Empire and its Aftermath: Modern Culture in Japan and the Koreas

This course introduces the modern cultures of Japan and Korea through an examination of events, artifacts, and cultural practices. With a broad understanding of culture as a general process of artistic and intellectual development, as a body of material artifacts, and as a social practice of ordinary life, attention will be brought to the relationship of high culture, popular media and political activism to the abiding structures of empire. Topics covered may include: early colonial fiction, the re-creation of tradition, the proletarian arts, myth in the DPRK, ethnic minority experience, the globalization of popular culture, girls' culture, and translational activism.