FROM PHONOGRAPHS TO K-POP: A SONIC HISTORY OF EAST ASIA.

Catalog description

This course examines East Asian media from the period shortly after World War I to the present day, through a particular channel: sound. How people spoke, what they sang, what they listened to, and the auditory technologies they used are all questions that can bring us closer to everyday histories of Asia. In addition, through our readings and primary sources, we will use sound analysis as our tool to explore major watershed events over the last century including nationalist language movements in the 1920s, popular culture during World War II, the Cold War and political contestations over music and listeners, cultural and technological innovations such as the Walkman in the 1980s, and consumer markets for K-Pop in the twenty-first century.