Listening to Korean Pop Songs through Fiction

This course explores the possibility of listening closely to Korean popular music through literary fiction. Each week students learn about the histories and cultures of a different Korean musical genre (minyo, trot, military songs, rock, folk, K-pop, etc.) from the Japanese colonial era (1910-1945) to the present. The class engages with music through celebrated and lesser-known works of modern and contemporary Korean fiction, films, and critical essays on media, popular culture, and listening. Guiding these inquiries, we consider how popular songs intersect with, inform, or diverge from modern Korea's history of political upheaval, rapid modernization, and mass social movement; and the ways in which popular musical languages, cultures, and histories inform understandings of literary style, form, and narrative. It is expected that upon completion, students will be able to articulate critical and informed responses to such scholarly discussions as those surrounding cultural hybridity, collective memory, and the power of song; and apply the interdisciplinary and intermedial approaches they've learned in class to their understandings of popular song cultures more broadly. All readings are in English. No prior knowledge of Korean is necessary.