VISST 4454 - Modernity, Spatiality, and Urban Culture: Seoul

(crosslisted)
(also ASIAN 4454) @ (CA-AS)

Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

E. Choi.

Seoul is the source of the Korean Wave (Hallyu) in music, film, architecture, art and popular culture, as well as an important socioeconomic, political, and cultural center, both within Northeast Asia and increasingly the globe. However, underneath the glitter of modernity and globalization visible in the urban sprawl of contemporary Seoul are forgotten stories, invisible practices, contested claims, and a tumultuous history which include 35 years of Japanese rule, a war, and the ongoing presence of 28,500 American troops. Using an interdisciplinary approach focusing on the treatment of the Seoul city in literature, visual culture, and media, this course will provide students with an understanding of the “spatial turn” in modernity and intellectual history, through a tour of this dynamic city as it developed from a royal/imperial capital (1392-1910), a colonial one (1910-45), to today, a 21st century “Design City.”