6 Credits | Dr. Zoe Meng Jiang
Contemporary media cultures from East Asia are now everywhere in the global cultural arena. Pop phenomena like Anime, K-pop, fan fiction, Mukbang, eSports, Tiktok are simultaneously agency-generated cultural products, state-sponsored industries, and fandom-distributed virtual communities. In this course, we will explore the explosion of new media practices in contemporary East Asia and the resulting forms of media production, circulation and reception that have transformed modes of identity-formation, sociality, economy, and political organizations. Combining approaches of media studies, performance studies, and cultural studies, this course examines major topics such as the idol industries, fan labor via social and web-based media, the inter-related nature of popular cultures in East Asia, the hybridization of Western pop culture with Korean, Japanese, and Chinese cultural developments, etc. Particular attention is given to how identities are negotiated on both local and global levels in the lens of race, gender, and sexuality.
Assessment: 100% coursework.