JaHyun Kim Haboush

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Field" <shanghaidrew@GMAIL.COM>
To: <H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2011 11:14 AM
Subject: H-ASIA: Remembering JaHyun Kim Haboush

> H-ASIA
>
> Remembering JaHyun Kim Haboush
> ************************
> From: "Keith Knapp" <knappk@citadel.edu>
>
> For two years back in the early 1980s, Professor JaHyun Kim Haboush
> taught at SUNY Albany. I was lucky enough to take both halves of the
> survey of Chinese history with her, as well as a seminar on Neo-
> Confucian thought. She was an ethusiastic and engaging lecturer and an
> outstanding teacher. Interestingly though, she could never remember
> exact dates. When queried about this, she always said that you could
> look up dates in a book; all you needed was a ballpark knowledge of
> the sequence of events -- that struck me then (and now) as an
> immensely sensible answer. In the three semesters I took her classes,
> she instilled in me an everlasting fascination with Chinese history
> and Confucianism. Since she was supposed to be teaching Chinese
> history at Albany, that is exactly what she did -- only much later on
> did I find out that she was one of America's preeminent authorities on
> Korean history.
>
> Albany was not her cup of tea -- it was a bit too small for her. Its
> biggest virtue was that it wasn't far from New York City, which is
> where she really wanted to be. She once told me that she loved big
> cities, whether it be Seoul or NYC. She was also incredibly stylish;
> everyweek it seemed that she had a new hairdo and the most fashionable
> clothes I had ever seen. Years later when she was at Columbia, I
> bumped into her at a number of AAS meetings. I thought that she would
> never remember an undergraduate student from long ago. But she did
> and each time I saw her she impressed me with her personal warmth.
>
> It truly is very sad that she is no longer with us, brightening our
> days with her humor and enlightening us with her keen understanding of
> East Asian history.
>
> Keith N. Knapp
> History Department Professor and Chair
> The Citadel
> 171 Moultrie Street
> Charleston, SC 29409
>
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