MARTIN, Tenn. – For most students at the University of Tennessee at Martin, global marketing is a concept they have come to know through textbooks. That-s where the problem is says Dr. Choong Soon Kim, professor of anthropology at UT Martin.
Kim will explain the need to broaden students- minds with more cross cultural teaching when he delivers UT Martin-s Centennial Lecture at 7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 5, in the Ed and Carolyn Boling University Center-s Phillip Watkins Auditorium.
-We do a good job of teaching factual information and what-s in textbooks, but we are not putting in the effort to broaden the minds of our students,- Kim said.
Kim-s lecture is titled, -Two Worlds, Three Decades, One Anthropologist: Toward Cross Cultural Understandings.- The lecture is free and open to the public. By analyzing Kim-s long journey from premodern to modern to ultramodern, and from East to West twice for the past three decades, Kim will present his reflections on the vital role of cross-cultural understandings in an increasingly globalizing era in the 21st Century.
Kim earned his bachelor-s and master-s in law from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea; a master-s in sociology from Emory University; and his doctorate in anthropology from the University of Georgia. He is currently faculty scholar and professor of anthropology at UT Martin where he has been teaching since 1971.
He has been a visiting professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Korea, Seoul, Korea; a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Seoul National University, Korea; a visiting professor at Hirosaki University, Japan; a Rockefeller Foundation-s Scholar-in-Residence at Bellagio Study Center, northern Italy; a Senior Fulbright Scholar and a visiting professor at Yonsei University, Korea.
In 1998, Kim received the Inch-on Award, the highest cultural award accorded to the scholars of highest distinction in Korea. He has been a member of the Selection Committee for Senior Fulbright Scholars for Japan and Korea, and a member of the Area Advisory Committee for East Asia and Pacific for the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (Senior Fulbright Award Abroad).
Kim-s main area of interest is business and industrial anthropology. He has been the adviser to PMX Industries, a major coin blank supplier to the United States Mint in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; a member of the Board of Directors of Poongsan Corporation in Korea; and he has served as a panel member for the state of Tennessee and other southeastern states at the annual Southeast United States-Korea Joint Conference since 1997.
In addition to publishing monographs and articles in various scholarly journals in anthropology such as American Anthropologist, Current Anthropology and other journals published in the United States and Europe, Kim is the author of several books, including Anthropological Studies of Korea by Westerners; A Korean Nationalist Entrepreneur: A Life History of Kim Songsu, 1891-1955; Japanese Industry in the American South.; The Culture of Korean Industry: An Ethnography of Poongsan Corporation; Faithful Endurance: An Ethnography of Korean Family Dispersal; and An Asian Anthropologist in the South: Field Experiences with Blacks, Indians and Whites.
With a advance contract, Kim is working on a book titled, One Anthropologist, Two Worlds, Three Decades: Identity, Marginality and Reflexivity.
Kim, with his wife, Sang Boon, live in Martin.They have two children, John and Drew. John is the executive director of Goldman Sachs (Seoul, Korea) and Drew is marketing manager for the Nashville (Tennessee) Area Chamber of Commerce.
-Our minds are fixed,- Kim said. -Let-s do something about cross-cultural education. Right now, we are preoccupied about black and white. We-re still dealing with issues from the 1960s.-