Gender and Sexuality in Korean Culture Ehwa Summer School 2014

Todd A. Henry Assistant Professor, UCSD Department of History Acting Director, UCSD Program in Transnational Korean Studies [email protected]

Course Description This course will examine how gender and sexuality have been used to investigate modern and contemporary Korean culture, especially in its social, political, economic, and military dimensions. After an introductory session on these concepts, our course will proceed across the twentieth century in a loosely chronological fashion, visiting key moments and sites when and where gender and sexuality were tied to historical transformations and contentious politics. These include patriarchy and sexual violence as they relate to both middle-class and lower-class women as well the emergence of queer movements and cultures in a contemporary Korea that is becoming increasingly multicultural. The course will expose students to a number of research articles, primary documents, feature and documentary films, as well as public institutions and media around which gender and sexuality have been discussed and made visible. By the end of the course, students will be able to assess narratives and representations of gender and sexuality in Korean culture, ones that have tended to oscillate between obfuscation and hyper-visibility.

Grading and Requirements Attendance and Participation (including in-class presentations) 25% Paper 1 (Due in class on July 7) 25% Paper 2 (Due in class on July 21) 25% Final Exam (In class on July 23) 25%

**All readings are available in the course reader and/or as PDFs. You should be sure to bring all readings to class, either as printouts or on a portable device.

WEEK 1: INTRODUCTIONS AND BEGINNINGS

Introduction (Tuesday, June 24) Introductions In class screening and discussion: YMCA Baseball Team (2002; 104 minutes)

Conceptual Framings (Wednesday, June 25) Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis,” The American Historical Review 91:5 (Dec. 1986): 1053-1075 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1 (New York, Vintage Books, 1990), 17-49

Women and the Politics of Patriarchy (Thursday, June 26) Hyaeweol Choi, “New Woman, Old Woman,” in New Women in Colonial Korea: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2013), 26-47 In class screening and discussion: New Woman: Her First Song (2004; 63 minutes)

WEEK 2

Turn of the Century Masculinities (Monday, June 30) Vladimir Tikhonov, “Masculinizing the Nation: Gender Ideologies in Traditional Korea in the 1890s-1900s,” Journal of Asian Studies 66:4 (Nov. 2007): 1029-65 John Whittier Treat, “Introduction to Yi Kwang-su’s ‘Maybe Love’ (Ai ka, 1909)” and “Maybe Love (Ai ka, 1909)” in Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature & Culture 4 (2011): 315-27

“New Women” Concerns (Tuesday, July 1) Hyaeweol Choi, “Love, Marriage, and Divorce,” in New Women in Colonial Korea: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2013), 94-138 In class screening: Sweet Dream (1936; 46 minutes)

The “Comfort Women” System (Wednesday, July 2) Chin Sung Chung, “The Origin and Development of the Military Sexual Slavery Problem in Imperial Japan," Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 5:1 (Spring 1997): 219-253 “I Would Rather Die Than…,” in Dai Sil Kim-Gibson (ed.), Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women (Parkersburg, Iowa: Mid-Prairie Books, 1999), 12-31 In class screening and discussion: In the Name of the Emperor (1998; 50 minutes)

“Comfort Women” Memories and Critiques (Thursday, July 3) Hyunah Yang, “Re-membering the Korean Military Comfort Women: Nationalism, Sexuality, and Silencing,” in Elaine H. Kim and Chungmoo Choi (eds.), Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism (London: Routledge, 1997), 123-139 Alexis Dudden, “‘We Came to Tell the Truth’: Reflections on the Tokyo Women’s Tribunal,” Critical Asian Studies 33:4 (2001): 591-602 In class screening and discussion: Breaking the History of Silence: The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal for the Trial of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery (2000; 68 minutes)

WEEK 3

Field Trip 1 (Monday, July 7) **PAPER 1 DUE IN CLASS** Field trip to Women’s Museum

Camptowns and their Transnational Cultures (Tuesday, July 8) W. Taejin Hwang, “An Indispensable Edge: American Military Camptowns in Postwar Korea,” in Wen-hsin Yeh (ed.), Mobile Subjects: Boundaries and Identities in the Modern Korean Diaspora (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 2013), 88-122 Kang Sŏk-kyŏng, “Days and Dreams,” in Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton (trans.), Words of Farewell: Stories by Korean Women Writers (Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 1989), 1-27 In class screening and discussion: The Women Outside (1995; 60 minutes)

Domestic Sex Work (Wednesday, July 9) Jin-kyung Lee, “Domestic Prostitution: From Necropolitics to Prosthetic Labor” in Service Economies: Militarism, Sex Work, and Migrant Labor in South Korea (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 79-123 In class screening and discussion: Yŏngja’s Heyday (1975; 103 minutes)

Militarized Modernity (Thursday, July 10) Seungsook Moon, “Trouble with Conscription, Entertaining Soldiers: Popular Culture and the Politics of Militarized Masculinity in South Korea,” Men and Masculinities 8:1 (July 2005): 64-92 Insook Kwon, “Masculinity and Male-on-Male Sexual Violence in the Military: Focusing on the Absence of the Issue,” in Setsu Shigematsu and Keith L. Camacho (eds.), Militarized Currents: Toward a Decolonized Future in Asia and the Pacific (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 223-49 In class screening and discussion: Going South (2012; 45 minutes)

WEEK 4: QUEERING KOREA

Filmic “Queerings” of the Past (Monday, July 14) Pil Ho Kim and C. Colin Singer, “Three Periods of Korean Queer Cinema: Invisible, Camouflage, and Blockbuster,” Acta Koreana 14:1 (2001): 115-134 Jeeyoung Shin, “Male Homosexuality in the The King and the Clown: Hybrid Construction and Contested Meanings,” Journal of Korean Studies 18:1 (Spring 2013): 89-114 In class screening and discussion: The King and the Clown (2005; 119 minutes)

LGBT Politics (Tuesday, July 15) Youngshik D. Bong, “The Gay Rights Movement in Democratizing Korea,” Korean Studies 32 (2008): 86-103 Seo Dong-jin, “Mapping the Vicissitudes of Homosexual Identities in South Korea,” Journal of Homosexuality 40: 3/4 (2001): 65-79 In class screening (clips) and discussion: Miracle on Jongno Street (2010; 117 minutes)

Transgender Korea (Wednesday, July 16) Patty Jeehyun Ahn, “Harisu: South Korean Cosmetic Media and the Paradox of Transgendered Neoliberal Embodiment,” Discourse 31.3 (2009): 248-272 Tari Youngjung Na and Hae Yeon Choo, “Becoming a Female-to-Male Transgender (FTM) in South Korea,” in Chris Bobel and Samantha Kwan (eds.), Embodied Resistance: Challenging the Norms, Breaking the Rules (Nashville: Vanderbilt Press, 2011), 48-57 In class screening and discussion: To Become 2 (2013; 80 minutes)

Queer Practices of Survival and Pleasure (Thursday, July 17) John (Song Pae) Cho, “The Wedding Banquet Revisited: ‘Contract Marriages’ between Korean Gays and Lesbians,” Anthropological Quarterly 82:2 (2009): 401-22 Ji-eun Lee, “Beyond Pain and Protection: Politics of Identity and Iban Girls in Korea,” Journal of Lesbian Studies 10.3/4 (2007): 49-68 In class screening and discussion: Two Weddings and a Funeral (2012; 106 minutes)

WEEK 5: FROM THE PAST, TOWARD THE FUTURE

Field Trip 2 (Monday, July 21) **PAPER 2 DUE IN CLASS** Field trip to Korean Sexual Minority Culture Rights Center

Gender and Sexuality in a Multicultural Korea [and Final Exam Review] (Tuesday, July 22) Andrew Eungi Kim, “Global Migration and South Korea: Foreign Workers, Foreign Brides and the Making of a Multicultural Society,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 32:1 (2009): 70-92 In class screening and discussion: N.E.P.A.L: Never Ending Peace and Love (2003; 23 minutes)

Final Exam (Wednesday, July 23) **IN CLASS FINAL EXAM**