IEA

Fellowship from October 2010 to June 2011 

Research project:

" Colonial Laws of Naturalization in French Algeria and the
Contest over French National Identity after Empire"
 

"French conceptions of nationhood, citizenship, and national identity were, and continue to be, inextricably tied to the history of colonialism and decolonization in French-occupied Algeria (1830-1962). My project traces first, the French citizenship laws and practices as they applied to the French citizenry in Algeria during colonial rule, and examines the impact of these laws on the formation of French identity among colonists and naturalized Algerians after decolonization. Second, I trace the critical rupture in the conception of geography and nationhood with the advent of the Fifth Republic. I wish to interrogate the debates that shaped the notion of a geographic and legal nationhood as they played out in the politics of decolonization in Algeria and in the "repatriation" of the French from Algeria until the Mitterrand years. My long term goal is to align comparative aspects in the histories of East Asian geopolitical change following Japan’s withdrawal from its colonial territories, and the postcolonial interaction between North Africa and Europe."

Biographical elements: 

Sung Choi was born in South Korea but has split her life equally between Korea and the United States. She attended college in Korea, at Korea University where she majored in History. She received her MA in Modern European History at the University of Chicago and received her doctorate in History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2007. She studied the question of decolonization and the changes in the conception of French nationhood through the lens of the integration policies applied to the French settlers who left Algeria and relocated in France in 1962. Since then, she has taught History as visiting faculty at Pomona College in southern California and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. Her real passion has always been France and French history. She is interested in the role of geography, and the place of the Mediterranean in postcolonial French historiography as well as the urbanization of colonial relationships in French Algeria. As traveler, immigrant, and historian from Asia to the West, she hopes to contribute a global perspective to French studies. She hopes to continue research in transnational historiography and archival work while a resident scholar at the IEA.