Abstract
Willard D. Straight – architect, diplomat, photographer, publisher, sketcher, and writer – arrived in Korea in 1904 as a correspondent during the Russo-Japanese War, and became the US vice consul in Seoul in 1905. By utilizing a number of images from the Willard Dickerman Straight Papers of Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, and by referring to other relevant sources of/about Straight, this essay presents a textual analysis and comprehensive visual reading about the country which Straight observed in a very crucial transition period in global history. It provides a glimpse at the perspective of an early twentieth-century American diplomat, eyewitness, photographer, and writer on the cultural, industrial, and technological transformations that Korea experienced in the early 1900s as a consequence of its interaction with major world powers.
Dublin, Thomas and Walter Licht. The Face of Decline. The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century. Cornell University Press, Ithaca [etc.] 2005. viii, 275 pp. Ill. $65.00; £33.95. (Paper: $24.95; £12.95.)