“From Tradition to Brand” examines the construction of a ‘global’ Korean culture in the late 20th and early 21st centuries through the imbrication of cultural production and information technologies. “Global Korea” seeks to transcend the geographic boundaries of the Republic of Korea while simultaneously re-inscribing the limits of ethnonational identity by confusing the temporal distinctions of tradition and ethnic belonging to the geopolitical construct of “Korea.” Globalization was introduced in Korea as a nationalist project that continued on the developmental trajectory that had been pursued by the preceding authoritarian regimes, but the movements of South Korean citizens, diaspora Koreans, and non-ethnic-Korean immigrants in and out of the country has created a transnational community of shared social and cultural practices that now constitute the global image of Korean culture. National culture had been a major site of conflict between authoritarian regimes, opposition groups, and the specter of North Korea over the representation of a unified culture and ethnic heritage. However, civil society and economic successes in the 1990s brought about a crisis of identification, while migration flows began to threaten the exclusive correspondence between citizenship and ethnic identity. Studies of contemporary Korea have recognized the nationalist appropriation of globalization, but I argue that the parallel development of national culture and information technology in South Korea has resulted in a deracinated signifier of “Koreanness” that can be performed through the consumption and practice of mediated “Korean” content. Through a study of cultural policies; international literary events; and literature, film, and popular culture texts, I trace the vicissitudes of intervention and opposition by state, institutional, and individual actors involved in the production and transmission of Korean culture. I begin with the imbrication of national culture and information technology in Chapter 1, from the establishment of the Ministry of Culture and Information in the 1960s, to the application of the country’s well-developed research and technology sectors to the newly defined “cultural industries” in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In Chapter 2, I analyze the proceedings of international literary events held in Seoul from 2003-2011 that protested the instrumentalization of culture while decrying the persistence of a hierarchy of cultural distinction in “World Literature.” These chapters draw out the productive tension between the state’s conception of culture as content or commodity to be regulated, and the international artistic establishment’s view of culture as a “field of struggle.” In the following chapters I chart the intermedial discourse of identity and belonging to communities of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, national origin, and class through cultural texts from the early 2000s. In Chapters 3, 4, and 5, I analyze newly canonized literature and films about migrant laborers to South Korea (Ch. 3); popular TV dramas about Korean cuisine and the culinary industry (Ch. 4), and “historical” narratives that challenge generic boundaries through time travel, hybrid sonic registers, and alternate histories (Ch. 5). South Korea becomes the signifier of an ideal “Korean” space in these texts. It is at once a de-territorialized multi-ethnic space of excessive consumption; an idealistically cosmopolitan, yet ethnically homogeneous space of economic and class mobility; and a socially progressive atemporal space of pre- and post-modern aesthetes. “From Tradition to Brand” builds on critical discourses of multiculturalism, globalization, visual media, genre, narrative, and transnational cultural studies to conclude that South Korean global culture performs a temporal double-bind that erases its present-tense cultural identity in favor of a recuperative past in the utopian future.

Socialist realist fiction is a form that combines images and ideas based on realism and incorporates certain features of romanticism. The concept that human society develops from darkness to light, a key element in historical materialism, forms the foundation of socialist realism. It is a genre whose characters belong to a "great family" of socialist revolutionaries rather than to the traditional biological family of other literary forms. By depersonalizing and objectifying characters, socialist realist fiction highlights the maturation of the hero from spontaneity to consciousness. Socialist realist fiction is akin to Scripture because in its use as a parable to promote the "sacred spirit," an ideology that incorporates both Marxism and Leninism. It condenses an author's view on historical development into the behaviors and ideas of a single hero.

The question of the relationship between modernity and poetic classicism has typically been investigated through the lens of classical-style poetry, which is to say, by examining poetry written in the modern period which adheres to existing poetic forms and eschews the European influences and free-verse style of New Poetry (xin shi). But as premodern poetry existed within a classical media ecology alongside calligraphy and painting, to understand the ways conventional poetry confronted modernity, this dissertation argues, we must also understand the way this media ecology was transformed, as well as how this constellation of modes shifted from a literati practice during imperial China to a modern, even revolutionary practice in the twentieth century. I argue that changing conceptions of the zi, or character, were central to this transformation, and to the production of poetic classicism in the modern period. I understand the zi as a material, visual, and theoretical site at which the temporal, political, and aesthetic properties of poetry are articulated, a site which transgresses the boundaries between calligraphic inscription, pictorial representation, and poetic utterance. Covering a wide variety of media, including underground literary journals, political cartoons, paintings, typography, and theatre, this study investigates the ways changing conceptions of the zi allowed writers, artists, poets, and politicians to adapt classical poetics to contemporary political concerns. At stake is more than an expanded--or even revisionist--history of twentieth-century Chinese poetry. Rather, by tracing processes of canon formation, dissolution, and rearticulation in a way that reveals the role of literature in crafting political sentiment, this project shows how so-called traditional culture has been leveraged in support—and critique—of Chinese nationalism today.

This dissertation focuses on fiction and pictorials (huabao, 畫報) in the early twentieth century and its relation with the new visual technologies of the time, mainly photolithography, but also lantern slides and photography. It explores how these visual mediums were self-reflected in fiction and pictorials and how they connected these two literary expressions, as well as their constant transformation. It concludes that this type of intermediality and self-reflexivity came as a response to China’s modernization during the late Qing Empire (1868-1911). Most scholars agreed that photolithography was the catalyst for reproducing visual images in large quantities, which facilitated the hybrid publishing space of pictorials and, in tandem with the other visual mediums, allowed them to act as a multimedia platform. My dissertation demonstrates how fiction also participated in this new visual media ecology created by photolithography and thus contributes to the exploration of an aesthetic, social, and political moment in the late Qing Empire. Major texts discussed in this dissertation include Sequel to Dreams of Shanghai Splendor 續海上繁華夢, The Flower of the Sea of Sin 孽海花, The Tales of the Moon Colony 月球殖民地小說, and The Current News Pictorial 時事畫報, as well as other critical works that also reflect modernization, propaganda, anti-imperialism, and cosmopolitanism. It is widely assumed that this intermedial experimentation was introduced to China with the global trend of modernism in the 1920s and 1930s. However, my dissertation demonstrates an earlier experiment in the 1900s in the literati’s first attempt to directly respond to modern visual and printing technologies. I argue this early experiment should be understood as one of the last attempts to revitalize the traditional Chinese chapter novels (Zhanghuixiaoshuo, 章回小說) during a time when they were gradually being displaced by Westernized modern fiction. I further demonstrate that by depicting the material production of the pictorials, the artists made them not merely a static medium that captured the development of the cities, but rather a transformative medium that developed alongside these cities. My approach will challenge the current methodology that views pictorials as the transparent publishing medium that passively recorded the sociopolitical changes, thus redefining the dynamics of the pictorial images, its production and modernization. These discoveries and analyses will illuminate the transformations of both Chinese pictorials and fiction, and the brave experimental spirit of their writers and artists during the technological transition at the turn of the twentieth century.

This thesis examines the theme of gender and power relationships in the works of Ding Ling (1904-1986) and Zhang Ailing (1920-1995), focusing particularly on two novels: Ding Ling’s The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River (1948) and Zhang Ailing’s The Rice-Sprout Song (1954). Through this examination, this thesis demonstrates the critiques by these authors of the CCP and its policies which, while ostensibly guaranteeing equality to women, in actuality do nothing more than reinscribe traditional Confucian gender values. This thesis situates these novels historically, and places them into the context of the author’s other writings. The analysis focuses on three main aspects of these two novels: violence, repression of women’s desire, and female sexuality. Through a close reading informed by a feminist approach to gender relationships, this thesis demonstrates the startling similarities in the critiques of Ding Ling and Zhang Ailing, despite the writers’ different political ideologies and situations in regard to the CCP.

The Journey to the West (西游记) is one of the masterworks of classic Chinese fiction. It was written by Wu Cheng‘en (吴承恩) in the 16th century CE. Many of the scholars, both Chinese and Western, who have studied the narrative of this Ming era (1368-1644) novel, have considered it to be an epic of myth and fantasy, heavily laden with allegorical meaning. Most scholars have chosen to interpret the novel by means of an encompassing framework of meaning rooted in the convergence of the teachings of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. I propose to look at the Journey’s narrative structure as a heroic adventure or monomyth of the kind proposed by Joseph Campbell, following the insights of Carl Jung on the nature of the collective unconscious. To analyze the component parts of the quest story that forms the bulk of the novel‘s narrative, I shall turn to Vladimir Propp‘s categorization of the functioning of elements of plot and character in his morphology of folktales. I shall also argue that the Journey is not an allegory that serves the beliefs and practices of a number of religions and philosophies, but a specifically Buddhist allegory. The Journey is seen as intentionally composed of symbols, images, and codes that function to project a heroic adventure with a complex pattern of meaning, primarily representing the eternal human struggle for identity and a fully realized existence, that are Buddhist in nature.

This dissertation examines a cluster of texts centered on Hizakurige 膝栗毛, or Shank’s Mare, by Jippensha Ikku 十返舎一九 (1765-1831), the first eight installments of which were published annually between 1802 and 1809 in the city of Edo, now Tokyo. The series follows its ruffian protagonists Yajirobē 弥次郎兵衛 and Kitahachi 喜多八 on a picaresque journey, as they make their way down the Tōkaidō highway 東海道 (literally, “Eastern Seaboard Road”) on a largely spurious pilgrimage to the Grand Shrine at Ise. Hizakurige rapidly established Ikku as a major figure in the world of gesaku 戯作 (roughly, “vernacular popular writing”) at the turn of the 19th century, and remains one of the most famous, enduringly-popular pieces of gesaku ever written, known at least in passing to most people in contemporary Japan. Despite this, there has been no dissertation-length study of Hizakurige written in English until now. Accordingly, I investigate the roots of its immense popularity by examining the nuanced layers of laughter and enjoyment—or warai 笑い—that Yaji and Kita’s stories have brought to the readers of Hizakurige over the last two centuries. To do so, I explore a variety of sources, media, and genres that Jippensha Ikku drew upon to build the multifaceted and dynamic world of Hizakurige-related texts—or Hizakurigemono 膝栗毛物—with the groundbreaking first eight installments serving as the unifying nadir for my inquiries. I start with an in-depth introduction to Ikku’s life and his works, detailing his experiences as a writer, illustrator, playwright, poet, traveler, and, eventually, as a person with physical disabilities, which reveal much about the tone, style, and contents of Hizakurige. I examine scholarship on Ikku’s work has to date, and propose frameworks centered on the intertwined structural and compositional concepts of sekai 世界 (literally, “world”) and shukō 趣向 (roughly, “innovation”) in gesaku as conceptualized by Nakamura Yukihiko 中村幸彦 (1911-1998). The second chapter revolves around the role played by kyōka 狂歌 (comic poetry) in Ikku’s development as a creator of gesaku. Centered on two compilations of kyōka edited and illustrated by Ikku—Ikyoku suzukuregusa 夷曲十廻松 (Rustic Rhymes: Rustling in the Pines, 1799) and Ikyoku azuma nikki 夷曲東日記 (Rustic Rhymes: A Diary of Eastern Times, 1800)—the chapter makes use of a framework that hinges on shukō to analyze the structural and poetic techniques that kyōka poets had at their disposal to create meaning, develop narratives, and, ultimately, instill their poetry with wit and amusement. I take up the topic of Nansō kikō tabisuzuri 南総紀行旅眼石 (Travels to Nansō with a Glittering Ink-stone: The Gem-sights of the Journey, 1802) in the third chapter. Although it is an illustrated, kyōka-centric, two-protagonist travelogue written by Ikku in the same year as the first installment of Hizakurige, Tabisuzuri appears to have been a total flop. To discover why this might be, I examine the bibliographic and biographical context in which Tabisuzuri came to be written, explore how the poetically dense paratextual apparatus of its various prefaces function, and analyze a series of linked scenes from the main body of Tabisuzuri that are the direct progenitors for two of Hizakurige’s most infamous episodes. In the fourth chapter, I consider Hizakurige in the context of travel writing, beginning with the prefatory matter of Hizakurige, then discussing the influence of two groups of travel texts upon the development of Hizakurige: first, Chikusai 竹斎 (1621), by Toyama Dōya 富山道冶 (date of birth unknown -1634), and Tōkaidō meisho ki 東海道名所記 (Record of Famous Sites of the Tōkaidō, 1659), by Asai Ryōi浅井了意 (c. 1612-1691); and, second, a trio of illustrated guidebooks (Meisho zue 名所図会) written in 1780, 1796, and 1797 by Akisato Ritō 秋里離島 (fl. 1770-1830). In a comparative analysis, I show how the two-person protagonist structure of Hizakurige draws on models frequently seen in travel writing, and investigate how Yaji and Kita’s characterization is enlivened through their depiction both as equals and as lovers. I also investigate how and why Ikku makes increasingly extensive—but decreasingly innovative—use of motifs taken from the illustrations in Ritō’s Meisho zue series. Finally, in the fifth chapter I examine how Hizakurige is deeply influenced by shukō drawn from performative genres—particularly kyōgen—and how Hizakurige is imbued with a kind of “latent performativity” that offers a hybrid mode of engagement with the text that sits at the intersection between “reading” and “performing.” I contend that this latent performativity comes about through the operation of Hizakurige’s shukō, both as individual, discrete shukō that function in the context of a single moment of the text, and as more extended, structural “macro-shukō” that shape broader swaths of the text’s character and have a greater impact upon the development of Hizakurige’s sekai. Accordingly, I investigate how Ikku imitates and innovates upon shukō drawn from two kyōgen plays—Dobukacchiri どぶかっちり (“Kerplunk”) and Kitsunezuka 狐塚 (“Fox Mound”), exploring the key characteristics of these two kyōgen pieces, and carrying out comparative analyses of the relevant scenes in Hizakurige. Over the course of the dissertation, I attempt to offer a variety of answers to one central question: why does Hizakurige matter, and what is its significance for our understanding of the development of gesaku in the late Edo period (1603-1868)? I contend that Hizakurige is important not just because of its immediate success, or its subsequent influence on surrounding textual and dramatic genres, or its enduring popularity, but also because it demonstrates the need for a more fruitful approach for the study of early modern Japanese popular literature: one predicated not just on genre, but on the intertwined interactions of sekai and shukō.

This thesis will investigate contemporary Japanese film as a reflection of and commentary on gender relations in Japan. This thesis will discuss two contemporary Japanese films: Love and Pop (1998) and Swing Girls (2004). By employing feminist perspectives we will illustrate that form and content work together in these films to offer both positive and negative critiques of gender relations. Because this thesis examines how these films illustrate high school girls and what kinds of messages they provide, it will apply Mulvey’s (1975) feminist film theory and Morohashi’s (2009) research, which is about visual images of contemporary Japanese women. This thesis will pay attention to specific camera techniques, lighting, and settings, which directly connect with the films’ content. We will analyze the form and content of these two Japanese films to show how the interpretation of a work of art, specifically a feminist interpretation, emerges from the relationship between form and content.

My area of research is Modern Japanese Literature and Film, and my thesis examines the collaborations between the writer Abe Kôbô and filmmaker Teshigahara Hiroshi, two artists who addressed the themes of identity and alienation in modern society through their work together. Specifically, I focus on the process of adaptation, looking at how the themes from the original texts are approached and captured cinematically. Such a study will allow me to explore the relationship between the two media, the differences in the presentation of theme and the possibilities of translation. The collaborations between Abe and Teshigahara offer a rare opportunity to conduct a survey on a specific pair of writer and director over the course of several works, tracking the evolution of their artistic vision and practice. What I hope to achieve through this project is to situate film adaptation as a valuable branch in the study of narrative, demonstrating its exciting possibilities in providing a discourse on the re-imagining of words through images.

My area of research is Modern Japanese Literature and Film, and my thesis examines the collaborations between the writer Abe Kôbô and filmmaker Teshigahara Hiroshi, two artists who addressed the themes of identity and alienation in modern society through their work together. Specifically, I focus on the process of adaptation, looking at how the themes from the original texts are approached and captured cinematically. Such a study will allow me to explore the relationship between the two media, the differences in the presentation of theme and the possibilities of translation. The collaborations between Abe and Teshigahara offer a rare opportunity to conduct a survey on a specific pair of writer and director over the course of several works, tracking the evolution of their artistic vision and practice. What I hope to achieve through this project is to situate film adaptation as a valuable branch in the study of narrative, demonstrating its exciting possibilities in providing a discourse on the re-imagining of words through images.