Gender and Korean Literature

4 credits · Undergraduate

This course examines Korean literature from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries through the perspectives of gender. Although the modern discourse of enlightenment in Korea, beginning in the early twentieth century, has been sharply critical of gender inequality in premodern Korea, the gender relations represented in premodern Korean literature are much more complex and dynamic than we might expect. To revise our understanding of gender in premodern Korea, this course seeks to examine how gender is imagined particularly in terms of the body, bodily practice, and theatrical performance.