Ruth is a labor historian of modern Korea with research interests in literary history, biography and gender. Her book Factory Girl Literature examined the novels, autobiographies and poetry of Korean working-class women in conversation with European industrial literature to show the international dimensions of autodidact writing culture.
Her forthcoming book, Island Ablaze, co-edited with Jin-kyung Lee, Sang-kyung Lee and Jae-Yong Kim, anthologises Korea’s relationship with the United States in thirteen translated short stories that span the 1940s to the 2000s.
Her new book Red Glamour, co-authored with Professor Jiseung Roh from Incheon National University is about Korea’s early communist women. Research for this book has encompassed the State Archive for Social and Political History in Moscow, the North Korean collection at the National Library of Australia, The International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, and the FSB Archive in Kuznetsky Most. Red Glamour is under contract for parallel release in English and Korean.
Earlier collective book projects include Gender and Labour in Korea and Japan: Sexing Class, co edited with Elyssa Faison, (Routledge 2009) and Red Love Across the Pacific, co-edited with Heather Bowen-Struyk and Paula Rabinowitz, (Palgrave 2015).
