Tag: academia

Reading The Host in Context, Part 1

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This entry is part 10 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Well, here I go. This is my attempt to provide a reading of the 2006 blockbuster Korean film The Host in context — that is , not only a Korean cultural and historical context, but also in the context of Korean Gwoesu (“Giant Monster”)  movies, and those films which influenced the development of the genre in South Korea. Disclaimer — all images not cited to an photographer at copyright their respective owners. They are used in this post for educational/critical purposes, and thus their use falls under fair use. Thank goodness, because this essay would be hard to read without …

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Conference Change

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Ack. I knew Dokdo would ruin something for me. I just didn’t think the conference I was supposed to attend in Fukuoka would be relocated to Seoul over the territorial dispute. My first, over-the-top reaction was to resentfully sneer and mutter darkly about how self-isolation is the perfect solution to every dispute, but Lime ‘s take on it was that it’s simply pre-emptive damage control, for, as she put it, some small number of netizens are sure to raise a stink if they hear that a Korean Studies conference is held in Japan during the current relapse of “Dokdo crisis”-itis. …

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Zombie Scholarship

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Not the we-give-you-money-because-you’re-the-most-deserving-zombie kind, but rather the scholarly-work-in-the-subject kind. There’s a call for essays on scholarly perspectives on the zombie for an anthology. I’m thinking I know a few people who might be interested. (Yeah, Ben, I thinking of you, even if you’re not a litcrit guy, as it’s interdisciplinary and all that. Though “paraconsistent logic +  zombies” might be a harder fit for a scholarly essay than for a short story, one of the editors is a philosophy prof!) More details in the extended post.

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Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind by Gerald Graff

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This is, basically, an excellent book. Make a gift of it to those you know who are decision makers in departments. Read it if you want to help make things better for your students. More for those who want details, as well as my reflections on a few of the things I learned reading it, but for most of you who are teaching in departments (in Korea) where students actually have enough English to learn, you know, academic stuff, or for those teaching in the mother tongue of their students: trust me! Order it! Go! Now! University EFL teachers in …

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Do You Now, or Have You Ever Lived in South Korea?

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If so, my friend Charles is collecting info on what foreigners pick up as part of Korean oral culture. There’s a link from this page in his online journal. Go on, help a guy out: he’s clever-yet-nice, he’s (fairly) clean, he’s probably even a good dancer, and he needs results, results, results for some kind of academic something-or-other thingiedoodle. Plus it only takes a few minutes. And if you don’t, I’ll tell your mother. So GO!

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