17 Facts About Bruce Cumings

Bruce Cumings was born on September 5,1943 and is an American historian of East Asia, professor, lecturer and author.

Bruce Cumings is the Gustavus F and Ann M Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History, and the former chair of the history department at the University of Chicago.

Bruce Cumings formerly taught at Northwestern University and the University of Washington.

Bruce Cumings specializes in modern Korean history and contemporary international relations.

In May 2007, Cumings was the first recipient of the Kim Dae-jung Academic Award for Outstanding Achievements and Scholarly Contributions to Democracy, Human Rights and Peace granted by South Korea.

Bruce Cumings was born in Rochester, New York, on September 5,1943.

Bruce Cumings was raised in Iowa and Ohio, where his father, Edgar C Cumings, was a college administrator.

Bruce Cumings worked summers for five years, three of them at the Republic Steel plant in Cleveland, to put himself through Denison University, with further help from a baseball scholarship.

Bruce Cumings taught at Swarthmore College, University of Washington, Northwestern University, and University of Chicago.

Bruce Cumings joined the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars at Columbia after Mark Selden formed a chapter there, and published extensively in its journal, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, where his writings ranged from the early history of the Korean resistance movement against Japan to the intertwining of US academia with US intelligence agencies.

Bruce Cumings's research focus is on 20th century international history, United States and East Asia relations, East Asian political economy, modern Korean history, and American foreign relations.

Bruce Cumings is interested in the "multiplicity of ways that conceptions, metaphors and discourses are related to political economy and material forms of production", and to relations between "East and West".

Bruce Cumings has not confined himself purely to the study of modern Korea but has written broadly about East Asia and even books about the expansion of the American West.

Bruce Cumings wrote Industrial Behemoth: The Northeast Asian Political Economy in the 20th Century, which seeks to understand the industrialization of Japan, both Koreas, Taiwan, and parts of China, and the ways that scholars and political leaders have viewed that development.

Bruce Cumings explained that, in 1945, the Chinese and Soviets had armies in the north of Korea and that the Americans had an army in the south.

Bruce Cumings disputed the contention that North Korea had cheated on the October 1994 Agreed Framework.

The University of Georgia historian William W Stueck does not find that account to be convincing but acknowledges that Cumings succeeds in exploring aspects of the Korean War that have lacked analysis in traditionalist accounts.