Asian Media & Pop Culture

(4 Credits)

This course surveys Asian media and popular culture with an emphasis on cultural developments from the 1990s onward. The material we explore hails from various parts of Asia and the Asian diaspora, including East and Southeast Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia. Rather than looking for a single meaning of “Asianness,” we examine the transnational flows, fissures, and movements of images, capital, and politics associated with the term (think memes, BTS, anime). Likewise, we scrutinize the “popular” in popular culture, asking how it might signify beyond mass entertainment, as an omnipresent yet invisible infrastructure defining our daily life.