missionaries from the United States, who took on months-long voyages to reach Korea from the 1880s to the 1920s. As historians have demonstrated in recent years, American missionaries in Korea emblematised and contributed to the Pacific expansionism of the United States. They aimed not only to convert the "natives" but also to enforce the moral, cultural, and economic transformation of the human as part of a "civilising mission." However, my research proposes that such characterisations of the mission fail to capture the complex workings of the transnational diffusion of religion and minimise the opportunity for locating agency in local actors. While the mission had considerable success in sanctioning a range of US interests and ideologies in Korea, the religious and secular practices that formed among the early local converts were also framed by local experiences of Pacific colonialisms and existing socio-cultural heterogeneity.This research project aims to provide a fuller account of early Christian life in Korea. It not only examines the cultural projects of North American missionaries in Korea, but it also seeks to explore the ways in which Koreans experienced, appropriated, and renegotiated the 'new' religion by reassessing Korean Christianity through the lens of singing and praying. The missionary community in Korea sought to recreate Western-style songs (e.g., hymns, children's songs, choral music) and improvised prayers as everyday religious practice among Koreans. For them, hymn singing and audible prayers were signs of personal authenticity and social intimacy, privileged values within late-nineteenth-century American evangelicalism. Missionary and Korean Christian writings from the 1890s to the 1940s tell us that many Korean Christians embraced these vocal practices as they participated in an expanding range of religious and para-religious meetings, including tent revivals, bible studies, school rallies, music concerts, Sunday school sessions, and mutual aid gatherings. My research project will provide a comprehensive documentation of singing and praying at these activities. And more importantly, it will explore how the new vocal forms practised in these activities interacted with particular conceptions of modernity that circulated in early-twentieth-century Korea. There are good reasons to suggest that praying and singing in early-twentieth-century Korea were connected to broader ideologies. Since the late nineteenth century, Korea was undergoing radical social reorganisation due to the incursion of two Pacific empires - the United States and Japan. The United States operated religious, medical, and humanitarian projects in Korea and opened Korea for trade. Japan fought expansionist wars on Korean land (the Sino-Japanese War, 1894-5; the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5) and formally colonised Korea in 1910, an occupation that lasted until 1945. As these empires exerted more influence on Korea (and elsewhere in the Asia Pacific region), local discourse and practice surrounding what it means to be a person and a community also changed. Thus, I will explore relationships among everyday rituals of religion, local experiences of modern Pacific empires, and discourses of modernity. In summary, the following questions will be addressed in my project: -What kinds of religious activities did the American missionaries promote in Korea? Why?-How did Koreans of different backgrounds experience and appropriate forms of voicing introduced by the missionaries? -How can we theorise the relationship between colonialism and vocalisation by building on an illustrative case of colonial-modern Pacific history?