• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.107-127
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• 2008

Critics are inclined to interpret J.M. Coetzee's novels in South African contexts, which Coetzee's own background seems to support. One has to bear in mind, however, that Coetzee tends to "see the South African situation as only one manifestation of a wider historical situation to do with colonialism, late colonialism, neo-colonialism." In other words, putting too much emphasis on South African contexts may diminish or undermine significance of Coetzee's multi-layered novels. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to highlight what Coetzee has to say about American colonialism/imperialism and to emphasize importance of "postcolonial rhetoric of simultaneity" which is repeatedly shown in his fictional works. It gives a meticulous attention to and analyzes "Vietnam Project," the first novella of Dusklands, Coetzee's very first novel, which depicts and characterizes "what Chomsky in the context of Vietnam [War] called 'the backroom boys.'" "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee," "When a Woman Grows Older," and Diary of a Bad Year are occasionally brought into discussion as well. This kind of study seems timely and pertinent especially when we take into account the rampant American imperialism which has devastated and almost traumatized the world.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.5
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• pp.903-941
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• 2012

This essay examines Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism focusing on the concepts of 'culture,' 'empire,' and 'nation'. The approach is critical, theoretical, and historical rather than explicatory. Consequently, the range of the essay is not limited to Said's own explanation and argument about Western imperialism and its culture presented in the book. In doing this, this essay finally purposes to be a discursive resistance to the current global empire, the United States, via a critical reading of Said's work. Said's notion of culture is set upon to disclose the function of culture as an apparatus of ideological consent of the dominated to the dominant. When applied to imperial practice, Western culture functions to subject the colonized to the colonizer. Said's geographical approach to imperialism complements the historical understanding of imperialism. Imperialism is not only the practice of Western-centered historicism but also the spatially mutual interaction between the West and the rest of the world. Along with European imperialism, Said poses the current global empire of the United States as his main target of criticism. Said's problem is that he takes the United States as a nation-state. When examined, the United States is not a nation-state, but today's empire. The empire in the appearance of the nation-state United States does not work for the interest of the American nation, that is, the American people. The empire is the transnational and postnational political and economic institution that works for the interest of global capital. In order to resist the current global empire, this essay suggests that the building or restoration of nation-states with its basic principle of people's sovereignty is in need.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.287-309
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• 2014

The purpose of this paper is to critique British imperialism in Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India (1991) by analyzing the partition of India from the perspective of nation, religion, and women. Dubbed "Punjabi-Parsi-Indian-Pakistani," Sidhwa is in a position where she can view the partition from an objective and neutralized stance. Rather than focusing on the lives of nationally well-known political figures such as Gandhi, Nehru, or Jinnah, Sidhwa delves deep into the miserable lives of the lower classes before and after the partition. First, I analyze the process of the partition, as it is performed through the manipulation of British imperialism. By adopting the viewpoint of an 8-year-old Lenny, who is the daughter of a Parsi family, Sidhwa is able to critique both British imperialism as well as the male-dominated Indian society where the treatment of women is unthinkably harsh. Second, I focus on the tragedy of the confrontation of three religions, Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh. Religious people fight each other while they were forced to move from South to North or from North to South. I argue that the religious conflicts have much to do with political issues. Third, I want to argue that women are the major victims of the partition. Ayah, Hamida, and Papoo are victims of male-dominated India during the partition. They symbolize the feminized India, which is exploited and victimized by British Imperialism. Even though Ayah is shattered by Ice-candy-man while working as a prostitute and dancer, she decides to return to her home in India, which shows her challenge against male-dominated India as well as against British colonialism. In conclusion, Sidhwa tries to heal the suffering of the Indian women who fell victim to male-dominated Indian society by criticizing the problems of British imperialism. In addition, by dealing with the lives of silenced people, Sidhwa asks readers not to forget the historical tragedy and not to repeat the tragedy again.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.25
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• pp.55-85
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• 2011

Many States such as Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, California, New Mexico, Florida were obtained either from Spanish Empire or from Mexico. In 1848 due to the Guadalupe-Hidalgo treaty America could obtain half of the original territory of Mexico. American identity cannot be understood without the history of American expansionism further consolidated by the Spanish-American War in 1898, which brought other ex-Spanish colonies such as Guam, Puerto Rico, the Philippines to the US. The US's interest in these territories dates back to the Monroe doctrine in 1823 when Monroe "declared the Americas off-limits to any new European colonization." America justifies their expansion based on the notion of Manifest Destiny which was created by O'Sullivan at the hight of American fever to annex Texas to US. The intent of this paper is to study how Anglo-Saxon and Latin Culture clashed against each other especially right before and after the Spanish-American War. In this study the American hero, Theodore Roosevelt and Latin American hero, $Jos{\acute{e}}$ Martí will be compared, though they did not meet each other during the Spanish-American war due to Marti's early death in 1895 at the battle for the Cuba Libre. Their comparison is significant in that the former represents the American expansionist spirit and the latter the spirit of Anti-imperialism and Anti-Anglocentrism. Along with the concept of Manifest Destiny of America, 'American exceptionalism' is also mentioned which motivates U.S. to expand further even after the Spanish-American war in the form of 'informal imperialism' characterized by 'gunboat politics'of the US. These discussions will draw attention to how recent theorists such as Bryce Traister criticizes the Border Theory represented by $Jos{\acute{e}}$ David Saldívar. Here the Border Theory is criticized to repeat the discourse of the globalized capitalism which prefers the weak state and the transnational aspects by focusing on the in-betweenness of the border. In the end the paper will focus on how the Border theory as represented by Saldivar is political enough and sets up a resistant example against American expansionism of today in its focus on the call for pan-American and pluri-versal subjectivity of the borderlands. This point will be supported by a discussion of how Saldivar's view is confirmed by Walter Mignolo who advocates the "bottom up" resistance of the indigenous people of Chiapas and other social forums such as World Social Forum and the Social Forum of the Americas derived from the Zapatistas' movement whose motto is "A World in which many world co-exist."

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.277-296
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• 2023

The South Korean ethnic diaspora US lobby shows efficacy as an interest group in generating influence in American foreign and domestic public policy making. The persuasive portrayal of South Korea as a critical Cold War US ally reinforced US amenability to pro-South Korea lobbying. Also, the South Korean US diaspora is a comparatively recent immigrant group, thus its lingering resistance to assimilation facilitates its political mobilization to lobby the US government. One source of this influence includes the foundational legacy of proselytizing Western and particularly American religious social movement representatives in Korean religiosity and society. US protestant Christianity acquired a strong public association with emerging Korean nationalism in response to Japanese imperialism and occupation. Hostility towards Japanese colonialism followed by the threat from Soviet-sponsored, North Korean Communism meant Christianity did not readily become a cultural symbol of excessive external, US interference in South Korean society by South Korean public opinion. The post-Cold War shift in US foreign policy towards targeting so-called rogue state vestiges of the Cold War including North Korea enhanced further South Korea's influence in Washington. Due to essential differences in the perceived historical role of American influence, extrapolation of the South Korean development model is problematic. US hegemony in South Korea indicates that perceived alliance with national self-determination constitutes the core of soft power appeal. Civilizational appeal per se in the form of religious beliefs are not critically significant in promoting American polity influence in target polities in South Korea or, comparatively, in the Middle East. The United States is a perceived opponent of pan-Arab nationalism which has trended towards populist Islamic religious symbolism with the failure of secular nationalism. The pronounced component of evangelical Christianity in American core community nationalism which the Trump campaign exploited is a reflection of this orientation in the US.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.163-202
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• 2020

This paper examines how Japanese society produced and reproduced a distinctively gendered history and memories of the experience of WWII and colonialism in the postwar era. We argue that these gendered narratives, which were embedded in postwar debates about the Peace Constitution and comfort women, have engendered contradictions and made the historical conflicts with neighboring countries challenging to resolve. On the one hand, this deepens conflict, but on the other, it also generates stability in East Asia. After Japan's defeat in WWII, the American Occupation government created the Peace Constitution, which permanently "renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes." The removal of the state's monopoly on violence - the symbol of masculinity - resulted in Japan's feminization. This feminization led to collective forgetting of prewar imperialism and militarism in postwar Japan. While collectively forgetting the wartime history of comfort women within these feminized narratives, the conservative movement to revise the Peace Constitution attempted to recover Japan's masculinity for a new, autonomous role in international politics, as uncertainty in East Asia increased. Ironically, however, this effort strengthened Japan's femininity because it involved forgetting Japan's masculine role in the past. This forgetting has undermined efforts to achieve masculine independence, thus reinforcing dependence on the United States. Recurrent debates about the Peace Constitution and comfort women have influenced how Japanese political elites and intellectual society have constructed distinctive social institutions, imagined foreign relations, and framed contemporary problems, as indicated in their gendered restructuring of history.

• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.37
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• pp.249-293
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• 2018

The Musical Theatre was a popular art genre that originated from the western musical tradition represented by the European opera. In the twentieth century, it bloomed around Broadway in the United States. It is also one of the commercial arts which is popularly loved by the public in the field of performing arts all over the world at present. Due to the nature of this genre, the development of dramas and the expression of characters use music, not words or gestures, as the main medium. And the style of music reacts sensitively to the taste of the public, not to a particular class. When Japan colonized Korea, the empire strongly believed modernization equaled westernization and Japan was the one who could awaken Korean. The Japanese colonial music education was intended to bring cooperation and obedience to Japan by forcibly injecting Japanese ideology and culture into Joseon people. The music education of colonialism with the textbook of the "Songs for public education(보통교육 창가집)" compiled by the Japanese government was a sparkstone for the conversion of the Korean musical identity to Japanese and Western music. In addition to the capitalistic economical mechanism for establishing a South Korean government friendly with the United States during the Cold War after liberation, and the rush of American Pop culture represented by 'the show stage in 8th US Arm' and 'movies' which are to be the influence of invisible 'new cultural imperialism', our traditional music was confined to the meaning of 'Korean music', meaning 'past music'. In Korea, after the liberation, the musical was introduced by the influx of American popular culture. In accordance with the cultural policy of Park Jeong-hee regime, which aimed to spread the 'healthy culture' through the modernization of traditional arts, 'The Yegreen(예그린악단)' was founded. However, the plan to create a contemporary performing art based on Korean national arts showed the possibility of success in 1966 with the success of , but soon after, they have been destined to fall into an institution that has lost their ability to operate on their own due to the suspension of the sponsorship of the regime. Due to the cultural imperialist strategy of the influence of Japanese imperialism's colonial music education and influx of American popular culture after liberation, in the early days of Korean musicals, our traditional aesthetic style brought about the situation of the 1960 's, which did not become an independent ethnic art through the exchange and expansion with Western music. This is the background of the western licensed musicals led by the Korean musical market in the 21st century as well as the main cause of musical creation based on western music.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.251-276
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• 2020

The purpose of this article is to critically read Globalizing Borderlands Studies in Europe and North America to examine trends in border studies conducted so far in Europe and North America and to discuss the expandability and limitations of the narrative. It introduces a variety of case studies covering the borderlands of Europe and North America from ancient to modern times. It consists of a total of 10 chapters, in addition to the introduction chapter to clarify the purpose and definition of the collaboration and the short conclusion chapter on the prospects for the future of borderlands studies. This volume has some important implications for current borderland research in two main respects. First, it can introduce us we the areas and targets that the leading researchers from European and North American academia (usually the United States') have paid attention to. It also examines the current status of borderland research and predicts whether it will be possible to study various border areas where exist in other regions (especially in Asia) based on accumulating academic achievements, as well as the possibility of expansion of so-called 'globalization'. Second, it introduces the borderland as a conceptual space, beyond the border area as a physical space that is commonly thought of when it comes to 'border'. Cases of "conceptual borderlands" can be applied to a number of topics ranging from an individual's identities to the methods of governance, religions, economies, social institutions, families, labor issues, public health services and gender issues. There are, however, also some questions to be noted in the volume: the lack of consistent use of terminology, which can be considered general problems of collaboration studies; the fact that the authors still tend to understand borderlands within the imperialist discourse, perhaps because of their academic background is situated mainly in Europe and North America; the borderlands cases described here as the areas of conflict and struggle only. Nevertheless, the book is of significance in that it suggests a possibility of various borderlands studies and helps us to have better understanding of the current geopolitical situation imposed on the Korean Peninsula, which is located on the borderland between the continental and maritime powers.