Sheila Miyoshi Jager | |
|---|---|
 Jager speaking at the 2013National Book Festival | |
| Born | 1963 (age 61–62) |
| Alma mater | Bennington College Middlebury College University of Chicago |
| Occupation | Historian |
| Employer | Oberlin College |
| Spouse | Jiyul Kim |
| Children | 4 |
Sheila Miyoshi Jager (born 1963) is an American historian. She is a Professor of East Asian Studies atOberlin College, author of two books on Korea, co-editor of a third book on Asian nations in the post-Cold War era, and a forthcoming book on great power competition in northeast Asia at the turn of the 19th-20th century. She is a well-known historian ofKorea andEast Asia.
Sheila Miyoshi Jager was born in 1963.[1] She is of Dutch and Japanese ancestry.[2] She graduated fromBennington College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1984.[3] She earned a Master of Arts degree fromMiddlebury College in 1985, and a PhD in anthropology from theUniversity of Chicago in 1994.[3]
Jager is a Professor of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College.[3] She is the author of several books aboutEast Asian history.[4]
Her first book,Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism, was published in 2003. In it, Jager analyzes Korea through the axes of history, gender, and nationalism, by using both theory and data.[5] She looks at male identity through the figures ofShin Chaeho andYi Kwang-su between 1910 and 1945 in the first part; the female body as a metonymy for the Koreanbody politic in the second part; and the leaders of South Korea (Park Chung Hee,Chun Doo-hwan,Roh Tae-woo) and North Korea (Kim Il Sung) in the third part.[5][6] In a review forThe Journal of Asian Studies,Roy Richard Grinker, a Professor of Anthropology atGeorge Washington University, called it "a coherent, well-argued, and well-researched study of Korea nationalism", but he deplored, "This book is not long, yet the scope is so extensive that it demands more detailed and wide-ranging analyses that might complicate her arguments."[5] He also criticized her use of Korean literature as reductive.[5] In a review forPacific Affairs, Chiho Sawada also criticized the book for being too short (only 140 pages), but he added that it was "an excellent text for courses on not only Korea but postcolonial histories and national/gender identities."[6] In a review for theBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Swiss academic Martina Deuchler called it "a sophisticated and well-written study," although she warned "the book is not an easy read."[7] A Korean translation was published by Namu yŏnp'il (도서출판 나무연필) in November 2023.
Her second book,Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia, co-edited withRana Mitter, was published in 2007. It is a collection of essays by various scholars about the state of Asia since the end of theCold War.[8] In a review forThe China Quarterly,Parks M. Coble, a professor of history at theUniversity of Nebraska–Lincoln, concludes that, contrary to Europe, there is no common thread between the Asian nations analyzed in this volume.[8] Nevertheless, inPacific Affairs, Associate Professor Kerry Smith ofBrown University suggests reading the entire book from cover to cover, not just certain chapters relevant to one's personal interests in specific nations.[9] Reviewing it forThe Journal of Asian Studies, Erik Harms, an Associate Professor of Anthropology atYale University (then atDuke University), described it as "an insightful collection of expertly researched and theoretically informed case studies from Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Vietnam."[10] He also noted, "We see how apparently local developments emerge within broader international, regional, and global contexts."[10] InThe Journal of Japanese Studies, Christopher Goto-Jones ofLeiden University highlights Mitter and Jager's "attempt to wrestle the question of war memory away from its near exclusive focus on the singular rupture represented by Japan's defeat in 1945"; instead, they attempt to show how "the continuously shifting international environment impacts the formation (and utility)[clarification needed] of national (and transnational and subnational) narratives."[11]
Her third book,Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea, was published in 2013 simultaneously by Profile Books in the UK and Norton in the U.S.[12][13] It was a selection for the 2013 National Book Festival and featured in a C-Span Book TV After Words interview.[14][15] The book covered the history of the Korean peninsula from its liberation in 1945 to 2012, portraying the confrontation between the two Koreas as a competition for legitimacy.The Economist called it the "most balanced and comprehensive account of the Korean War."[16] Mark Atwood's review for theNew York Times remarked it as "superb...elegant and balanced" while Eliot Cohen, reviewing forThe Wall Street Journal, wrote "Brothers at War does an exceptionally good job of bringing the conflict to life."[17][18] In a review forForeign Affairs,Andrew J. Nathan, a Professor of Political Science atColumbia University, who thought the book was a "magisterial history of the Korean War," noted that Jager suggested atrocities were committed not only by theNorth Korean Army, but also by theSouth Korean Army and theUnited States Army during theKorean War, a conflict which formally ended in 1953 but has never been fully resolved.[19] She also suggested that North Korea may have to become a province of China to survive economically.[19]Brothers at War was chosen as one of three Best International Relations Books of the Year in the Asia and the Pacific category byForeign Affairs.[20] A Dutch translation was published in 2020 by Omniboek under the titleBroederstrijd in Korea: Het oneindige conflict tussen Noord en Zuid.[21]
Her fourth book,The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia was published in May 2023 by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. The publisher described it as"A dramatic new telling of the dawn of modern East Asia, placing Korea at the center of a transformed world order wrought by imperial greed and devastating wars."[22] The book received the 2024 Robert L. Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder Best Book Award in international history and politics from the American Political Science Association (APSA). It was described as an "epic tour de force [that] elucidates the decades long struggle between regional powers China, Russia, and Japan in their rivalries with each other, illustrating how their respective, competing bids to dominate the Korean peninsula was at the epicenter of that competition." APSA further noted that it was "international political history at its best. Integrating finely detailed analyses of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the Russo-Chinese War of 1900, and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 with an uncommon sensitivity to the political and social currents within all four of these societies,The Other Great Game illustrates the crucial roles of both situationally distinct contexts and the influence of general pressures and motivations, combining the savvy of a regional expert and the analytical rigor of a specialist in international relations."[23] The book also won the 2024 Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History. The medal is awarded annually by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) for the best English-language writing on military history. Professor Michael Clarke, the head of the panel of judges, stated, "The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia is a work of true scholarship, both for its sources, inaccessible to most of us, and the way it puts a generally neglected area of study into the conventional picture of imperial history that shaped East Asia towards the region as we know it today."[24]
In addition to academic articles, she has written op-eds, columns, and book reviews forThe New York Times, Boston Globe, Politico Magazine, andThe New York Times Sunday Book Review.[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]
She has advised and appeared in two documentaries on the Korean War,The Battle of Chosin (WGBH/PBS, 2016) andKorea: The Neverending War (PBS/BBC/ARTE, 2019).[33][34]
Jager's Dutch paternal grandparents, Hendrik and Geesje Jager, were recognized asRighteous Among the Nations byYad Vashem in 1996. TheYad Vashem online entry reads,
"In order to avoid deportation, the parents of seven-year-old Margaretha Celine (Greetje) de Haas (later Gosschalk) handed her over in August 1943 to a nurse who was active in a nurses’ Resistance group. The Resistance group was connected with an underground movement in the province of Groningen, and Hendrik Jager was one of the people who traveled to Amsterdam to maintain contact between the two groups. Hendrik’s main task was to find families willing to hide Jewish children. He would wait at the train station in Groningen and then escort the children either to the address he had found or, temporarily, to his home until a permanent place could be located. Since he had not found a family who would take her, Hendrik decided to take Greetje in himself and she stayed with him and his wife, Geesje, for three years. Hendrik and Geesje lived in Hoogezand, Groningen, and had two sons, Henk and Bernd, who regarded Greetje as a sister. The family never received any payment for looking after her...Hendrik found hiding places for approximately 50 Jewish children all around the province. After the war, the Jagers applied to become Greetje’s guardians, but in 1946, close friends of her parents were awarded custody. Although they were not related, Greetjeand called her guaridians 'uncle' and 'aunt,' and the Jagers remained close, even after she got married and immigrated to the United States...The Jagers kept in touch with her husband, Eddy, and their son and daughter after Greetje’s untimely death in 1971. On October 10, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Hendrik Jager and his wife, Geesje Jager-ten Brinke, as Righteous Among the Nations."[35]
In the 1980s, Jager lived withBarack Obama, then a community organizer in Chicago.[36][2] In winter 1986, Obama asked her parents if he could marry her, but they objected.[36] Shortly after he entered theHarvard Law School, Obama proposed to Jager a second time, but she rejected him.[2][4] Their relationship was only made public in May 2017, several months after the end of Obama's two-term presidency, inDavid Garrow'sRising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.[4] Notably, David Garrow admitted that he had never seen Obama's letters to Sheila Miyoshi Jager.[37][38]
Jager is married to Jiyul Kim, a retired U.S. Army veteran and a history instructor at Oberlin College. They have four children and reside in Ohio.[citation needed]
The letters to and from Sheila. Are we ever going to see them? Not in my lifetime or yours.
Now, no one has ever seen Barack's letter to Sheila Jager.
