When:
Friday, February 14, 2020 12:30 PM
-
2:00 PM
Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs
East Asia Program
present
Korean Wave, K-Pop, and Monster Kitsch: The Politics and Aesthetics of the K-Culture Industry
A Talk by Jake Levine, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at
Keimyung University, Korea
This talk explores
the “poetic consequences of K-pop,” as poet Emily Jungmin Yoon puts it, writing
about how when she sees “BTS singing in Korean on American television and when
I see their American fans—many of them young people of color, I have
noticed—chanting along to the Korean lyrics… I want to believe... That they, in
turn, engage with translation, with imagination and creativity. That they find
poetry in that process.” What in K-pop is being translated? Does this kind of
cultural product require translation? The talk
examines the aesthetics of the K-pop culture industry, the rise of
K-pop as a global export, and some of the forces behind its production.
Jake
Levine is an American translator, poet, and scholar. He received both his BA
and MFA from the University of Arizona and is currently A.B.D in a PhD program
in Comparative Literature at Seoul National University. He works as an
assistant professor of creative writing at Keimyung University and as a lecturer
at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. He is the assistant editor at
Acta Koreana and the editor for the Korean poetry series Moon Country at Black Ocean.
His most recent translations are Kim Yi Deum’s Hysteria (Action
Books, 2019), Kim Kyung Ju’s Butterfly Sleep (Tupelo Press,
2019) and Kim Kyung Ju’s Whale and Vapor (Black Ocean, 2019).
His work has appeared in Boston Review, Granta, Hallyu Magazine, The
Margins and many other places.
Sponsored by Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, East Asia Program, Humanities Center, Asian/Asian American Studies Program,
Korean
Peninsula Affairs Center,
International
Relations Program, and Department of Languages,
Literatures, and Linguistics
Contact Havva Karakas-Keles for more information: hkarakas@syr.edu