Robert M Oppenheim

What makes histories “big”? The focus of this course is on world histories centrally involving Asia from the medieval period to the present. It examines ways in which Asia and other areas of the globe have had connected intellectual, artistic, and social developments, and how Asia figured in the “rise of the West” to industrial and imperial dominance by the end of the nineteenth century…as well as the potential “decline of the world” with climate change. It looks also at global histories of political forms, dynamics, and spaces. Finally, it looks at Asian(-American) histories of violence and its aftermath as a way of considering a broader politics of memory and apology. Throughout the course, historiographical issues are paramount: How does one conceive of and write “connected histories”?

Grading:

• Attendance/participation: (10%)
• A and B class presentation (2.5% each, 5% total)
• First and second tests (15% each, 30% total)
• Discussion papers/blog entries (10% total)
• Exploration papers (5% each, 20% total)
• Abstract, outline, and tentative bibliography for final research paper (5%)
• Final research paper (20%)

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (commonly called North Korea) is often described as closed or unknowable, and simultaneously characterized in much U.S. public discussion as alternatively threatening, crazy/irrational, or simply pathetic. It is very rare to hear something about North Korea other than nuclear weapons, famine, or human rights/refugees; it is sometimes hard to imagine that there is an actual society there. Yet in recent years, there has emerged a growing scholarly literature precisely concerned with understanding North Korea’s historical development and its current workings as a social, cultural, and political/ideological system. Self and Culture in North Korea is focused on the questions this literature raises.

Grading:

• A and B class presentations (5% each, 10% total)
• Short assignments (5 x 5%=25% total)
• Papers (10% + 15%=25% total)
• Take-home, open-book midterm exam (15%)
• Take-home, open-book final exam (15%)
• General class participation and discussion (10%)

Please check back for updates.

Description

This course is designed as an introductory overview of Korean history, culture, and society from ancient times to the present.  It aims also to encourage students to locate their knowledge about Korea in relation to perspectives from other disciplines, while thinking critically about how history, culture, and society are understood.  This class has no prerequisites.

Please check back for updates.  Prerequisite: For Asian studies and Asian cultures and languages majors, twelve semester hours of upper-division coursework in Asian studies or Asian languages; for others, upper-division standing.

This is a course about contemporary social and political life in urban South Korea—to use a complex and problematic concept, about Korean modernity.  It focuses on present conditions and their historical background: on capitalism and development from the colonial era (1910-1945) to the present, on the perspectives of workers, white-collar employees, and students over time, on the lifestyles of the new middle class, and on the struggle for democracy and its aftermath.  We will read ethnographies of corporations, factory work, consumption, and activism, as well as accounts of popular culture and changing gender systems and roles.  We will also watch several recent films and examine other visual materials.

This course will examine major religious traditions of Korea, focusing on history and contemporary practice rather than origins, philosophical systems, or textual bases.  Topics will include shamanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and new religions, each of which will be considered from a variety of anthropological, sociological, and historical angles. We will also explore the relation between religion and politics mostly from the late 19th century to the present.  In the process, we shall seek also to ask a variety of broad empirical and conceptual questions.  How have religions in Korea been understood and used by various parties, and with what consequences?  Is “religion” a universal concept?  Can religion help explain political or economic change?  What intersections do religions have with ethics or with transnational imaginaries?

North Korea (officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is often understood almost solely through the challenges it poses, its failings, and its horrors.  The story is unremittingly one of nuclear breakout, famine, refugees, and gulags.  Without disregarding such issues entirely, this course focuses on a variety of recent attempts—notably in anthropology, history, literature, art history, and cultural studies—to understand the public culture of North Korea and the constitution of self and everyday life within it.  Readings will be supplemented with both documentary and feature films.

Anthropology of East Asia is a graduate level course designed both for anthropologists and for non-anthropologists interested in East Asia.  It has two primary goals.  The first is simply to consider contemporary topics, approaches, and frameworks in anthropologies focused on East Asia in a way useful to non-anthropologists and anthropologists alike; I group recent writings around a selection of major and minor themes.  The second is to forward a more explicit discussion of the complex intersections of theory, topic, and area focus.  Consider the following:

a) Anthropologists, often, define themselves by topic or approach, rather (or more than) the geographical area of their research.  E.g., in conversations at conferences, “I do development” often trumps “I do West Africa.”

b) Anthropologists of East Asia are sometimes exceptions to rule a.

Understanding this and its effects on the political economy of knowledge involves keeping in mind a host of tensions, overlapping histories, and divergent and convergent traditions.

This course is designed as an introductory overview of Korean history, culture, and society from the early modern era to the present. It aims to encourage students to locate their knowledge about Korea in relation to perspectives from other disciplines, while thinking critically about how history, culture, and society are understood. Class lectures will be supplemented with films, slides, and other audio-visual materials. This class has no prerequisites.

Grading:

• Class attendance and Participation (20%). Class attendance is mandatory and will be checked regularly including the add/drop period. Students are allowed one absence. For each unexcused absence after that, your final grade will be lowered by 2 points, up to a maximum of 20 points.
• In-class midterm exam (20%).
• Reaction papers (30%). Students are expected to write TWO essays (3 single-space pages) about a given topic (15% each). 
• Take-home final exam (30%). Essay questions based on class lectures, readings and films. 

This is a course about contemporary social and political life in urban South Korea—to use a complex and problematic concept, about Korean modernity.  It focuses on present conditions and their historical background: on capitalism and development from the colonial era (1910-1945) to the present, on the perspectives of workers, white-collar employees, and students over time, on the lifestyles of the new middle class, and on the struggle for democracy and its aftermath.  We will read ethnographies of corporations, factory work, consumption, and activism, as well as accounts of popular culture and changing gender systems and roles.  We will also watch several recent films and examine other visual materials.

What makes histories “big”? The focus of this course is on world histories centrally involving Asia from the medieval period to the present. It examines ways in which Asia and other areas of the globe have had connected intellectual, artistic, and social developments, and how Asia figured in the “rise of the West” to industrial and imperial dominance by the end of the nineteenth century. It looks also at global histories  of political forms and actions, social spaces and dynamics, and scientific theories and practices that have been exemplified through Asia—of, for instance, the interaction of nomadic and sedentary modes of life, domestic spaces, and “growth” as a ruling idea of economic planning. Throughout the course, historiographical issues are paramount: How does one conceive of and write “connected histories”?

This is a reading, discussion, and research based course. In order to foster discussion, I am implementing a NO (open) LAPTOPS (or tablets, or phones) POLICY for this course.  You are free to have printed materials, take notes on paper, etc.

Core Readings and Methods in Asian Studies. Various theories and methods used in the field of Asian studies, including disciplinary history, controversies, and the diversity of approaches within the field.

Description:

This course will examine the production, distribution, and consumption of East Asian popular culture. Specific topics include Hong Kong cinema, Japanese animation, Japanese trendy dramas, Korean television dramas, and K-pop music. Noting the “globalization” phenomenon, this course will address what has caused the increasing visibility of East Asian cultural products outside of the region. The growing recognition of East Asian pop culture around the globe, however, has also accompanied by more vibrant circulations of the cultural products and interactions among recipients within the region. Therefore, this course will take the globalization of popular culture as an analytical lens through which to reflect modernity, tensions of (trans)nationalism, urbanization, gender politics, and identity formations in East Asia.

Description:

The focus of this course is on various social scientific and humanistic approaches to materiality—theorizations of objects, of things, and/or of material culture.  In particular, the course highlights perspectives—ranging from science studies to deconstruction—that highlight the material aspects of texts and textual artifacts, images, and language.  Illustrative works will be drawn mostly from scholarship on East and South Asia.

This course is designed as an introductory overview of Korean history, culture, and society from the early modern era to the present. It aims to encourage students to locate their knowledge about Korea in relation to perspectives from other disciplines, while thinking critically about how history, culture, and society are understood. Class lectures will be supplemented with films, slides, and other audio-visual materials. This class has no prerequisites.

Grading:

• Class attendance and Participation (20%). Class attendance is mandatory and will be checked regularly including the add/drop period. Students are allowed one absence. For each unexcused absence after that, your final grade will be lowered by 2 points, up to a maximum of 20 points.
• In-class midterm exam (20%).
• Reaction papers (30%). Students are expected to write TWO essays (3 single-space pages) about a given topic (15% each). 
• Take-home final exam (30%). Essay questions based on class lectures, readings and films. 

Flags: Global Cultures and Writing

The focus of this course is on various recent and contemporary manifestations of “the Koreas in the world, and the world in the Koreas.” We begin with various historical formations of Korean out- and return migration, notably encompassing both Koreas. From there, we go on to look at various movements of people, products, ideas, and institutions in the last twenty years. These include labor and marriage migration from and to the Koreas, educational sojourning (and so-called “kirogi” families split by the practice), transnational adoption, tourism, international sport, and media flows (e.g., the “Korean Wave”).

What makes histories “big”?  The focus of this course is on world histories centrally involving Asia from the medieval period to the present.  It examines ways in which Asia and other areas of the globe have had connected intellectual, artistic, and social developments, and how Asia figured in the “rise of the West” to industrial and imperial dominance by the end of the nineteenth century.  It looks also at global histories of political forms and actions, social spaces and dynamics, and scientific theories and practices that have been exemplified through Asia—of, for instance, the interaction of nomadic and sedentary modes of life, domestic spaces, and “growth” as a ruling idea of economic planning.  Throughout the course, historiographical issues are paramount: How does one conceive of and write “connected histories”?

The aim of this course is to examine a variety of contemporary and recent research projects in Korean studies, ranging from humanities to the qualitative social sciences, with the goal of exploring the theoretical, conceptual, and comparative underpinnings of each.  We will look at “agenda-setting” works, and consider the research paradigms that have resulted and the empirical domains that they delineate.  Through assignments, we will also delve into the most emergent work in the field as embodied in dissertations and conference papers.  Although the focus of this course is on Korea-related writings, its object in a broader sense is the act of situating a project, and hence it may have relevance to students in other area or disciplinary fields.

This course is designed as an introductory overview of Korean history, culture, and society from the early modern era to the present. It aims to encourage students to locate their knowledge about Korea in relation to perspectives from other disciplines, while thinking critically about how history, culture, and society are understood. Class lectures will be supplemented with films, slides, and other audio-visual materials. This class has no prerequisites.

Grading:

• Class attendance and Participation (20%). Class attendance is mandatory and will be checked regularly including the add/drop period. Students are allowed one absence. For each unexcused absence after that, your final grade will be lowered by 2 points, up to a maximum of 20 points.
• In-class midterm exam (20%).
• Reaction papers (30%). Students are expected to write TWO essays (3 single-space pages) about a given topic (15% each). 
• Take-home final exam (30%). Essay questions based on class lectures, readings and films. 

FLAGS:   GC

North Korea (officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is often understood almost solely through the challenges it poses, its failings, and its horrors.  The story is unremittingly one of nuclear breakout, famine, refugees, and gulags.  Without disregarding such issues entirely, this course focuses on a variety of recent attempts—notably in anthropology, history, literature, art history, and cultural studies—to understand the public culture of North Korea and the constitution of self and everyday life within it.  Readings will be supplemented with both documentary and feature films.

Study of various Asian studies-related topics that do not focus on any single geographic region.  Specific offerings are listed in the Course Schedule.  Prerequisite: Graduate standing; additional prerequisites vary with the topic and are given in the Course Schedule.

“Science, technology, and society” (STS) is both the name of an emerging field, a set of interrelationships studied by scholars in a variety of disciplines (e.g sociology, anthropology, history, and cultural studies), and a holding tank for a set of methodologies and philosophical claims that arguably transcend their application to science per se.  In any case, the questions it opens are reasonably important in today’s world.  How do social forces/interests impact scientific practice, and vice versa?  How is science actually done?  How have technological changes impacted personhood, citizenship, etc.? 

This course aims to be an introduction to this field, with most of its examples set in South, East, and Southeast Asia.  However, the study of Asia also poses some additional conceptual questions—scientific incommensurability, cultural difference, colonialism, and postcoloniality, for starters—which we also try to address.  Finally, we seek to look at several methodological issues.

The focus of this course is on various recent and contemporary manifestations of “the Koreas in the world, and the world in the Koreas.”  We begin with various historical formations of Korean out- and return migration, notably encompassing both Koreas.  From there, we go on to look at various movements of people, products, ideas, and institutions in the last twenty years.  These include labor and marriage migration from and to the Koreas, educational sojourning (and so-called “kirogi” families split by the practice), transnational adoption, tourism, international sport, corporate expatriation, and media flows (e.g., the “Korean Wave”).

Overview: This is a course about contemporary social and political life in urban South Korea—to use a complex and problematic concept, about Korean modernity.  It focuses on present conditions and their historical background: on capitalism and development from the colonial era (1910-1945) to the present, on the perspectives of workers, white-collar employees, and students over time, on the lifestyles of the new middle class, and on the struggle for democracy and its aftermath.  We will read ethnographies of corporations, factory work, consumption, and activism, as well as accounts of popular culture and changing gender systems and roles.  We will also watch several recent films and examine other visual materials.

This course is designed as an introductory overview of Korean history, culture, and society from ancient times to the present.  It aims also to encourage students to locate their knowledge about Korea in relation to perspectives from other disciplines, while thinking critically about how history, culture, and society are understood.  This class has no prerequisites.

This course will examine major religious traditions of Korea, focusing on history and contemporary practice rather than origins, philosophical systems, or textual bases.  Topics will include shamanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and new religions, each of which will be considered from a variety of anthropological, sociological, and historical angles. We will also explore the relation between religion and politics from the late 19th century to the present.  In the process, we shall seek also to ask a variety of broad empirical and conceptual questions.  How have religions in Korea been understood and used by various parties, and with what consequences?  Is “religion” a universal concept?  Can religion help explain political or economic change?  What intersections do religions have with ethics or with transnational imaginaries?

Readings: 

Laurel Kendall, Shamans, Nostalgias and the IMF.

Robert Buswell, The Zen Monastic Experience.

Timothy Lee, Born Again: Evangelicalism in Korea.

Articles on Blackboard

Grading/Assignments:

A) Attendance = 7.5%

B) Participation = 7.5%.

C) Five short (1-2 pp., double-spaced 12 pt.) reaction papers = 10% total

D) First test = 25%

E) Second test = 25%

F) Final paper (8-10 pp., double-spaced, 12 pt.) = 25%

This course provides an introduction to the history, central issues, and past and present conceptual frameworks of the academic study of South and East Asia.  Topics include the formation of classical Indology and Sinology, the place of Asia in 19th century social thought in relation to imperialism and nationalism, the establishment and transformation of classical and national canons, the historicity of comparative projects (comparative philology, comparative religion) and their categories, translation theory, essentialism and the occlusion of areas, area studies as a Cold War institutional paradigm, the critique of Orientalism and post-Orientalist debates, and the politics of Asian studies in the American academy.  We will also engage with major authors who have been important in conceptualizing Asia, e.g., Marx, Spencer, Maine, Weber, Foucault, Said, and Spivak.

Science, Technology, and Society in Contemporary Asia

Historical and critical studies of science and technology in their relation to social, cultural, and political processes have expanded greatly in recent years. Crucial questions have centered on the way that technologies and scientific concepts are formed and succeed, the place of interests in scientific practice, the politics of expertise and the issues this poses in political life, and the relation between technology and new forms of subjectivity. This course attempts to bring together recent writing that considers such topics in Asia. The course will also introduce ways of looking at science and address issues of its specific location in Asian contexts.

This course is designed as an introductory overview of Korean history, culture, and
society from ancient times to the present. It aims also to encourage students to locate
their knowledge about Korea in relation to perspectives from other disciplines, while
thinking critically about how history, culture, and society are understood. This class
has no prerequisites.

TEXTS:

Seth, Michael, A Concise History of Korea.
Cumings, Bruce, Korea’s Place in the Sun.
 

Colonialism and Korea

Please check back for updates.

ANS 390

(CROSS-LISTED AS ANT 391):

ANTHROPOLOGY OF EAST ASIA

Uniques #31095/30555

Tu3:30-6:30, CAL 419

Spring 2010

Instructor:         Robert Oppenheim

Office:              WCH 5.134

Tel.:                  471-7279

Email:               rmo@mail.utexas.edu

Office hours:     Tu 1-3; Th 11-12

Description:  Anthropology of East Asia is a graduate level course designed both for anthropologists and for non-anthropologists interested in East Asia.  It has two primary goals.  The first is simply to consider contemporary topics, approaches, and frameworks in anthropologies focused on East Asia in a way useful to non-anthropologists and anthropologists alike; I group recent writings around a selection of major and minor themes.  The second is to forward a more explicit discussion of the complex intersections of theory, topic, and area focus.  Consider the following:

a) Anthropologists, often, define themselves by topic or approach, rather (or more than) the geographical area of their research.  E.g., in conversations at conferences, “I do development” often trumps “I do West Africa.”

b) Anthropologists of East Asia are sometimes exceptions to rule a.

Understanding this and its effects on the political economy of knowledge involves keeping in mind a host of tensions, overlapping histories, and divergent and convergent traditions.

Readings: Readings for this course will be available in one or more of three places: ERes (password: AnthEA), in databases that you can access via the UT library (American Anthropologist/Ethnologist are indexed by Anthrosource and JStor), or as books.  I’ve ordered the following books, which will also be on reserve at PCL:

Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception

Jesook Song, South Koreans in the Debt Crisis

Lisa Rofel, Desiring China

David Palmer, Qigong Fever

Heonik Kwon, Ghosts of War in Vietnam

Christopher Nelson, Dancing with the Dead

Laura Miller, Beauty Up

Ian Condry, Hip-Hop Japan

Note that I don’t expect you to read every word of books.  I don’t.  Read enough to understand what is going on and to form an opinion.  Read with graduate-level questions in mind: What “moves” of theory, method, or presentation are being made?  What evidence is being presented, how, and is it sufficient?  What are the assumptions and conclusions?  (In short, how does a book legitimate its existence?)  What possibilities or alternatives does it suggest?

Assignments:

There are five main assignments for this class; grading percentages are shown in parentheses:

1) Presentation on one week’s readings and leading of class discussion (10%): I’m thinking something in the range of a 15 minute presentation on key issues at the beginning of class, followed by some direction of discussion to issues you think are important.  This presentation can be more or less evaluative (beyond “this sucks,” please) at your discretion.

2) Presentation on your final paper topic (10%): This more formal presentation should be 15-20 minutes, the length of the standard conference presentation.  We will divide up slots for these presentations (followed by questions) over the last two classes of the term.  As for what this presentation should be about, see #4, below.

3) Written Assignment #1: Report on Asian Anthropologies/Anthropologies of Asia (6-8 pp; 20%): This assignment is meant to give you the opportunity to explore more fully contemporary tendencies, and relations between area and topical or theoretical concern, relating to one specific area of Asia.

            Pick ONE journal that publishes a lot of cultural/social anthropology specifically focused on East Asia or some sub-area.  This can be an English-language anthropology journal (e.g., Asian Anthropology), an interdisciplinary or area studies journal with a significant anthropological presence (e.g., Korea Journal, Journal of Japanese Studies), or the Asian-language or multilingual journal of an Asian anthropological society (e.g., Hanguk Munhwa Illyuhak, Bunkajinruigaku (zasshi? – whatever it’s called now), Taiwan Journal of Anthropology) or an adjacent discipline (e.g., Pigyo Minsokhak – “Comparative Folklore”).  Skim/review developments in this journal over the last 5-10 years.  Are there specific themes, concerns, or approaches that seem to predominate?  Are there tendencies of a “local tradition” of anthropology that you can detect, or not (and note that U.S. anthropology of Asia is a “local tradition” as well…).  Illustrate with reference to individual articles.

4) Written Assignment #2 (ca. 20 pp.; 40%): Topical Review of Literature or Topical Term Paper

I know you are not, many of you, anthropologists.  On the other hand, anthropologists study just about everything, and it can be useful to know about anthropological approaches or theories connected with different topics even if you never plan to do ethnography.  With those considerations in mind, for your big paper, you have two options:

            Option 1: A structured and thematized review of literature on a given topic.  Maybe you are interested in anime?  If so, you might want to know what is going on in the anthropology of transnational media.  Or you could review the anthropology of civic festival, of political violence, of digital technologies and their users, of advertising, etc.  Note that most of these topical foci will take you well beyond a focus on Asia.

            Anyway, if you choose this option I expect something akin (albeit on a smaller scale) to what you would find in Annual Review of Anthropology – that  is, a review in which you have imposed some structure by identifying different approaches or tendencies in the literature.  I expect you to consider at least 20 individual sources (books/articles), but that does NOT mean you have to consider them at equal length or with equal weight.  Some books or articles make paradigms; others only follow them – the trick is to figure out which.

            Option 2: A more conventional term paper.  You can also write on your major research or some other topic of interest.  If you do this, however, I expect you to bring some anthropological considerations to the table.

5) General Class Participation (20%)

Special Needs:  The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities.  To determine if you qualify, please contact the Dean of Students at 471-6259, 471-4641 TTY.  If your needs are certified, I will work with you to make appropriate arrangements.

Religious Holy Day Observance:  If an assignment or exam falls due on a day when you are observing a religious holy day, I will work with you to find an acceptable alternative time to complete the assignment.

1/19 Course introduction

1/26 Interlude: Discipline, Area, History: Formatting some questions

Takami Kuwayama, “The ‘World-System’ of Anthropology: Japan and Asia in the Global Community of Anthropologists,” in Yamashita, Bosco, and Eades, eds., The Making of Anthropology in East and Southeast Asia, pp. 35-56.  (New York: Berghahn, 2004).

Kwang-Ok Kim, “The Making and Indigenization of Anthropology in Korea,” in ibid., pp. 253-85.

Keelung Hong and Stephen O. Murray, “American Anthropologists Looking through Taiwan to See “Traditional” China, 1950-1990,” in Hong and Murray, Looking Through Taiwan, pp. 48-74. (Lincoln: U Nebraska, 2005).

Robert Oppenheim, “Revisiting Hrdlicka and Boas: Asymmetries of Race and Anti-imperialism in Interwar Anthropology,” American Anthropologist, March 2010.

2/2 Unit 1: Political Economy and Issues of Neoliberalism

Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception.

2/9 Jesook Song, South Koreans in the Debt Crisis.

***Give me some idea of your plans for Written Assignment #1 by this date***

2/16 Lisa Rofel, Desiring China

2/23 Unit 2: Sciences and Nonhuman worlds

Matsutake Worlds Research Group, “A New Form of Collaboration in Cultural Anthropology: Matsutake Worlds,” American Ethnologist 36(2): 380-403.

Anna Tsing and Shiho Satsuka, “Diverging Understandings of Forest Management in Matsutake Science,” Economic Botany 62(3): 244-53.

Timothy K. Choy, “Articulated Knowledges: Environmental Forms after Universality’s Demise,” American Anthropologist 107(1): 5-18.

3/2 David Palmer, Qigong Fever

3/9 Interlude: Texts and Spaces: Critical Theories and Anthropology

Maeda Ai, Text and the City, selections TBA {ERes}

Written assignment #1 due

Spring Break

3/23 Unit 3: History, Memory, and Religious Practice

Heonik Kwon, Ghosts of War in Vietnam

{possibility of rescheduling this date – TBA}

***Please give me some idea (preferably on paper or by email) of your plans for Written Assignment #2 by this date, if not before***

3/30 Christopher Nelson, Dancing with the Dead

4/6  Laurel Kendall, “Of Hungry Ghosts and Other Matters of Consumption in the Republic of Korea: The Commodity Becomes a Ritual Prop,” American Ethnologist 35(1): 154-70.

Manduhai Buyandelgeriyn, “Dealing with Uncertainty: Shamans, Marginal Capitalism, and the Remaking of History in Postsocialist Mongolia,” American Ethnologist 34(1): 127-47.

Christoph Brumann, “Outside the Glass Case: The Social Life of Urban Heritage in Kyoto,” American Ethnologist 36(2): 276-99.

4/13 Unit 4: Popular Cultures

Laura Miller, Beauty Up

4/20 Ian Condry, Hip-Hop Japan

4/27 Student presentations (1)

5/4 Student presentations (2)

5/7 Friday: Written Assignment #2 due

Please check back for updates.

 1 

ANS 361 

CAPTIALISM, CONSUMPTION, AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN KOREA 

Unique #31125 

Fall 2009 

Meets:  Tu 3:30-6:30, PAR 203 

Instructor: Robert Oppenheim 

Office:  WCH 5.134 

Tel.:   471-7279  

Email:   rmo@mail.utexas.edu 

Office Hours: Tu 2-3, Th 10-12 

Overview: This is a course about contemporary social and political life in urban South 

Korea—to use a complex and problematic concept, about Korean modernity.  It focuses 

on present conditions and their historical background: on capitalism and development 

from the colonial era (1910-1945) to the present, on the perspectives of workers, white- 

collar employees, and students over time, on the lifestyles of the new middle class, and 

on the struggle for democracy and its aftermath.  We will read ethnographies of 

corporations, factory work, consumption, and activism, as well as accounts of popular 

culture and changing gender systems and roles.  We will also watch several recent films 

and examine other visual materials. 

Course Activities: Classes will consist of student presentations, discussion, and films.  

Most classes are divided into A and B segments of an hour each, with a film screening 

making up the third hour.  For the most part, we will begin watching a film in the final 

hour of one class and continue it in the first hour of the next class, at which point we will 

have a presentation and discussion of the film. 

Assignments/Grading:  This is a SWC course, so writing makes up a significant portion 

of the class grade.  I will grade writing based upon the presence and quality of an 

argument, your use of sources, and the structure and style of your paper.  Please do try to 

be accurate in grammar and spelling; I encourage you to use the writing center or to have 

a friend read over a paper for errors.  That said, I will not mark off for minor English 

errors unless they get in the way of comprehension or seem to indicate laziness on your 

part.  I am here to teach writing, not grammar, and there is a difference. 

Ten (10) 1-page reading reactions  15% (1.5% each) 

One “super-short” (2-3 pp.) paper    5% 

One midterm paper (5-6 pp.)   25% 

One final paper (6-8 pp.)   30% 

Class presentation on readings/film  10% 

Class participation/attendance  15% 

Reading reactions: For 10 of the 13 classes beginning with the second week of 

class, you should submit a one page (1-2 paragraph) reaction to some aspect of that 

week’s readings (not films) BY MONDAY EVENING before the class is to be held.  I 

 2 

will ask you to upload your response to the discussion board on EReserve; please note 

that there are folders for each class date.  Everyone should start their own thread, though 

feel free to respond to others.  The other aspect of this assignment is that YOU SHOULD 

GO ONTO ERES AND READ the reactions of others Monday night or so before class.  

We will use these reaction papers as a partial basis for discussion. 

 Part of the point of assigning short reading reaction papers is, indeed, to check 

that you are reading for this class.  However, reading reactions should not be 

summaries, and mere summaries will have points subtracted.  Rather, I want you to 

identify a particular aspect of an author’s argument that you find especially important 

(and explain why), argue with a text, or pose a conceptual (not merely factual) question 

for discussion.  You may focus on all or part of one reading, or the relationship between 

various readings; you do not need to cover all the material for a given class. 

 “Super-short” paper: Towards the beginning of the term, I will assign a very 

short paper that will, however, require you to use sources and offer an argument.  This is 

only worth 5% of your grade and you might be tempted to blow it off.  Don’t.  This is an 

opportunity for you to get feedback on your writing before undertaking assignments that 

will substantially affect your course grade, but that feedback will only be useful to you if 

you write to the best of your ability. 

 Midterm and final papers: Each will be assigned and due on dates indicated 

below.  I will provide questions or problems for you to write on, but there will be 

considerable latitude.  Both readings and films are fair game (for you and for me)! 

 Class presentation: Each student will be called upon to present on class readings 

or a film once during the term .  Each presentation should be a MAXIMUM of 10 minutes 

in length—I WILL time you and I WILL cut you off.  As with reading reactions, 

presentations should not be summaries; rather, they should suggest important issues that a 

set of readings or a film raises and pose questions for class discussion.  Basically, your 

grade on this component of the class will depend on how well and coherently you do this.  

You may find, incidentally, that looking at your classmates’ reading responses on 

Monday night will suggest ideas; please give credit where credit is due. 

 If you present on a reading or set of readings, I have also provided some broad 

framing questions in the syllabus to think about what you might want to say.  You do not 

have to answer these questions, necessarily, and you should feel free to suggest your 

own.  If you present on a film, I hope you will relate the film to other class topics.  Also 

please note that you will be expected to present on a film immediately after we finish 

watching it in class, so it would be good if you had watched it in its entirety beforehand.  

The price of presenting on a film is going to the library to pre-screen it on your own time! 

 We will sign up for presentations on the first class meeting day.  One student per 

presentation slot, please. 

 Class participation:  This is a discussion-based class, and you will be rewarded 

for the quantity and quality of your participation.  Attendance is one factor here as well (I 

will take attendance at the beginning of classes, and bad attendance without proper 

notification will certainly hurt).  At the same time, if you are the vocal type please be 

respectful of other students and give others a chance to speak as well. 

 Graduate students should discuss required assignments with me. 

 3 

 I will make use of plus/minus grading.  Generally, I regard averages >=92 

(rounded) as an A, 89-91 as an A-, 87-88 as a B+, 82-86 as a B, and so on at equivalent 

points down the scale. 

Academic Dishonesty/Cheating can result in automatic course failure and a report to the 

appropriate Dean.  Your work on exams and papers should be your own. 

Cellphones/Computers: Cellphones and other communication devices should be turned 

off or (if you truly need to be in contact) set for silent/vibration mode.  If you need to 

make or receive a call, please leave the room before you begin talking.  Don’t ask, just 

go.  Likewise if you need to use the bathroom.  Don’t text in class. 

 In a discussion based course such as this, you shouldn’t have your laptop open 

during class. 

Email:  I usually check email once or more a day, but not always, particularly on 

weekends.  Do not rely on me reading emails you send the night before an exam or paper 

is due. 

 I would prefer receiving a hard copy of major papers.  Basically, I write 

marginalia while grading, and so someone is going to have to print the paper out…may as 

well be you.  (The Department of Asian Studies, like others at UT, is consistently under 

pressure to reduce administrative costs.  Should your stay in Austin inspire the thought of 

taking the issue of funding for higher education up with Texas legislative authorities, I 

will be happy to hold the door for you.)  The hard copy rule is not hard and fast, and if 

there is a real reason why this is difficult for you email the paper instead.  But 1) asking 

first would be nice, and 2) responsibility for technological snafus and incompatibilities 

ultimately rests with you, so check to be sure I’ve gotten it. 

Special Needs:  Any student with a documented disability who requires academic 

accommodations should contact Services for Students with Disabilities at 471-6259 

(voice) or 1-866-329-3986 (Video Phone) as soon as possible to request an official letter 

outlining authorized accommodations. 

Religious Holy Day Observance:  If an assignment or exam falls due on a day when you 

are observing a religious holy day, I will work with you to find an acceptable alternative 

time to complete the assignment. 

Readings/Films:  This class meets only once a week, so it is important to pace yourself 

and start reading early.  For many weeks, we read all or most of a book.  Also remember 

that reading reactions are due the Monday night before a Tuesday class, so that we can 

all have time to get through them and make use of them. 

 I’ve ordered the following books for this course, all available at the Coop.  They 

are also on reserve at PCL.  I recommend buying/acquiring the books (there or 

elsewhere) as soon as you commit to the course, if possible, since the Coop returns books 

to the publisher early in the term and it is best to order additional books early if that 

becomes necessary: 

 4 

 Laura C. Nelson, Measured Excess. 

 Nancy Abelmann, The Melodrama of Mobility. 

 Denise Potrzeba Lett, In Pursuit of Status. 

 Namhee Lee, The Making of Minjung. 

Other readings (as well as course documents such as weekly lists of key concepts, 

the map quiz review, etc.) will be placed on E-reserve.  These are .pdf copies of articles 

and the like; you can read them on screen or (my recommendation) print them so you can 

mark them up.  E-reserve can be accessed from any computer connected to the UT 

system.  Go to http://reserves.lib.utexas.edu/courseindex.asp and search by the course 

number or my name.  The required password to access materials for this class is CapKor 

(capital letters matter).  This is for the use of students of this class only; please do not 

share the password with others.  The listing should be alphabetical by the author’s last 

name or (when there is no listed author) by the document title. 

If there is enough sentiment for having a packet made up for the course, I will try 

to get that done, I hope by the second week or so.  We’ll discuss pros and cons. 

All films for this class will be placed on reserve at the Audiovisual Library.  If 

you wish to see a film outside of class (whether for review or because you missed the in 

class screening), you can do so there, although films cannot be taken out of the library. 

Schedule: 

1) 9/1 Introduction 

Class introduction and housekeeping 

Laurel Kendall, “Introduction,” in Kendall, ed., Under Construction: The Gendering 

of Modernity, Class, and Consumption in the Republic of Korea (Honolulu: U 

Hawaii, 2002), pp. 1-5 only {in class reading}. 

2) 9/8 Genealogies of South Korean Capitalism 

A) Beginnings: Who Cares, and Why? Presenter: 

Karl Marx, “Marx on the History of His Opinions,” (fragment) (originally preface to 

A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy), in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The 

Marx-Engels Reader, p. 5 (only) {the half paragraph from “No social order ever 

perishes...” to the end of the paragraph}. 

Carter Eckert, Offspring of Empire: The Koch’ang Kims and the Colonial Origins of 

Korean Capitalism, Preface, Ch. 1, Ch. 8, Conclusion. 

What does Eckert mean by capitalism?  What is at stake for Eckert and other 

authors in locating the origins of Korean capitalism?  What understanding(s) of 

history underlie these efforts?  If Korean capitalism has “colonial origins,” what 

 5 

consequence might this have for how it is viewed (or should be viewed) in the 

present? 

B) Structures and Conditions of South Korean Development Presenter: 

Martin Hart-Landsberg, The Rush to Development, chs. 1-2 {pp. 25-55} 

What is H-L writing against?  What was the scope and magnitude of South 

Korean development, and how/why did it occur?  What was its legacy? 

Film: “The Aimless Bullet” (???) (1961) 

3) 9/15 Modernization as Triumph, Romance, Tragedy, and Myth 

“Super-short” paper topic assigned (due 9/25, Friday) 

Film: “The Aimless Bullet” (conclusion) Presenter: 

A) Developmentalisms and Anti-developmentalisms Presenter: 

Park Chung Hee, To Build a Nation (Washington: Acropolis Books, 1971), pp. 18-31 

and 101-134.  {READ QUICKLY—skim and look at pictures} 

Walt Rostow, “The Republic of Korea: My Marginal Association with a Miracle,” in 

Concept and Controversy: Sixty Years of Taking Ideas to Market (Austin: UT Press, 

2003), pp. 254-261. 

Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America 

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2003), short excerpts pp. 42-47, 100-103. 

David J. Nemeth, “Blame Walt Rostow: The Sacrifice of South Korea’s Natural 

Villages,” in Tim Tangherlini and Sallie Yea, eds., Sitings: Critical Approaches to 

Geography in Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 2008), pp. 83-97. 

What were the promises of “modernization,” “nation-building,” and 

“development” in South Korea and in the broader world?  What were its 

effects?  What were the assumptions of classical “modernization theory” of the 

1960s, and do they hold sway today? 

B) One More Ambivalence after the Last: Modernity as Myth Presenter: 

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (section), in Tucker, ed., 

The Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 473-483. 

 6 

Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity 

(New York: Penguin, 1982), “Introduction: Modernity—Yesterday, Today and 

Tomorrow” (pp. 15-36). 

James Ferguson, “Decomposing Modernity,” in Global Shadows (Durham: Duke, 

2006), ch. 7 (pp. 176-193). 

What is “the experience of modernity?”  Do you feel it?  How do the spiritual 

conditions of “post-development” compare in South Korea versus other areas – 

Ferguson’s Africa, for example? 

4) 9/22  Inside the System: A Portrait from a Korean Corporation in the 1980s 

A) From the Top Down: Explaining Korean Corporate Leaders Explaining 

Themselves  Presenter: 

Roger Janelli with Dawnhee Yim, Making Capitalism: The Social and Cultural 

Construction of a South Korean Conglomerate (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1993), 

Introduction and chs. 1, 3 

How do South Korean corporate leaders legitimate themselves?  How do you 

think the image of such leaders compares to that in other situations/locales?  

Why do Janelli and Yim talk about “representations” of Korean culture and 

political economy, and not just culture and political economy? 

B) From the Bottom Up: Control, Response, “Resistance”  Presenter: 

Janelli with Yim, chs. 4-5, 7. 

How is the control of corporate leaders and managers reproduced?  How do 

lower level employees operate within the system?  Is Korean culture on one side 

or the other?  How might we understand Korean culture after this book? 

Film: “A Single Spark” (???? ?? ???) (1995) 

***9/25 (Friday 5 p.m.) “Super-short” paper due to me in Asian Studies department 

5) 9/29 The View from Below: The Making of the Korean Working Class 

Film: “A Single Spark” (continued) Presenter: 

A) Class Culture in Common and in Conflict Presenter: 

E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: 

Penguin, 1963), Preface (pp. 8-13). 

 7 

E.P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” in Customs in 

Common (New York: New Press, 1993; original in Past and Present 38, 1967), pp. 

352-403. 

What does Thompson mean to do by saying that the English working class was 

“made”?  How was it?  What is he arguing against?  What is involved in 

“proletarianization”?  What relationship between culture and politics does 

Thompson envision? 

B) Korean Workers and Class Formation Presenter: 

Hagen Koo, Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation (Ithaca: 

Cornell UP, 2001), chs. 2-3, 6 (pp. 23-68, 126-152).  {All on E-Reserve} 

How does Koo use Thompson’s argument?  What was the Korean working class 

“made out of”?  What sorts of experiences were central, and how do these 

compare to other contexts/situations?  How have custom and culture been 

important issues in labor conflict in South Korea? 

6) 10/6 Another Angle: The State, Mobilization, and Gender 

A) Men and the Mobilizing State Presenter: 

Seungsook Moon, Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea 

(Durham: Duke, 2005), chs. 1-2. 

Sheila Miyoshi Jager, Narratives of Nation Building in Korea (Armonk: M.E. 

Sharpe, 2003), ch. 5. 

What does Moon mean by “discipline” (evoking Michel Foucault)?  How were 

men disciplined in South Korea’s developmentalist years?  How did this relate 

to their subjectivity and their “subjectification” (how they became subjects of 

history)?  What role did the military play?  How was/is South Korea a 

militarized society, according to Moon, and how does this compare with other 

places?  

B) Women and the Construction of Nation Presenter: 

Jager, ch. 3. 

Moon, ch. 3. 

What was the place of women in the “narrative of nation,” e.g. Yi Kwang-su’s 

work, according to Jager?  What might one imagine this place to be today – in 

Korea or elsewhere, in novels or other media?  What were the mechanisms that 

produced gender relations under state developmentalism? 

 8 

Film: “Green Fish” (?? ???) (1997) 

7) 10/13 The Movement Sphere 

Film: “Green Fish” (continued) Presenter: 

A) Meanings and Conditions of Minjung Presenter: 

Namhee Lee, The Making of Minjung (Ithaca: Cornell, 2007), Intro, chs. 1, 3. 

What are the minjung?  What assumptions (about history, etc.) underlay this 

category?  What were the roles and effects of Yusin, Gwangju/Kwangju, and 

anti-Americanism? 

B) The Counterpublic and the Politics of Alliance Presenter: 

Namhee Lee, chs. 4, 6-7. 

Consider aspects of the culture and practice of the undonggwôn – can you 

compare anything?  What were the conditions and difficulties of student 

attempts to ally with labor?  What does Lee mean by the relation between 

Gramscian organicism and Leninist vanguardism?  Does this tension exist 

anywhere else? 

Midterm paper assigned (due 10/30 Friday) 

8) 10/20 The 1990s and “New New Social Movements” 

A) Citizens to the Fore: The Post-1987 Shift Presenter: 

Sunhyuk Kim, “Civil Society in South Korea: From Grand Democracy Movements 

to Petty Interest Groups?” Journal of Northeast Asian Studies 15(2): 81-97. 

Nancy Abelmann, Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent (Berkeley: U California 

Press, 1996), ch. 9 {pp. 226-248}. 

Robert Oppenheim, Kyôngju Things (Ann Arbor: U Michigan Press, 2008), ch. 7. 

What shifts to these authors identify?  What is the relationship between simin 

and minjung movements in discourse, life histories, etc.?  What other 

dimensions might we talk about?  How do different authors/groups regard these 

developments of the 1990s? 

B) An Exercise: Issues, Networks, and the Self-Presentation of Korean Social 

Movement Organizations Presenter: 

 9 

Spend some time reading material linked on the following websites (not just the front 

page): 

For the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice (??????????): 

http://www.ccej.or.kr/english/ or http://www.ccej.or.kr/ (Korean) 

For the Korean Federation of Environmental Movements (??????): 

http://english.kfem.or.kr/ or http://www.kfem.or.kr/ (Korean) 

How do these organizations organize?  What issues do they find important?  

How do they construct their relation to other past or present movements?  To 

society?  

Film: “Beat” (??) (1997) 

9) 10/27 Of Salarymen and Apartment Towers: South Korea’s New Middle Class 

Film: “Beat” (continued) Presenter: 

A) Making Money, Making Families Presenter: 

Denise Potrzeba Lett, In Pursuit of Status: The Making of South Korea’s “New” 

Middle Class (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 1998), Intro and Chs. 1- 

3 {pp. 1-96}. 

What is “new” about the new middle class, and what is not?  What relationship 

does Lett see between Confucianism and capitalism, and how is the middle class 

“between”?  What are the advantages and assumptions of a focus on status? 

B) Livin’, Learnin’, Lovin’ Presenter:  

Lett, chs. 4-6 and Conclusion {pp. 97-228}. 

To what extent can there be said to be a convergence of middle-class lifestyles 

around the world?  What are significant differences in life or motivation?  Do 

you agree (last page) that the middle class has “contributed”? 

***Midterm paper due 10/30 Friday*** 

10) 11/3 Gender, Nationalism, and the Politics of Consumption 

A) Space, Policy, and Strategies of Affluence Presenter: 

 10 

Laura C. Nelson, Measured Excess: Status, Gender, and Consumer Nationalism in 

South Korea (New York: Columbia, 2000), Preface and Chs. 1-3. 

Consider the Korean real estate market comparatively: how has the housing 

system contributed to socioeconomic differentiation?  What role does the state 

play in consumption, in South Korea and elsewhere?  Why does Nelson choose a 

strategy of offering “vignettes” and what does it do for her? 

B) Consumption, National Time, Domestic Others Presenter: 

Nelson, chs. 3-6. 

How might we best understand consumer nationalism in Korea, according to 

Nelson?  Consider some examples of the temporality of consumption, and the 

paradoxes of national time.  How do the (broken) promises of the South Korean 

national narrative that Nelson discusses compare to other such narratives? 

Film: “Attack the Gas Station” (??? ?? ??) (1999) 

11) 11/10 The Asian Financial Crisis 

****Final paper assigned (due Friday of the last week of class, 12/4)**** 

Film: “Attack the Gas Station” (cont.) Presenter: 

A) Political Economy Presenter: 

T.J. Pempel, “Introduction,” in Pempel, ed., The Politics of the Asian Economic 

Crisis (Ithaca: Cornell, 1999), pp. 1-14. 

Bruce Cumings, “The Asian Crisis, Democracy, and the End of ‘Late’ 

Development,” in Pempel, pp. 17-44. 

Meredith Woo-Cumings, “The State, Democracy, and the Reform of the Corporate 

Sector in Korea,” in Pempel, pp. 116-142. 

What were the causes and consequences of the crisis?  What/who is at fault?  

What does the political perspective the authors offer bring to the table? 

B) Neoliberalism and social effects Presenter: 

Jesook Song, "Family Breakdown and Invisible Homeless Women," positions 14(1): 

37-65. 

Seung-Kyung Kim and John Finch, “Living with Rhetoric, Living against Rhetoric: 

Korean Families and the IMF Economic Crisis,” Korean Studies 26: 120-39. 

 11 

What sorts of effects did the Asian Financial (“IMF”) crisis have on Korean 

families?  How was the IMF understood in public discourse, and how did this 

discourse interact with its practical realities?  What is “neoliberalism,” and 

what sort of shifts in the relations of individuals and society does it gloss? 

12) 11/17 Women, Talk, and Class 

A) Keywords of Social Life after Development Presenter: 

Nancy Abelmann, The Melodrama of Mobility (Honolulu: Hawaii, 2003), Preface 

and chs. 1-3. 

Why melodrama?  What would some comparable keywords be? 

B) Masculinities, etc. Presenter: 

Abelmann, chs. 6-7, 9. 

How/why does Abelmann bring film into the discussion?  How does her look at 

masculinity compare to others? 

Film: “Take Care of my Cat” (???? ???) (2001) 

13) 11/24 Globalization, Multiculturalism, New Identities 

Film: “Take Care of my Cat” (cont.) Presenter:  

A) Meanings of Globalization, and Gay Identities  Presenter:  

Gi-Wook Shin, Ethnic Nationalism in Korea (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 

2006), ch. 11. 

Younghan Cho, “Unfolding Sporting Nationalism in South Korean Media 

Representations of the 1968, 1984, and 2000 Olympics,” Media, Culture and Society 

31(3): 347-364. 

John (Song Pae) Cho, “The Wedding Banquet Revisited: ‘Contract Marriages’ 

Between Korean Gays and Lesbians,” Anthropological Quarterly 82(2): 401-422. 

What have been some of the differing assumptions and agendas of 

“globalization” in Korea?  How has it played out in different contexts?  What 

are the local politics and cultures of gay and lesbian identities? 

B) Multicultural Korea(?) Presenter: 

 12 

Cho Uhn, “Towards a Multicultural Society?” Korea Journal 47(4). 

Han Kyung-Koo, “The Archaeology of the Ethnically Homogeneous Nation-State 

and Multiculturalism in Korea,” ibid 

Han Geon-Soo, “Multicultural Korea: Celebration or Challenge of Multiethnic Shift 

in Contemporary Korea?” ibid 

Eun Mee Kim and Jean S. Kang, “Seoul as a Global City with Ethnic Villages.” ibid 

Is South Korea becoming “multicultural”?  Is this inevitable?  What might this 

mean, and how might it compare to other “local multiculturalisms”? 

14) 12/1 Consumption, Meaning, and (Neo-) “Tradition” Presenter: 

Hyangjin Lee, “Chunhyang: Marketing an Old Tradition in New Korean Cinema,” in 

Shin and Stringer, pp. 63-78. 

Sangmee Bak, “McDonald’s in Seoul: Food Choices, Identity, and Nationalism,” in 

James L. Watson, ed., Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia (Stanford: 

Stanford UP), pp. 136-160. 

Rebecca Ruhlen, “Korean Alterations: Nationalism, Social Consciousness, and 

‘Traditional’ Clothing,” in Re-Orienting Fashion (London: Berg, 2003), pp. 117-138. 

How can we best understand moral discourses on consumption in Korea?  What 

is being consumed in each case?  How do objects/goods, places, and practices 

interrelate? 

Film: “The Way Home” (???) (2002) No Presentation 

***Final Paper due 12/4, Friday (5 pm), in my office in Asian Studies*** 

There is no separate final exam for this class. 

Please check back for updates.

The Signature Course (UGS 302 and 303) introduces first-year students to the university’s academic community through the exploration of new interests. The Signature Course is your opportunity to engage in college-level thinking and learning.

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Study of various Asian studies-related topics that do not focus on any single geographic region.  Specific offerings are listed in the Course Schedule.  Prerequisite: Graduate standing; additional prerequisites vary with the topic and are given in the Course Schedule.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Study of various Asian studies-related topics that do not focus on any single geographic region.  Specific offerings are listed in the Course Schedule.  Prerequisite: Graduate standing; additional prerequisites vary with the topic and are given in the Course Schedule.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.