The (relatively) recent popularity of East Asian media and popular culture in the United States was preceded by decades of regional cross-pollination and adaptation between industries in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and China. What we find today on Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Rakuten Viki, and so on, is the result of cultural intersections inflected as much by conflict and disjuncture as congruence, and it continues to evolve under a global gaze that further affects how such media are created, disseminated, and consumed.

By way of understanding the evolution and spread of increasingly influential East Asian popular media, this course looks at three case studies of the inter-regional and global circulation of East Asian media: Hong Kong cinema, the Korean Wave, and BL (boy’s love) media. We’ll begin with an overview of the inter-East Asian cultural, historical, and sociopolitical conditions out of which such media emerged, paying particular attention to the ongoing effects of imperialism, colonialism, and the Cold War on how East Asian media are received and perceived across borders. We’ll also interrogate how such histories intersect with the material conditions of transnational media access, consumption, and cultural (re)production to circulate, sustain, and transform media texts and cultures.

By the end of this course, you will be able to

• identify key historical influences on the evolution of East Asian transnational media
• differentiate between media cultures in Japan, South Korea, China, and Hong Kong
• evaluate the role played by media technologies in the distribution and consumption of transnational media