From Cool Japan to the Korean Wave: Popular Culture from East Asia

Catalog description

The hegemony of American popular culture notwithstanding, cultural products from Japan and South Korea are becoming significant players in the globalization of culture. From the de-Disneyfied anime to the hybridized R&B K-pop, these cultural products challenge American cultural domination, and inspire alternate forms of aesthetics, participation and enjoyment. This course examines the historical formation of Japanese and Korean popular culture, focusing on their contested cultural meanings at the national, regional, and global scales. Some of the issues we will consider include: cultural imperialism, fandom, the role of the state and the development of cultural industry, representations of race and gender, capitalism and transnationalism. 001304