[Commlist] CFP The Hallyu Project

This is a reminder that abstracts for The Hallyu Project are due by Mach 
1, 2022. 300-word abstracts and 100-word bios are due to Yin Yuan 
((yy8 /at/ stmarys-ca.edu) <mailto:(yy8 /at/ stmarys-ca.edu)>) by March 1, 2022.

The Hallyu Project, A Post45 Contemporaries Cluster
CFP website: https://thehallyuproject-p45.com/ 
<https://thehallyuproject-p45.com/>
Post45 Contemporaries website: https://post45.org/contemporaries/ 
<https://post45.org/contemporaries/>

***
THE HALLYU PROJECT: A Post45 Contemporaries Cluster

Squid Game’s global impact barely needs introduction. The first ever 
television series to top Netflix daily charts in every single country 
where the streaming service is available. Netflix’s most-watched series 
as of October 2021, a distinction previously held by the American period 
drama Bridgerton. What is more impressive is that the South Korean show 
achieved this in a non-English language, proving that Parasite’s 
cultural breakthrough in 2019 was not simply an anomaly. Perhaps 
English-speaking viewers have finally, to quote Parasite director Bong 
Joon-ho, overcome “the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles.”

But why now?

The Hallyu Project cluster invites contributors to think about how, why, 
and whither Korean popular culture is resonating worldwide at this 
moment in time. What distinctive structures of feeling do Korean 
cultural products offer in a world that must increasingly reckon with 
neoliberal precarity, physical displacements, and global systems of 
exploitation? How has the production and reception of Korean pop culture 
opened up questions of racial capitalism, super-exploitation, 
neocolonialism, cultural hybridity, media trans-nationalization, and 
fandom culture?

Squid Game shines a light on these issues, but it is far from the only 
Korean show to do so. Reflective of what has been termed South Korea’s 
“compressed modernity,” in which explosive post-war economic growth also 
led to tremendous social upheaval, Korean television and film tend to 
underscore the ways in which individual lives are caught within broader 
socioeconomic, gender, national, and imperial contexts. Tracing all the 
way back to the Golden Age of South Korean Cinema (1955-72), these 
narratives have long been invested in exploring how, as Kathleen McHugh 
writes, “personal frustration becomes the basis for interpersonal 
identification that is at once familial, social, and political.”

What new understandings emerge when we locate Squid Game within this 
long history of performing the personal as the political? How is that 
politics complicated by the ambivalent status of the Hallyu commodity, a 
commodity produced both to express domestic concerns and for exporting 
to a global audience? Is Hallyu necessarily self-conscious? How are 
Hallyu products differently received by Koreans, the Korean diaspora, 
countries outside of Korea, seasoned Hallyu fans, and other 
international viewers? What implications does this hold for our 
understanding of Hallyu and online fandom?

Suggested lines of inquiry for cluster contributions include, but are 
not limited to:

-The unstable meanings of Hallyu: What is it, who owns it, who is it 
for, what ends does it serve?

-Cultural analyses of Korean media content: Analyze Korean tv shows, 
music, film, variety programs, and other relevant narrative/audiovisual 
modes within a domestic and/or transnational context. What makes them 
distinctive?

-Hallyu’s (neo)colonial roots and/or (post)colonial implications

-Cross-cultural comparisons: Compare Korean and non-Korean popular 
media. As an example: What distinguishes Squid Game from other cultural 
offerings within the “battle royale” genre, such as America’s Hunger 
Games and Japan’s Alice in Borderland?

-The self-consciousness of Hallyu products: their mutual references and 
porous boundaries. As an example: How does Squid Game’s themes, motifs, 
and eye-popping sets connect and/or consciously allude to other Korean 
cultural exports, including variety game shows, K-pop, and other 
internationally popular tv shows?

-Digital Hallyu: The influence of streaming and social media platforms 
on Korean popular culture

-Hallyu fandom: Fan practices and their potentially transformative power

-Hallyu's uneven reception across different communities and cultures: 
Koreans, the Korean diaspora, the Global South, the Global North, 
seasoned fans, novice viewers, etc.

More information on the Hallyu Project can be found at this CFP website: 
https://thehallyuproject-p45.com/ <https://thehallyuproject-p45.com/>


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