Rate My Professor Sheila Jager

Sheila Miyoshi Jager is a Professor of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College, serving as Chair of the East Asian Studies department, Chair of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Director of the East Asian Studies Program, and Director of the Russian, Eastern European & Eurasian Studies Program. She earned her PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1994, an MA from Middlebury College in 1985, and a BA from Bennington College in 1984. Jager's research focuses on war, empire, and revolution in modern East Asia. She teaches courses such as Cold War in Asia, Korea & East Asia: From Ancient Times to the Present, The Korean War, The Opening of Korea 1860–1910, and The Great War & East Asia.

Jager is the author of several acclaimed books, including The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2023), which received the 2024 Robert L. Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association and the 2024 Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History from the Royal United Services Institute. Other major publications include Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea (W.W. Norton/Profile Books, 2013), selected for the 2013 National Book Festival and named one of the Best Books on Asia by Foreign Affairs; Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism (M.E. Sharpe, 2003; Routledge, 2016); and Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia (Harvard University Press, 2007, co-edited with Rana Mitter). Forthcoming works include From War to Revolution: The Great War and East Asia (Harvard University Press) and The Korean War: A Local History (co-authored with Jiyul Kim, Cambridge University Press). She has published articles in Politico Magazine, History Today, Wilson Quarterly, Public Culture, New Literary History, Journal of Asian Studies, and positions, as well as contributions to the Cambridge History of America and the World (2021). Jager received a Senior Scholar Fulbright Fellowship for research in South Korea (2014-15) and a Smith Richardson Foundation International Security & Foreign Policy grant (2020). She has delivered lectures at institutions including Stanford University, the Wilson Center, and Ohio State University, and appeared in documentaries such as PBS's Korea: The Never-Ending War (2019).