3:45 p.m., June 27, 2008--Hannah Kim, a doctoral candidate in history at UD, has received an Asian, Black, Hispanic and Native American United Methodist History Research Grant of $1,000 from the United Methodist Commission on Archives and History. The grants encourage research and writing on topics related to the history of Methodism.

Kim, who is currently an instructor at Rowan University, is researching American perceptions of Koreans from the 1880s to the 1965 when immigration laws changed, resulting in a large increase of Asians settling in the United States.

“Whenever I took American history courses, I had the constant thought, 'Where are the Asian voices?' because there has been a large Asian population in the United States for a long time,” Kim, who has a Korean background, said. “Then I had an internship at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and worked on a project of on the Korean community in Philadelphia. This experience triggered my interest in Koreans in the United States and how Americans perceived them for my dissertation.”

American Methodist and Presbyterian missionaries were present in Korea in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Kim said. She is writing a dissertation chapter on this era when Christian Koreans were accused of conspiring against the Japanese occupation of the country. The grant is for research on the Methodist missionaries in Korea at Drew University where the archives are kept.

A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, Kim has a teaching certificate in secondary education from Rowan University, a master's degree in American history from Rutgers University and a master's degree in history from UD. She is a research assistant at UD and worked on the Historical Literacy Project to improve teacher knowledge of American history.