Rate My Professor Janet Poole

Janet Poole serves as Distinguished Professor of the Humanities and Chair of the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. She earned her PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University, an MA in Korean Literature from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, and a BA (Honours) in Japanese and Korean from the University of London. Poole's career encompasses extensive teaching and research on literary and aesthetic forms amid colonialism and modernity, along with significant administrative leadership as department chair. Her scholarly pursuits integrate histories and theories of translation with creative translation practice.

Poole's research specializations include decolonization and mid-century modernism across the Koreas, the history of literature, art, and photography in the Japanese empire, and literary translation theory and practice. She has authored and translated key works that position Korean writers within global modernism and explore creative responses to colonial fascism. Notable publications are When the Future Disappears: The Modernist Imagination in Late Colonial Korea (Columbia University Press, 2014), which received the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize in 2015 and an Honourable Mention for the James B. Palais Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies in 2016; Patterns of the Heart and Other Stories by Ch’oe Myŏngik (Columbia University Press, 2024); Picturing a Moment: The Colonial Visions of Newspaper Photography in Early Twentieth-Century Korea (Routledge, 2022); Dust and Other Stories by Yi T’aejun (Columbia University Press, 2018), developed during a residency fellowship at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre; Eastern Sentiments by Yi T’aejun (Columbia University Press, 2009); Crossing the Great Divide: Mid-century Modernism on the Korean Peninsula (Routledge, 2020); and The Remains of Colonial History (University of Washington Press, 2016). Poole has secured major funding, including a SSHRC Insight Grant in 2017 and a Chancellor Jackman Faculty Research Fellowship in 2020 for her project “Decolonizing Style: Going North and the History of Korean Modernism.” Her contributions have profoundly influenced studies of Korean modernism, colonialism, and translation.