November 12 (M), November 14 (W), November 16 (F), November 19 (M)

Reading instructions for this unit: Pick two articles from the list below, one from the top group of three, and another from the second group of three. I've selected two articles on which you might focus, indicated in bold type. You can either read those, or you can pick two articles of your own choosing.

Read: Leshkowich and Jones, "What Happens When Asian Chic Becomes Chic in Asia?" (Moodle article)
Lee, "Beauty between Empires: Global Feminisms, Plastic Surgery, and the Trouble with Self-Esteem" (Moodle article)
Tu, "White Like Koreans: The Skin of the New Vietnam" (Moodle article)

Lie, "What Is the K in K-pop? South Korean Popular Music, the Culture Industry, and National Identity" (Moodle article)
Fish, "Authorizing Yoga: The Pragmatics of Cultural Stewardship in the Digital Era" (Moodle article)
Bestor, "How Sushi Went Global" (Moodle article)

1. What do Jones and Leshkowich mean by performance practices? How does it allow us to make sense of Asian Chic dress choices in Asia? What, in your opinion, are the advantages and disadvantages to this approach?

2. What are techno-orientalist imaginings? How does Lee use this concept to analyze critiques of plastic surgery in South Korea by US feminists?

3. Why, according to Lee, are the critiques of plastic surgery in Korea offered on Jezebel and by Womenlink ultimately not so very different?

4. How, according to Tu, are narratives and practices related to skin, and particularly its lightness or brightness, ways that Vietnamese make sense of the world in the midst of rapid economic and cultural transformation? Why are South Korean products and Koreanness important in this regard?

5. Why is K-Pop inextricably linked to South Korea's export imperative? How can K-Pop simultaneously be central to Koreanness and claims of continuity between past and present yet have "almost nothing 'Korean'" about it?

6. What is cultural stewardship? What dilemmas does it raise? Why does Fish see it as central to understanding debates about intangible cultural heritage in this age of digital globalization?

7. How, according to Bestor, do commodities, culture, capital, and people flow in the trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna?

 

Topic for RESPONSE PAPER #8 (2-3 pages, double-spaced, due on November 19 by email before class to Professor Leshkowich.) Please remember to submit your paper as a Microsoft Word document named lastname8.docx.

Option 1: Research Proposal: An Ethnographic Study of Cultural Travels
In our unit on aging in Japan, we took time in class to imagine that Jason Danely had been asked to consult on a research project about how older Chinese use the IKEA store in Shanghai. This unit's response paper asks you to engage in a similar exercise based on one of the articles that you read. To prepare for the paper, pick one of the two articles you read. Make sure that you can summarize the author's central argument and the key terms or concepts that the author uses to develop that argument. Next, pick a phenomenon in which an element of culture travels and which involves either something commonly perceived as Asian or Asian consumers. Try to be specific: if you pick yoga, it might not be yoga in general, but perhaps yoga classes at Holy Cross or in a community with which you are familiar. If you pick manga, perhaps you might look at specific manga or a specific group of individuals who engage with manga, such as through a club. You could even pick the play that you will be seeing on Thursday night.

Now that you know the cultural phenomenon you would like to study and the author whose ideas you will apply to your study, you're ready to compose your essay. Your essay will take the form of a research proposal. The pieces of a research proposal are as follows:
- Introduction: Begin with a description of the research topic. This might take the form of a brief vignette that allows a reader to understand the topic and the issues at stake.
- Key questions: In the final sentences of your intro paragraph or in a second paragraph, state what the central questions of your research would be. Why are these questions important?
- Relationship to existing scholarship, aka "lit review": In 1-2 paragraphs, explain how your research will build upon the work of the author you've read. What key concepts or arguments did that author develop? Why might they be useful to your research? Or why might they be less helpful or have gaps that your research will address? A lit review allows you to relate your anticipated research to the work of other scholars to show how you might build upon their insights or push the conversation into new directions. Through this conversation, you show why your research promises to be interesting or significant.
- Methods: Briefly explain what your research methods will be and how they will allow you to address your key questions. Be specific! Don't just say participant observation; state what you will do, where, with whom, how often, and over what period of time.
- Conclusion: State what you expect the findings might be and how they might be significant.

Option 2: Letter to the Editor
For this assignment, you are to pretend that you are one of the authors you read and that you are writing a "letter to the editor" of a media source that has recently published an article about the topic of that author's research. First, find a newspaper or reliable electronic media account from the past five years that discusses that topic. Next, determine how the scholar you have chosen might respond to the article. Would that scholar agree with the way that the author of the article depicted or assessed the phenomenon? Are there other parts of the situation that the scholar would be likely to emphasize? Different conclusions that the scholar would draw? And why might those be significant? (Important! Although you will be writing "in character" as the scholar, be sure that your discussion allows you to highlight what you personally see as the strengths or weaknesses of the scholar's analysis.)