Results for KOREA

For over a decade now, South Korea has established itself as a tireless generator of soft power, the popularity of its pop-culture spreading from Asia to the rest of the world. This class will look into the economic engine that moves this "cultural contents" industry, and will examine some of its expressions in the form of K-pop, soap operas, tourism, food, sports, and fashion in order to illuminate the ways in which Korean culture is being (self-)narrated and consumed in this era of globalization of the 21st century.

For over a decade now, South Korea has established itself as a tireless generator of soft power, the popularity of its pop-culture spreading from Asia to the rest of the world. This class will look into the economic engine that moves this "cultural contents" industry, and will examine some of its expressions in the form of K-pop. Class meets in East Asia Library (Lathrop Library), Rm 338.

This introductory survey will examine the development of South and North Korean literature from the turn of the 20th century until the present. The course will be guided by historical and thematic inquiries as we explore literature in the colonial period, in the period of postwar industrialization, and contemporary literature from the last decade. We will supplement our readings with critical writing about Korea from the fields of cultural studies and the social sciences in order to broaden the terms of our engagement with our primary texts.

Ethics and violence seem to be contradictory terms, yet much of Korean film and literature in the past five decades has demonstrated that they are an intricate and in many ways justifiable part of the fabric of contemporary existence. Film exposes time and again the complex ways in which the supposed vanguards of morality, religious institutions, family, schools, and the state are sites of condoned transgression, wherein spiritual and physical violation is inflicted relentlessly. This class will explore the ways in which questions about Truth and the origins of good and evil are mediated through film in the particular context of the political, social, and economic development of postwar South Korea. Tuesday classes will include a brief introduction followed by a film screening that will last on average for two hours; students that are unable to stay until 5 pm will be required to watch the rest of the film on their own.

Did you grow up watching Pokémon and Power Rangers? Have you danced along to "Gangnam Style"? As we become increasingly exposed to Asian popular culture and the Internet facilitates instant access to new media, previous localized forms of entertainment--animated cartoons, comics, video games, music videos, film, and soap operas--have become part of a global staple. However, these cultural forms have emerged not only in their original form with mediation of subtitles. Many have undergone various processes of adaptation and translation so that we no longer recognize that these products had ever originated elsewhere. This course will immerse students in a range of Japanese and Korean cultural phenomena to reveal the spectrum of translation practices across national boundaries. We will inquire into why these cultural forms have such compelling and powerful staying power, contextualize them within their frames of production, and explore the strategies, limitations, and potential of translational practices.nnContact instructor for place. dafnazur@stanford.edunKnight 201.

Close analysis of fiction and poetry in original Korean. Discussion of the works in a broader context of Korean literature, history, and current events. Translation of Korean fiction that has not previously been translated; select translations will be considered for publication. Prerequisite: three years of Korean language.

Literature for children often reflects society's deepest-held convictions and anxieties, and is therefore a critical site for the examination of what is deemed to be the most imperative knowledge for the young generation. In this respect, the analysis of both texts and visual culture for children, including prose, poetry, folk tales, film, and picture books illuminates prevalent discourses of national identity, family, education and gender. Through an examination of a diverse range of genres and supported by the application of literary theories, students will obtain an understanding, in broad strokes, of the birth of childhood and the emergence of children's literature of China, Korea and Japan from the turn of the century until the present.

Korea and China have long been intertwined in their political, economic, and cultural histories. The depth of this historical relationship has enormous ramifications for East Asia today. This course will investigate the history of Korea-China relations from its deep roots in the ancient past, through its formative periods in the early modern period and the age of imperialism, to the contemporary era. Topics to be covered include formation of Chinese and Korean national identity, Sino-Korean cultural exchange, premodern Chinese empire in East Asia, China and Korea in the wake of Western and Japanese imperialism, communist revolutions in East Asia, the Korean War, and China's relations with a divided Korea in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Particular attention will be paid to how the modern and contemporary ramifications of past historical relations and how contemporary Chinese and Koreans interpret their own and each others' pasts.nThis course will ask students to engage with diverse interpretations of the past and to consider how a common history is interpreted by different audiences and for different purposes. What are the implications of divergent memories of a single historical event for Chinese and Korean political, cultural, and ethnic identities? How are political, cultural, and ethnic identities constructed through engagement with difference? And what is at stake in different constructions of identity?In addressing these issues, students will also engage in social inquiry. They will be asked to understand how political ideology, economic organization, and social forces have shaped the character of Sino-Korean relations. What are the economic and political institutions that influence these relations in each time period? How do ideologies like Confucianism, Communism, or free-market liberalism interface with Chinese and Korean societies and impact their relations?

In the early modern period, East Asian societies featured long-established institutions of learning and traditions of knowledge. This course examines the relationship between knowledge and power in East Asia societies prior to 1900. It explores how knowledge production operated in late imperial China (1550-1900), Chos'n Korea (1392-1910), and Tokugawa Japan (1600-1868). Among the themes addressed are: the state's role in patronizing science and knowledge; major intellectual movements; engagement with Western science and religion; East Asian statecraft; and East Asian understandings of space and geography. nTaking a holistic perspective, it places science and technology in 1) a social and cultural context 2) in relation to other bodies and fields of knowledge 3) in comparison to other societies in a similar historical time period. A socially embedded perspective on knowledge and science seeks to appreciate how politics, society, and knowledge are integrated, and in particular how science and knowledge can be both instruments and sites of political power. By exploring these links, the course will also illustrate how our modern disciplinary categories of natural science,social science and the humanities cannot be taken for granted and the areas of knowledge they cover can be deeply intertwined. nnThe course will also address these issues historically and across geographic regions in East Asia and beyond. The comparative lens and frameworks these perspectives can offer will bring an awareness of the diverse traditions of knowledge production in East Asia. Its examination of East Asian encounters with Western paradigms of knowledge throughout the early modern period will also illustrate how communication occurs across cultural, social, and linguistic barriers and how diverse world-views were managed in these encounters. These encounters of knowledge-exchange between Jesuit missionaries, Ming literati, Korean aristocrats, and Japanese doctors also show how cultural identities were constructed, reinforced, and challenged. These identities, expressed through the mastery of knowledge, are essential for understanding how East Asian reckoned with growing pressures to adopt Western industrial technology and military science in the late nineteenth century.

What is tyranny? When does political power cease to be legitimate and government become tyrannical? And what can individuals do in the face of tyranny? This course will explore East Asia's long political tradition through the problem of tyranny and its resistance. We will cover a wide range of material. We begin with how seminal political thinkers in East Asia, including Warring States philosophers such as Mencius and Han Feizi, understood the boundary between legitimate and illegitimate authority. We will also look at the strategies used by various political actors, including government officials, cultural or social elites, and common people, when they confronted what they perceived to be the unjust exercise political power, whether in the form of despotic monarchs, corrupt authorities, or general misrule. Our discussions will be wide-ranging. We will pay particular attention to how these historical examples from China, Korea, and Japan¿s past have resonated with modern and contemporary political discussions in contemporary East Asian societies.

EALC students writing a Senior Capstone Essay who wish to conduct research with their adviser may enroll in this course for 1 unit, for 1 quarter.

EALC seniors or juniors pursuing honors research should sign up for this course under their faculty adviser for research credit.

Directed Reading in Korean Studies, requires instructor consent before enrolling.

For over a decade now, South Korea has established itself as a tireless generator of soft power, the popularity of its pop-culture spreading from Asia to the rest of the world. This class will look into the economic engine that moves this "cultural contents" industry, and will examine some of its expressions in the form of K-pop, soap operas, tourism, food, sports, and fashion in order to illuminate the ways in which Korean culture is being (self-)narrated and consumed in this era of globalization of the 21st century.

This introductory survey will examine the development of South and North Korean literature from the turn of the 20th century until the present. The course will be guided by historical and thematic inquiries as we explore literature in the colonial period, in the period of postwar industrialization, and contemporary literature from the last decade. We will supplement our readings with critical writing about Korea from the fields of cultural studies and the social sciences in order to broaden the terms of our engagement with our primary texts.

Ethics and violence seem to be contradictory terms, yet much of Korean film and literature in the past five decades has demonstrated that they are an intricate and in many ways justifiable part of the fabric of contemporary existence. Film exposes time and again the complex ways in which the supposed vanguards of morality, religious institutions, family, schools, and the state are sites of condoned transgression, wherein spiritual and physical violation is inflicted relentlessly. This class will explore the ways in which questions about Truth and the origins of good and evil are mediated through film in the particular context of the political, social, and economic development of postwar South Korea. Tuesday classes will include a brief introduction followed by a film screening that will last on average for two hours; students that are unable to stay until 5 pm will be required to watch the rest of the film on their own.

Did you grow up watching Pokémon and Power Rangers? Have you danced along to "Gangnam Style"? As we become increasingly exposed to Asian popular culture and the Internet facilitates instant access to new media, previous localized forms of entertainment--animated cartoons, comics, video games, music videos, film, and soap operas--have become part of a global staple. However, these cultural forms have emerged not only in their original form with mediation of subtitles. Many have undergone various processes of adaptation and translation so that we no longer recognize that these products had ever originated elsewhere. This course will immerse students in a range of Japanese and Korean cultural phenomena to reveal the spectrum of translation practices across national boundaries. We will inquire into why these cultural forms have such compelling and powerful staying power, contextualize them within their frames of production, and explore the strategies, limitations, and potential of translational practices.nnContact instructor for place. dafnazur@stanford.edunKnight 201.

Close analysis of fiction and poetry in original Korean. Discussion of the works in a broader context of Korean literature, history, and current events. Translation of Korean fiction that has not previously been translated; select translations will be considered for publication. Prerequisite: three years of Korean language.

Literature for children often reflects society's deepest-held convictions and anxieties, and is therefore a critical site for the examination of what is deemed to be the most imperative knowledge for the young generation. In this respect, the analysis of both texts and visual culture for children, including prose, poetry, folk tales, film, and picture books illuminates prevalent discourses of national identity, family, education and gender. Through an examination of a diverse range of genres and supported by the application of literary theories, students will obtain an understanding, in broad strokes, of the birth of childhood and the emergence of children's literature of China, Korea and Japan from the turn of the century until the present.

Korea and China have long been intertwined in their political, economic, and cultural histories. The depth of this historical relationship has enormous ramifications for East Asia today. This course will investigate the history of Korea-China relations from its deep roots in the ancient past, through its formative periods in the early modern period and the age of imperialism, to the contemporary era. Topics to be covered include formation of Chinese and Korean national identity, Sino-Korean cultural exchange, premodern Chinese empire in East Asia, China and Korea in the wake of Western and Japanese imperialism, communist revolutions in East Asia, the Korean War, and China's relations with a divided Korea in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Particular attention will be paid to how the modern and contemporary ramifications of past historical relations and how contemporary Chinese and Koreans interpret their own and each others' pasts.nThis course will ask students to engage with diverse interpretations of the past and to consider how a common history is interpreted by different audiences and for different purposes. What are the implications of divergent memories of a single historical event for Chinese and Korean political, cultural, and ethnic identities? How are political, cultural, and ethnic identities constructed through engagement with difference? And what is at stake in different constructions of identity?In addressing these issues, students will also engage in social inquiry. They will be asked to understand how political ideology, economic organization, and social forces have shaped the character of Sino-Korean relations. What are the economic and political institutions that influence these relations in each time period? How do ideologies like Confucianism, Communism, or free-market liberalism interface with Chinese and Korean societies and impact their relations?

In the early modern period, East Asian societies featured long-established institutions of learning and traditions of knowledge. This course examines the relationship between knowledge and power in East Asia societies prior to 1900. It explores how knowledge production operated in late imperial China (1550-1900), Chos'n Korea (1392-1910), and Tokugawa Japan (1600-1868). Among the themes addressed are: the state's role in patronizing science and knowledge; major intellectual movements; engagement with Western science and religion; East Asian statecraft; and East Asian understandings of space and geography. nTaking a holistic perspective, it places science and technology in 1) a social and cultural context 2) in relation to other bodies and fields of knowledge 3) in comparison to other societies in a similar historical time period. A socially embedded perspective on knowledge and science seeks to appreciate how politics, society, and knowledge are integrated, and in particular how science and knowledge can be both instruments and sites of political power. By exploring these links, the course will also illustrate how our modern disciplinary categories of natural science,social science and the humanities cannot be taken for granted and the areas of knowledge they cover can be deeply intertwined. nnThe course will also address these issues historically and across geographic regions in East Asia and beyond. The comparative lens and frameworks these perspectives can offer will bring an awareness of the diverse traditions of knowledge production in East Asia. Its examination of East Asian encounters with Western paradigms of knowledge throughout the early modern period will also illustrate how communication occurs across cultural, social, and linguistic barriers and how diverse world-views were managed in these encounters. These encounters of knowledge-exchange between Jesuit missionaries, Ming literati, Korean aristocrats, and Japanese doctors also show how cultural identities were constructed, reinforced, and challenged. These identities, expressed through the mastery of knowledge, are essential for understanding how East Asian reckoned with growing pressures to adopt Western industrial technology and military science in the late nineteenth century.