KOR/CMPL/WGST 237 Rebel, Lover, Martyr: Gender and Sexuality in North and South Korean Screen Cultures

This course introduces students to the history of North and South Korean film and popular culture through the lens of gender and sexuality. Covering the period between the colonial era and the present, it explores the primary role that representations of gender and sexuality have played in the shaping of central themes of North and South Korean film, television, and mass culture: imperial exploitation and resistance; the formation of postcolonial identity; tensions between the individual and the collective; the normalizing as well as liberatory functions of transnational genre forms. Additionally, the course will also explore the creative and critical links that representations of gender and sexuality have established between a range of canonical and independent directors including Bong Joon-ho, Shin Su-won, Shin Sang-ok, Kim-Jho Gwangsoo, and Jeon Go-woon. LA, BN