Career
Palais taught at Norfolk State University and the University of Maine before being recruited to help build up what was then known as the Far Eastern and Russian Institute at the University of Washington. He became chairman of the Korean Studies Program there, and in 2002 he was made chairman of the East Asian Studies Institute as well.
Palais' arrival in 1968 made the University of Washington program the largest Korean Studies Program on the North American mainland because there were three full-time scholars devoted exclusively to the study of Korea.
From 1974-77, Palais edited Occasional Papers on Korean Studies, as known as the Journal of Korean Studies, which was edited out of the University of Washington until 1988. Palais' political interests resulted in the Asia Watch report Human Rights in Korea (Washington, 1986), but perhaps his greatest work was the 1230-page Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyongwon and the late Choson Dynasty, a comprehensive overview of Choson Dynasty (1392-1910) Korean institutions as discussed by the eminent 17th century Korean statesman,. This book was awarded the John Whitney Hall book prize as the best book on Japan or Korea in 1998.
Palais was recognized with the Yongjae Paek Nakchun Award from Korea's Yonsei University in 1995, and by The Association for Asian studies with a lifetime achievement award in Asian Studies in 2001. Palais was Dean for International Studies at Sungkyunkwan University in Korea for three years.
Palais continued his activity at the University of Washington with editing, writing, and part time teaching in the Korea Studies Program until hospitalized with his final illness in the spring of 2005.
Read more about this topic: James Palais
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)