Abstract

In the English-speaking world, the history of Joseon is underrepresented on library shelves displaying books on East Asian history. Academic works in English on early modern Chinese and Japanese history greatly outnumber academic studies of Joseon. Moreover, even within the field of Joseon history, much more attention has been paid to political history and the history of war than to most other areas. Several studies of Joseon-era religion and philosophy, especially Confucianism, have also been published. However, only a small part of the scholarship on Joseon produced by scholars in the West deals with social or economic history. There is even less published on the history of science, medicine, and technology. Similarly, few monographs have been published that focus on Joseon’s cultural history. This lack of breadth in English-language scholarship may be the reason there is as yet no comprehensive one-volume survey of Joseon history, and why there are not as many books on Joseon in libraries as there should be. Fortunately, there are signs that the scholarship on Joseon is starting to multiply and diversify. That gives us hope that, in that nottoo-distant future, Joseon may be able to claim the space it deserves on library shelves.