Courses

Korea-related Course Offerings for Fall 2024:

Korea Content Courses

• EALC Art, Pop, and Belonging: Or, How to Talk about Korean Popular Culture, taught by So-Rim Lee

From K-pop and film to fashion, cosmetics, food, and art, South Korean culture seems to be everywhere. In this course, we will discuss how the cadences of Korean culture shifted in tandem with the sheer amount of historical and social change experienced by the Korean people throughout the twentieth century. Specifically, we will look at art and talk to artists, listen to K-pop, and contemplate how these cultural representations activate a sense of belonging and social coalition for marginalized communities in Korea. Addressing topics such as gender and sexuality, modernity and national trauma, xenophobia and racial tensions, queer feminist movements, and cultural transnationalism in the neoliberal era, we will pay particular attention to the structures of power and the role of the “other” in the construction of contemporary South Korea. In so doing, we will also rethink our own positionality in consuming Korean popular culture as North America-based scholars “looking at” Korea from a geographic, cultural, and social distance. All class materials will be in English; no previous knowledge of Korean language is required.

• EALC Gender and Sexuality in Korea, taught by So-Rim Lee

How have gender and sexuality been historically constructed and shifted in modern and contemporary Korea? How did terms like “new woman,” “t'ibu,” or “soybean paste girl” enter the popular discourse at different points of its capitalist modernity? This graduate seminar investigates gender/sexuality at large in relation to heteropatriarchal kinship system, ableist national biopolitics, and normative citizenship on the Korean peninsula from late Chosŏn to current times. Moving through the eras of Japanese occupation, the Korean War and division, developmental dictatorships, to the current millennia, we focus on the critical role that gender and sexuality played—and continue to play—in the political, social, cultural, and economic dimensions of nation-building, democratization, and neoliberalization that shaped the contemporary Korean societies. In this discussion-based seminar, we will read a broad range of secondary sources and explore different methods in interdisciplinary Korean studies including historiography, feminist cultural anthropology, queer and crip theories, among others.

• SOCI Economic Development, Education, and Inequality in East Asia, taught by Hyunjoon Park

Where are East Asian economies and education headed? Can a new model of East Asian economy and education be established to achieve economic sustainability and equity in rapidly changing global contexts? In this seminar, we will survey 1) evolution of the East Asian economic model, focusing on changes in economic development strategies, labor market structures, and relationships with global economies; and 2) features of East Asian educational systems, focusing on educational opportunities and learning outcomes. In reviewing East Asian economy and education, a central question is not only how productive East Asian economy and education is but also how equal economic and educational opportunities are in the region. In the final part of the seminar, students will come up with some policy recommendations for East Asian economy and education to better achieve economic sustainability and equity. This graduate-level course is also open to advanced undergraduate students.

• SOCI Social Inequality and Health: Global Implications, taught by Su Yeone Jeon

How are health, illness, and treatment shaped by society and its structures? This course provides an overview of how various social determinants of health—e.g., race, class, gender, culture, and environment—are connected to health disparities and shape access to healthcare. Specifically, we examine how an uneven distribution of resources and contested power dynamics among social groups lead to persistent inequalities in health outcomes in both the U.S. and global contexts. Additionally, we explore the professionalization of medicine, the industrialization of healthcare, as well as the forces that have led to “medicalization” in our society. Finally, we will examine the political economy of health care—that is, how governments interact with markets to influence medical services and what health care reform might look like.

Korean Language Courses: https://ealc.sas.upenn.edu/course-list/2024C/all/all