Bio

Dr. Na Sil Heo is an Assistant Professor of East Asian History. Her research interests include studies of childhood, the cultural Cold War, race, and gender and sexuality. She is currently completing a book manuscript that examines how childhood was a crucial site of postwar reconstruction and transnational anticommunism in 1950s-1960s South Korea. Reading sources ranging from home floor plans and children’s literature to infant formula advertisements, her work reveals how Cold War liberalism manifested in various realms of childhood in postwar Korea. Her research has been published in the Journal of Asian Studies and Gender & History. Heo’s second book project locates the history of family planning in South Korea within transnational circulations of medical knowledge, contraceptives, and population control advocates.

Heo teaches East Asian history classes, such as Introduction to East Asian Civilization, Modern East Asia, and Japan since 1800. Her research has been supported by fellowships and grants, including the Postdoctoral Associates Program at the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University, the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, Korean Collections Consortium of North America (KCCNA), and Dr. David Chu Scholarship in Asia Pacific Studies at the University of Toronto. Before coming to UofSC, she taught Korean and East Asian history courses at the University of Toronto, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University. 

Education

B.A. Hawaii Pacific University
M.A. George Washington University
Ph.D. University of Toronto