Teaching "Korean Popular Music in Context" at University of British Columbia

I've already been in Vancouver for months, but it seems that I cannot find time to catch my breath. My current backlog of things to do includes:

• Writing half of a chapter for a book on how to talk about Korean performance, sort of an introduction to the specialized and representative terminology (the topics in the chapter have been divided, I'm responsible for half of them). After both of us have written, then I'll have to go back and work with my co-author on editing them into a coherent whole. The book is part of a series with many different countries represented, and the authors were all part of a workshop in Berlin last summer where we hashed out what to write about (and who would write about each topic). 
• Editing and encouraging the writing of another chapter for the same book. I'm the native English speaker, but the other author is senior and more of a practitioner, so if he doesn't start writing soon I should put my encouraging hat on. As I understand it, I will be using my advanced knowledge of the topic and my English skill to make his writing more academic, more of a match with the volume, and of course, more fluent. 
• Writing a chapter for a book that will accompany a museum exhibition in Germany. 
• Reviewing a book (a solicited review for Journal of Western Folklore)
• Reviewing another book (a solicited review for Ethnomusicology Forum)

• Preparing my conference paper for Association for Asian Studies in Toronto in March. Yes, I know many people write their paper on the plane but 1) I don't work well that way and 2) I'm on the job market so I need to be schmoozing and shaking hands and attending talks, not locked in my room writing my paper throughout the conference. Also, it's a new project which means it requires more work to get it ready. 

• Finishing up a journal article on K-pop cover dance that is more than half done (and the research is done-for-now, although it is an evolving field so I will have to write more about it in the future). 
• Reading and responding to various other people's work (the only way to ask them to look at mine^^). I am really behind on this. 

-and most of all-

• Finishing my book. The idea was to be done in the summer, then I got this postdoc and decided I'd rather finish it while I was here (the postdoc application did indicate I'd work on it this year), get feedback from people here, and take advantage of a little more time to improve it. But since I got to Vancouver I haven't even opened the files. 

What have I been doing? 1) Teaching my class, and 2) job applications (they take a lot of time as well as mental/emotional energy). Fortunately this year there are quite a few jobs open that are worth applying to. Unfortunately most of those jobs will get more than 300 applicants (and that's only for the jobs in the smaller fields or with more restrictive search criteria, some of them will probably get closer to 1,000).

I just find this photo (from promotions for Troublemaker "Now") disturbing on so many levels that I'm subjecting you to it. Sorry. 

But the good news has been my class. The class is great. Although it is lot of work to teach such a large group (120 was the maximum enrollment and we had many students clamoring to be added to the class, at the start we didn't know how many of the students who enrolled were serious about taking it, or had just "saved themselves a spot," so we gambled and took just about ten extra students to make up for people who were going to drop. At that point we were just over 120, and worried about the work of grading, but even after the midterm we lost a few students so we're now about 110 + auditors). Teaching such a big class does mean preparing lectures (you can't have much discussion when you've got so many voices!), but the lecture topics are fun and the students are really great.

It has been quite a learning curve for me. It's my first time to teach a class with my own TAs. I have two, both really excellent. One is a fourth year undergraduate, and she understands the system here at UBC perfectly, is very responsible and detail-oriented, and navigates the computer system / learning platform (connect) for the class. The other TA is an eighth year graduate student here. She's full of energy, very thoughtful, and quite knowledgeable. I am so thankful that I got TAs who help me and never cause any problems. I think I've done a fairly good job of asking them for help so I'm not overloaded, but not dumping more on them than they should be dealing with. One of them is better about protecting her own time than the other. Preparing lectures for two classes per week has felt like twice as much work as preparing for one a week, which sounds right if you forget that lectures in Korea are three hours long, and this is only one and a half (one hour and twenty since I need to give them time to get to the next class). On many instances I have prepared much more than I can cover in the time period and had problems such as transitioning into speed-lecturing mode (this is NOT helpful, not just because I have many exchange and international students, but because no one can process information as fast as someone else can spit it out). Since I teach the same class next semester I will be able to better divide topics so that the important topics get enough time to talk through them slowly and thoughtfully. I will also have time to refine and revise my lecture notes instead of just throwing tons of information at paper and scanning through it in class, hoping I organized it effectively.

Google results for a search for Korean "flower boys" 

As for topics, at the start of the class I had some orienting lectures (first about Korean music before the modern era, and second a quick swing through of Korean history), various lectures then covered the evolution of music in the modern era (music in the colonial era, music under the dictators and such). These classes were the first 1/3 of the lectures. After that I have been working topically. For example, last week we had a lecture on K-pop Consumption and Fandom (Tuesday) and on Choreography and Fans Engaging with K-pop through Cover Dance (Thursday). Obviously both of those are linked to fan practices-- I did always try to make linked topics appear in back to back classes, to the extent possible. So the class that dealt with Masculinity, Male Image, and Mandatory Military Service was right before the class on Femininity, Plastic Surgery, and the Obsession with Image. Tomorrow I will be talking about Tradition, Korean Image, and K-pop (so how tradition is used within K-pop and how K-pop impacts the way tradition is packaged/promoted). I am really looking forward to this topic, although I'm so exhausted I wish the semester was over already.

Colored light sticks wielded at concerts correspond to the K-pop group you are a fan of

There are always ways to spend more money on K-pop

The class has no attendance, but quizzes without prior notice (so a zero on a quiz is the penalty for not showing up that day-- students can roll the dice to see if they want to show up or not, but we did decide to throw out the lowest two quiz scores). Quizzes are operated on the iclicker system (so the computer grades the quizzes and inputs the grades at the click of a button). Quizzes are 20%, there is a midterm (20%) and final (30%) as well as a video project (done in groups, 30%). In general I have no problem with attendance, because students enrolled in this class because they are interested in the topic-- it will not help them get a job or fulfill requirements for graduation. So they come, they stay awake, they send thoughtful emails and do pretty well on their assignments.

Speaking of doing well on assignments: the video projects varied greatly in quality-- the best groups were really amazing, and most fell into the A range. Here are a few of the best videos:

A Case Study of the Singer CL
New Mediatized Depictions of Rap in Korea
Star Making 101-- or Why is Bae Suzy (MissA) the "Nation's First Love"?
The Role of Cover Dancers in K-pop
Korean Survival Shows and K-pop
Androgyny and K-pop
The Success of "Gangnam Style" in the US (focusing on dance and marketing)
The video that won the popular vote in class is currently private, but it's so good... I'll share it if they make it public again. It also got the second highest grade from the instructors.

These videos lacked something on the academic engagement end, but were well done and are worthy of mention:
The Future of Big Bang
A Close Reading of the Big Bang Video "Bae Bae"

So, that's a short update and links for you to follow. It would be nice if I could write a blog post more than twice a year, though.

Yes, we had a class on cultural appropriation and K-pop

Book Recommendation- Scenic Spots by Pal Nyiri

Because I am applying for jobs in different (generally interdisciplinary) fields, I've had to prepare a lot of syllabi and course proposals (or versions of syllabi with somewhat different approaches) in the last few months. I highly recommend that you prepare a few syllabi before you ever enter the job market, because a good one takes quite a lot of time (I can bang out a course proposal pretty fast, but when it comes to planning each course meeting of a semester/quarter it takes days to plan a good class).

One recent syllabus was for the course "Cultural Tourism in East and Southeast Asia." As I prepared readings I discovered a review for a book that sounded so interesting I just had to use ILL (Inter-Library Loan) to get a closer look. Although I initially included it as an optional reading for the planned course, now that I've read it, if I have to submit that syllabus again I'll re-order my readings to make this one the first tourism ethnography the students will read. The book is by Pal Nyiri, and it's called Scenic Spots: Chinese Tourism, the State and Cultural Authority. It came out on the University of Washington Press in 2006.

To tell the truth I wasn't even planning to read it. I thought I'd skim the introduction, check out the quality of the writing, and get a feel for the level at which it was written (there is no point in assigning highly theoretical works to the average undergraduate, or at least not if you expect them to finish the reading and participate in a lively discussion). Instead I found it difficult to put down, high praise for an academic publication. Nyiri's writing is clear and precise, without meandering paragraph-long sentences. In addition he adds the occasional quip with just a hint of dry humor. One of the things I appreciated the most about his book, though, was the way that he provided an excellent demonstration of fieldwork technique. That's why I would assign it to undergraduates early in the term: a discussion of how Nyiri approaches and participates in tourism from multiple perspectives would make it clear to a student how they could visit a tourist site near their university and conduct their own field research project. Because I am interested in issues of performance and presentation of performances to tourist audiences, his observations on how performances were presented, what the narrative surrounding the performance was, and how other tourists engaged with the performances just makes the book that much more useful. And finally I loved it because it dealt with issues of ethnicity and Tibetans, including fieldwork in parts of the greater Tibetan ethnic area (not the TAR) that I have visited.

I leave you with a few passages from Nyiri to whet your appetite:

"Some examples drawn from promotional materials published by tourism authorities in 2002 and 2003 illustrate the features of the contemporary marketing of scenic spots. Promotional materials are structured in the gazetteer tradition of the pastiche, cataloging sites--from temples to theme parks-- with photos and brief texts without setting up a geographic or historical relationship between them. We learn, for instance, that a site lies "in the midst of high mountains" or "on crystal clear waters," but most of the time we do not get any of the tectonic details that we've come to expect from Western travel literature, such as the height, name, or geological origin of mountains, or the names of rivers or lakes.Following a tradition started by early twentieth-century guidebooks, or "local specialties" (tutechan) to taste and buy are included among the cameos." (p. 22) 

"As is customary in China, the show was led in dialogue by female and male hosts who presented the introduction and text between the performances. It covered the standard repertoire of an "ethnic culture" evening, providing a cultural master narrative of the place. This "culture," according to the narration at the show, consists of "solemn and mysterious religious rites, cheerful folk songs, and wild folk dancing," including alluded-to-mating or drinking rituals. Although some songs were in Chinese, each song and dance was identified as either Tibetan or Qiang. The representation confirmed Gladney's observation that while minority women in China are invariably presented as highly feminine and sexualized, "when minority men are portrayed... they are generally exoticized as strong and virile, practicing strange and humorous customs, or possessing extraordinary physical abilities in sport, work, or the capacity to consume large amounts of alcohol" (Gladney 2002). To complete the picture, the Qiang and Tibetans were established as patriotic Chinese citizens through the song "China, I love you" performed by a Tibetan singer." (p. 39) 

"As with its policy reversal on domestic tourism, China changed from a state that prevented foreign travel to one that encouraged it but attempted to control its meaning. The public discourse in 1990s China, from academia to the media, equated travel abroad with migration in pursuit of individual "development" (fazhan) through education or work and, ultimately and optimally, entrepreneurship." (p.99)

Femininity and K-Pop

I have followed K-pop (as an academic subject) with greater and lesser vigor over the past few years and several times I've even written academic papers on the subject and presented them at conferences. The world of K-pop is fascinating in a bizarre train wreck sort of way, and sometimes the music is good. This year I'm on the job market and I want to show my multiple spheres of teachable knowledge to the maximum extent possible, so I applied to present on K-Pop at the IASPM (International Association for the Study of Popular Music) conference in Austin, Texas. I left preparing the abstract until the last minute, and somehow was not able to prepare one that folded in my previous knowledge or research in any but the most incidental and general way. I was accepted based on my abstract for a paper titled "The Construction of the Feminine in Korean Popular Music: A Performance Analysis of "I AM: SMTown Live" and Multi-Artist Musical Variety Shows."

Whoa. Wait a second. I'm not someone who works on gender. Ever. Never have.

So, here's my first paragraph (at the moment it looks this way, anyway):

According to Philip Auslander, "the field of cultural studies generally emphasizes the reception of popular music much more than the performance behavior of musicians" (2004: 3). Auslander identifies reception of performance and performance of performers as two objects of study. I suggest that research can also focus on the presentation or framing of the performance. In this paper I will primarily consider the framing of performers of Korean popular music as presented by live music shows Music Core and Inkigayo and the performance documentary I AM SMTOWN: Live at Madison Square Garden. Consequently my attention will focus on choices made by the television stations and their emcees, stage and video production crews that produce the two music shows and by the decisions made by the director, film and editing crews who created the documentary for SM Entertainment. 

I will proceed to discuss how femininity is constructed not through talking about clothing, song choices, and dance choreography (all decided by the management company and production teams in greater or lesser consult with the artists before we ever see the performance), but through observing how the performances of the women on these shows is framed differently than performances of men are framed (fortunately for my analysis either women perform or men perform, there are almost no groups in Korea that mix men and women together). I might be onto something, I might not. I have viewed two entire episodes of Music Core and Inkigayo, and I am proceeding through the 4 DVD set of the I AM SMTOWN DVD. 

I would love to have your help. Point out something. Challenge. Share your thoughts or observations. Anything you say might help me think through these issues, please do not hesitate to comment.

Here are some clips that could help you help me:

Here is Boyfriend on Inkigayo (top), and on Music Core (below). I see a large difference in how the production companies and video crew for these two TV stations chose to shoot the performances. If you see a difference between the Inkigayo and Music Core framing of the same song by the same group on consecutive nights, please let me know what you see that's different. I don't want to tell you what I see as it may bias you. 

Here's a comparison with a female group, Girls' Generation. Again, I've put Inkigayo first and Music Core second. 

Please note that I am not claiming that either of these songs is really great. I'm just comparing the two "biggest name" performances on back to back nights but shot by two different production companies. Also because both songs are "dance" and performed by fairly large groups of artists with a more "mature" image (they aren't rookies, they aren't 15 years old), the comparison is more legitimate than if I asked you to compare singing a ballad in comparison with a large group dancing...

If you just want to comment based on the above, that's great, but I am also analyzing these performances below~~

I don't normally listen to K-pop outside the "dance" genre, but watching these shows I discovered the beautiful voice of Juniel who is also (surprise!) able to play an instrument. Inkigayo on top, Music Core below:

Men also get to do ballads. However I only have one male-sung ballad that is on both of these shows (Jan. 13th and Jan. 12th), and it's a duo. I still think you can compare with Juniel, however. 

Hello Venus is definitely not likely to get onto my frequent play list (esp. not this song), but here you go Inkigayo first:

Following cute girl group with cute boy group-- A-Prince with "Hello" 

Here's a duo that really should have gotten a better name: Ego Bomb. Really? Ego Bomb? Inkigayo first, Music Core second (just trying to be consistent here).

And the somewhat comparable Glam (except I'm sorry, I think their voices are atrocious). 

Comments? Please. Please. Please.Thank you^^

p.s. if you think these videos are pretty crappy quality (it's true, they are), then watch the entire show on Hulu (if you're in the US only, I think Hulu doesn't work outside the US). 

Letters of Recommendation

I hate asking for letters of recommendation, if I was only asking for 5 or so a year it wouldn't be so bad, but I think I've applied for about 25 jobs (tenure track and fellowships) during this year's job hunt, and there are still a handful left. Every time I write my professors and ask for more letters I feel like I'm burdening them more. A certain number of letters is reasonable to ask for (part of their job, right?) but so many... I start to feel really guilty about it.

Most jobs require 3 letters of recommendation, although once in a while it's only 2. Occasionally they ask for the contact information for your recommendation writers and they contact them -if- your application proceeds to the second round.

Why not every time? Don't they understand that letter writers are people -just like them- but working at another school? I frequently apply to positions that get 700 or more applicants, which means 2,100 letters per job. What a waste of the time and effort of my recommendation writers. Their letters are being lost in a sea of paper.

1. Even a few years ago the odds (the numbers of applicants per position) were better and convention has not caught up to these new desperate times.
2. Many of my applications are sent to schools that do not have vibrant graduate programs-- in other words, these professors are not as fully swamped by letter writing as the professors at more elite institutions (like UCLA).

I promise you, when I get my permanent position and have to serve on search committees I will reserve letters of recommendation for second round candidates only.

Persistence and Professional Acknowledgement

Please give me persistence. I need it. The job hunt is quite a depressing process, but I KNOW that my research is awesome, that I'm a great teacher, and that I get things DONE.

I love it when people notice-- and I've gotten some nice professional acknowledgement recently. Today a scholar who wrote one of the books that has influenced my research the most, in other words someone I deeply respect, asked me to co-chair a section of SEM (the Society for Ethnomusicology). I'm already a newsletter editor for another section of SEM. That society is the most vibrant place for encountering research on performance of all kinds. Yes, they focus on music, but they understand how it is interconnected to dance, theatre, etc.. I'm also currently a candidate in a professional election, the Committee on Korean Studies of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS is the other professional association I am most committed to-- there are lots of amazing papers presented each year, I struggle to see even a small fraction of the interesting panels). There are five people running for three seats, and I'm far and away the most junior of the five, but... why not?!! It shows what sort of person I am that I received enough nominations to get on the ballot, and if I'm not chosen this time, it'll happen in a couple years.

Although it is hard, I have to be persistent. Right now I seem to be getting noticed in these two professional associations, and hopefully that will lead to getting noticed on the job market!

Blogging Again

It has been a long time since I blogged. I've thought about it-- thought about things I might want to say, even new blog themes. But I haven't done anything.

Today I'm actually writing.

First of all, it's the end of the year. There are all these opportunities for introspection. Writing emails to friends asking for addresses so I can send a holiday card we exchange updates on major life changes. Here on the island our winter solstice long dance ritual/celebration is right around the corner. When that happens introspection is encouraged. And of course there are New Year's resolutions to make.

Yes, I'm back living in my hometown. I love it here, most of the time. It's a place I feel very comfortable in, and yet uncomfortable in. There are more assumptions about who I am and what I think-- people can base these assumptions on shared history, on knowing my family members, even on their idea of what my life has been like-- how I must feel having a Ph.D., or how I must feel to be back home, or how I surely must be itching to have a baby since I'm past 40 now.

Yet I hate it here, too. I feel trapped (physically and geographically by the ferry, by being in the corner of the entire country and financially by being mostly unemployed). Everyone here that I know (and many that I love) is busy. I'm not part of their daily life, their weekly life, their life of this decade. It's hard to break back in. And if there is one thing they know it is that I don't intend to stay. That in a few months or so I'll be gone, again. And K and I live in a tiny room, 13x17 feet. It has no running water. It has no table. It has minimal storage receptacles. My clothes are in my large suitcase plus a box for my outer garments. It's always a mess, no matter what I do.

Am I whining? When I first got back here I worried that I wouldn't be able to answer the well-intentioned questions about "what's next." I had people say really stupid things to me-- I know they didn't mean it badly, it's just that academia doesn't work the way they expect the world to work. For example someone told me to "volunteer at the UW-- once you've got your foot in the door, they'll be sure to hire you." Uhhh, you mean once I volunteer they'll know I'm a sucker and never hire me as long as I work for free... What do they think I'm going to do, volunteer to grade people's papers? Sweep the classroom? Make photocopies? Do they think that the UW would have me teach Korean Studies on a volunteer basis?  But of course they are just applying their experience of the world to my reality, and don't know that in academia such a thing cannot work out.

I --do-- volunteer in academia. It's called being an assistant editor for one journal, on the advisory board for another, writing anonymous reviews of articles, being the newsletter editor for an academic association, and so on. If I was at a school right now I'd probably be volunteering to sit on some board or other. I self-nominated for an academic leadership position in a professional academic society (too soon to know how that will turn out). That's academic volunteering.

So, yes. My life is also about the JOB HUNT. I hate the job hunt, but so does everyone, nothing new there. I have sent out around 20 applications so far this year and have another 8 or so that will be done soon. Wow. That's a lot. Yet many of these write back that they had "700 highly qualified applicants" and "regret to inform me..." So 28 seems like nothing. Because the odds are not in my favor. 700 applicants for a postdoc on Asia. 300 or so applicants for a tenure track position teaching about Korea. Don't ask me where I'd like to go, because I'm not in a position to be choosy. Perhaps -after- the first position I can be choosy. I hope so. But even then, it all depends on what positions are even available. The job hunt is depressing. I'd rather do anything else. Let me illustrate. This is what I did today:

1) worked on the job hunt for an hour
2) ran 3.3 miles (it was SUNNY!!!! for a couple hours)
3) rehearsed the women's dance for the solstice long dance
4) did the laundry
5) made a batch of sauerkraut (actually, technically I started the batch-- making takes weeks)
6) drank coffee and chatted with my dad
7) wasted time on FB
8) went to mom's to do dishes (not all of them, too many to carry at once)
9) flipped through a professional journal that just arrived
10) resurrected this blog
11) cooked dinner and made K's lunch for tomorrow
12) did the shopping
13) answered various emails

You see? I'd rather wash dishes than work on the job hunt.

That's all for now.