Gender, Family, and Social Change

This course examines the transformation of Korean society beginning around the turn of the 20th century to contemporary times. In particular, it explores how shifting categories of masculinity, and by contrast, femininity have impacted upon, and in turn been influenced by social, cultural, and political change.
The class will draw on a variety of topics such as traditional views of women, religion, race, class, education, patriarchy, sexuality, imperialism, modernity, war, globalization, the diaspora, among others. Special attention will be placed on the historical, transnational and transdisciplinary connections.
Section
Learning Objectives
- To recognize the durability and persistence of forms of gender and sexual inequality.
- To sensitize students to the position of women in Korean society.
- To recognize “gender relations” as a laborious process that requires interaction with special formations of power, of institutions, practices and discourses that establish, and regulate its shape and meaning.
Learning Objectives
- To discuss how a form of modern family is born and unmade in the contemporary Korea
- To identify the role of manager moms in the making of modern Korean families, and how specific gendered division of roles in both private and public lead to recent changes in Korean families
- To understand how globalizing structures and compositions of Korean families challenges what marriage, intimacy, cultural diversity, gender roles within families, and human rights of foreigners are to Korea as a state
understanding how globalizing structures and compositions of families challenges what marriage, intimacy, cultural diversity, gender roles within families, and human rights of foreigners are to as a state
Learning Objectives
- To analyze the intersectionality of class, gender, race and sexuality.
Chinese textbook helps boys find masculine side amid ‘gender crisis’ caused by effeminate men in Japanese, Korean culture
Discussion Point
Neoliberalism and Stratified Korean Society
Section
Learning Objectives
- To identify what sexuality is and how it is culturally mediated
- To understand the sexual desires, gendered expectations, sexual identity and sexual relations of Koreans are socially constructed and is thus changing
- To examine sexuality as the interface between the social context and personal experiences, and find out how the social factors such as gender, class, and sexual orientations shape the experiences of Korean people
Feminism in south Korea
Family and Sexuality in Korea
Sexual Minorities in Korea