Dr. Sujin Lee

Sujin Lee received her PhD from the Department of History at Cornell University in 2017 and also holds an MA in Japanese History from Yonsei University, Korea. Her research interests encompass the Japanese Empire and its aftermath, Foucauldian biopolitics, population discourses, eugenics, and the relationship between capitalist production and sexual reproduction. Her dissertation, entitled “Problematizing Population: Politics of Birth Control and Eugenics in Interwar Japan” focuses on three strands of inquiry: the reappraisal of eugenics and birth control movements as transnational, scientific discourses on population control during the interwar period; the impacts of multiple population discourses on the reconfiguration of the Japanese population in terms of both quality and quantity, and the target of the government; and the intersection of governmentality, scientific progressivism, and imperialism. At UCLA, she is planning to rewrite her dissertation into a book under the working title Problematic Bodies: Politics of Population Discourses in the Japanese Empire (1918-1945), and teach an undergraduate course about the history of the Japanese Empire particularly focused around the making of scientific knowledge regarding race and gender classifications.