Greetings!

I would like to say hello to all who visit the Henry James Society of Korea. I would like to share a lot of stories about James, but I am going to introduce the Henry James International Conference, one of the most important events of the year.
The Henry James International Conference has been held regularly for about 20 years every three years, alternating between the US and

Europe. It will be held for the first time in Asia with the theme "Jamesian Cultural Anxiety in the East and in the West" in 2017 followed by the US in 1999, France (Paris) in 2002, Italy (Venice) in 2005, the US (New Port) in 2008, Italy (Rome) in 2011 and the UK (Aberdeen) in 2014.

As you can see from the theme of the conference, this is an Asian perspective, which has been thoroughly researched for a long time, unlike the themes held in the US and Europe on both continents for about 20 years. During the Henry James International Conference in 2005, there was an expectation among European scholars to hold the conference in Asia. The main reason why it was difficult to accept the proposal at the time was to establish a relationship between the venue 'Asia' and the artist Henry James. Simply ‘hosting the conference in Asia’ did not justify the cause of the conference. On the other hand, some of the James scholars are Asians, and the local accountability, which is added to them, has been working in common with the consciousness of Asian scholars, and in such a cultural context, naturally Asia – especially China and Japan – I had to take the initiative to discuss the issue with hosting the conference. However, at the time, it was unclear whether it would be possible to provide concrete frameworks for establishing cultural relations between Henry James and Asia. Thus, it was decided that it would be difficult to implement the geopolitical implications properly.

Since 2005, my head has been full of questions about how Korean scholars majoring in foreign literature can play a role as the subject rather than as the other, and if possible, how to do it. I think that it is the task of reaching the essence of humanities. In fact, the answer to this question has been found at the time when the observer has been able to grasp the possibility of developing new perspectives on Jamesian cultural values in global context by analyzing the Henry James conference four to five times over the past two decades in terms of strict observer status in the US and Europe on both continents. The result of long research has become an important occasion not only to identify the geopolitical meaning of the venue but to establish our topic that fits into our vision for the conference – new perspectives on Jamesian cultural anxiety in terms of cosmopolitanism in the Asian context. And this fact overcomes the difficult situation as a small school society in the process of preparing the Henry James International Conference in Seoul in July 2017.

The conference location Korea, an especially apt site to consider overlapping encounters between Western cultures and other Asian forces of modernity, asks us to consider how contemporary Henry James studies naturally call for global analyses and responses that question our western conceptions of Jamesian cultural anxieties in the process of understanding the evolution of human consciousness. I would like to meet with you at the Henry James International Conference in 2017. Here I invite all those who are interested not only in Henry James but also in all aspects of culture.

The Henry James Society of Korea began in 1993 as a small society and started to publish the Journal Henry James Studies in 1996. In the 2000s, however, the position of the minor society has been minimized in the reality that the scale of the society should be increased. This small society has been able to overcome hardships due to the encouragement of Professor Kee Han Youn, the Professor Emeritus at Chungnam University who served as the first President of the society with the founding of the Society. Now our society is consisted of members interested in not only Henry James, but the essence of literature; we will create a place for discussion to participate more actively in the future. We have formed an open executive team in this spirit. I am amazed to see that their ability to extend freely beyond their own spheres to their globalization era comes from their own positive will. Thank you to all the executives who are working hard at the international conference!

See you at the Henry James International Conference in July 2017.

Choon-Hee Kim
President of the Henry James Society of Korea