AREA STUDIES
East Asia Program <- Back
Imagining Contemporary Asia
S HUM 419Cornell University
This seminar will revisit some of the arguments on globalization and cultural change/re-formation that have emerged, and reconsider them in relation to rapid developments in East Asia since the 1980s that have led to the significance of "East Asia" as a region. Specifically, we will consider the fact that globalization creates/strengthens trade within regions and how increased regional trade circulations may contribute toward an emergent and improvised imagining of an Asian Modern in the realms of cultural identity, cultural production, and visual art exhibitions. This seminar will keep in mind that the omnibus term "Asia" is a historic colonial/post-colonial problematic, and made to cover a great of cultural and social diversity. There will be an examination of the critical scholarship that has emerged from East Asia itself since the 1990s. The seminar will then proceed to look at various artistic productions, "high" and "mass" cultural products and consider the contrasting and similar attitudes towards a putative contemporary "East Asia."