McCann, David R. 1944- (David McCann, David Richard McCann)

PERSONAL:

Born July 1, 1944, in Lewiston, ME; married, 1968; children: two. Education: Amherst College, B.A., 1966; Harvard University, M.A., 1971, Ph.D., 1976.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Korea Institute, EALC Department, Harvard University, 2 Divinity Ave., #216, Cambridge, MA 02138. E-mail—dmccann@fas.harvard.edu.

CAREER:

During early career, was an English teacher in Korea for the Peace Corps; Cornell University, New York, NY, assistant professor, 1976-77, assistant professor of Japanese literature, 1978-79, other teaching positions until 1997; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Literature, 1997—, and associate director of the Korea Institute of History.

MEMBER:

Association for Asian Studies, Association of Teachers of Japanese (secretary, beginning 1978), Poetry Society of America, Poets & Writers, Inc.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Pushcart Prize, 1978.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Black Crane: An Anthology of Korean Literature, China-Japan Program, Cornell University (Ithaca, NY), Volume 1, 1977, Volume 2, 1980.

(Editor, with John Middleton and Edward J. Shultz) Studies in Korea in Transition, Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawaii (Honolulu, HI), 1979.

Keeping Time (poems), Troubadour Press (Chicago, IL), 1980.

(Translator, with Choi Sung-il) Kim Dae Jung, Prison Writings, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1987.

Form and Freedom in Korean Poetry, Brill (New York, NY), 1988.

(Translator and author of introduction) So Chongju, Selected Poems of So Chongju, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1989.

(Editor, with Gail Holst-Warhaft) The Classical Moment: Views from Seven Literatures, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 1999.

Early Korean Literature: Selections and Introductions, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(Editor, with Barry S. Strauss) War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War, M.E. Sharpe (Armonk, NY), 2001.

(Editor) The Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

(Translator) Ko Un, Traveler Maps: Poems = Yojido, Tamal Vista Publications (Cambridge, MA), 2004.

(Translator, with Jiwon Shin) Pak Chaesam, Enough to Say It's Far: Selected Poems of Pak Chaesam, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2006.

(Translator and author of introduction) Kim Sowol, Azaleas: A Book of Poems, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Also author of another poetry collection.

SIDELIGHTS:

David R. McCann is a scholar of both Japanese and Korean literature, though he is better known for his contributions to the study of the latter. A published poet himself, McCann has been praised for translating such Korean writers as So Chongju and Kim Dae Jung, as well as editing and writing books on Korean culture and history. He first became interested in Korean poetry as a young Peace Corps volunteer teaching in that country; later, he was a student under Edward Wagner, the professor responsible for starting the Korean literature program at Harvard University. McCann has since taken up the role of the now-retired Wagner to become one of the leading experts in the United States on Korean literature.

The majority of McCann's work has been in editing and translating, though he has produced such works as Early Korean Literature: Selections and Introductions, which is a combination of collected, translated Korean poems and original essays on literary history by McCann. "Though few in number, the translations are welcome new additions to the body of Korean literature available in English," reported Kim Kichung in Korean Studies, adding: "The introductions and notes on the historical and literary backgrounds are also excellent: concise, informative, and quirky."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Korean Studies, 2001, Kim Kichung, review of Early Korean Literature: Selections and Introductions, p. 138; June, 2002, Donald W. Boose, Jr., review of War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War, p. 314.

Naval War College Review, summer, 2002, Karl Walling, review of War and Democracy, p. 166.

World Literature Today, September-December, 2005, Bonnie R. Crown, review of The Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry, p. 87.

ONLINE

Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Web site,http://www.fas.harvard.edu/ (January 22, 1998), brief biography of David McCann.

Harvard University Office of News & Public Affairs Web site,http://www.hno.harvard.edu/ (December 1, 2006), "A Poet Discovers Korea."