• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.50
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• pp.97-118
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• 2000

The purposes of the present research were (1) to investigate the sociological factors influencing the increase of ambivalence and the relationship between, the ambivalence and fashion change(2) to categorize sets of the ambivalence expressed for contemporary fashion and (3) to examine the frequency and the patterns of ambivalence presented for contemporary fashion. This research was conducted through in depth literature review and content analysis. Data was collected from 806 colored pictures presented on 'Collections' from 1972 to 1988. Eight types of clothing cues were incluede: look color texture decorative motifs of clothing collar sleeve and wearer's headdress/hair style and make-up. The results of this study were as follows: 1 The popularization of culture has been accelerated by mass production mass consumption and mass media. Since the 1980s postmodernism and poststructuralism have resulted in the breakdown of dualistic distinction. As the ambiguity of meaning in appearance increases the meaning is negotiated constantly for identity. 2. The most frequenctly expressed ambivalence in clothing was feminity/masculinity and tradition/modernity and wealth/poverty was the least. The number of ambivalent expression were the highest during 1990s. The rapid growth in ambivalence of tradition/modernity was found in 1970s feminity/masculinity in 1980s and modesty/immodesty in 1990s. Within a clothing style ambivalence was manifested through feminine look in white for beauty/ugliness feminine look mainly in yellow/red for wealty/poverty sexy look dominantly in black for modesty/immodesty androgynous look in black for feminity/masculinity and through ecology look most frequently in black for tradition/modernity.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.473-487
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to analyze the body type and fashion of posthuman in SF movies. The method of this study was to analyze documentaries, internet web site, fashion books and so forth. The results were as follows: The body types of posthuman were expressed as mutation type, prosthetic type, clone type by biological hybrid or renovation and digital type by computer simulation. The mutation type was expressed as reinforcement of masculinity or feminity and reinforcement of body functions. The fashion item was expressed as a black tailored suit, leather jacket, cat suit, whip, black sunglass, garter belt, high heel shoes, short pants, black one piece dress and functional body suit. The prosthetic type was expressed as reinforcement of body functions and reinforcement of masculinity or feminity. The fashion item was expressed as a military item, high-tech power suit and ergonomic armor suit. The clone type was expressed as the plural ego with reinforcement of body functions. The fashion item was expressed as a power shoulder jacket, fake fur coat, vinyl, black see-through look and functional suit. The digital type was expressed as reinforcement of masculinity or feminity and the plural ego with reinforcement of body functions. The fashion item was expressed as a data suit, leather jacket, black over coat, boots, black sun glass, ethnic items and military items. The meanings of posthuman fashion in SF movies were impurity of posthuman, display of superhuman's power by sexuality, metaphor of power and fantasy of superhero in opposition futuristic dystopia. As mentioned above, posthuman body type and fashion in SF movies become the conversational topic in the real world. The fact that we think about utopia and identity of posthuman in the future is of great significance.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.3
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• pp.433-451
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• 2018

In Jesmyn Ward's 2017 novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, Ward places herself within the modern African American literary tradition and lays out the unending "historical traumas" of blacks and cultural haunting in her narrative. She brings to the fore the story of a young black boy and demonstrates the difficulty of living while a black man in the American rural South. Living or dead, black males remain spectral as their frustrated black bodies are endlessly rejected and disembodied. It's through Ward's close attention to the notions of black masculinity and retrieval of (black) humanity that the black South is remembered, recuperated, and historicized. Shrewdly enough, Ward expands it further into the tradition of American literature. Instead of singularizing African American identity and its historical traumas, she renders them the part of American history and universalizing the single black story as the story of the American South. Filling in the gaps that Faulkner and other white writers have left in their novels, Ward writes stories about the unspeakable, the invisible, the excluded to deconstruct white narratives and rebuild the American history; and reasserts African roots and history, spirituality, black raciality and locality within the American tradition. I examine the symbolic significance of Jojo's claim of black masculinity within the socio-political contexts of contemporary America. I also look closely at Ward's portrayal of Jojo's black family genealogy on account of its traumatic experiences of incarceration in notorious Parchman Farm. Locating Jojo as the inspiration of linking the past and the present, the unburied and the living, I contend that Ward creates "home" for blacks in an atemporal oceanic space where the past and the present are able to meet simultaneously. I argue that the oceanic space is an alternative space of affect that functions against the space of white rationality.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.191-206
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• 2017

Langston Hughes (1902-67) and Richard Wright (1908-60) lived in almost the same era, but it is obvious that their ways of describing the people, who are manipulated by gender-based controlling images, are different. Both Wright and Hughes try to reveal how reality is disturbed by the black men's and white women's prevailing stereotypes; however, their works have very different tones. In Richard Wright's short story, "The Man Who Killed a Shadow," and Langston Hughes' poems in his early days, "Silhouette" and "The South," the stereotyped images of black masculinity and white womanhood are transformed and destroyed. While Hughes celebrates the black culture amicably, Wright depicts completely hopeless black men living in the world dominated by white supremacy. This difference is indicative of the shifting views from Harlem Renaissance to Post-Harlem Renaissance. While romantic tones can be still found in Hughes' poems, Wright subverts the power dynamics between the black man and the white woman, and completely ruins sentimentality which tends to be attached to the Southern stories in the $19^{th}$ century.

• The International Journal of Costume Culture
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.51-61
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• 2010

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of clothing style and color of male casual wear on image perceptions and age evaluations. $4{\times}2$ (top color${\times}$trouser color) and $2{\times}3{\times}2$ (clothing style${\times}$clothing hue${\times}$clothing chroma) factorial designs were used as the experiment designs. Photoshop program was used to manipulate the clothing colors after creating photos of models wearing experiment clothing for stimulus. Subjects were 280 female college students from Seoul region and each subject responded to two stimuli. Factor analysis showed four factors of images of male casual wear; sociability, conspicuousness, softness and masculinity. Polo shirts were evaluated higher in sociability and softness than jumpers and nary blue trousers were evaluated higher in masculinity than beige trousers. High chroma clothing was assessed higher in sociability and conspicuousness than low chroma clothing. High chroma red jumpers displayed very sociable feel and low chroma blue jumpers displayed the lowest sociability. High chroma male clothing resulted in younger age perception but age was evaluated young when a black shirt was worn under the jacket when wearing a low chroma jacket.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.58 no.2
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• pp.62-77
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• 2008

This study aims to analyze color characteristics centered by women's suit styles that represent masculinity remarkably. Through this, it figures out color's type and continuance availability as a representing tool to express masculinity to provide useful color information which can be applied effectively to various color planning. For this research, related images were collected among women's pants suits appeared in $2004{\sim}2006's$ Paris, London, New York and Milan collection F/W that are most similar to modern man's suit. Among them, the study analyzes 319 pictures where the features of masculinity were represented effectively. The referred color values were earned by converting $L^*a^*b^*$ values measured through the color extracting tool of Computer program (Adobe Photoshop CS) and color tone characteristic were analyzed by classifying 12 color PCCS and 5 achromatic colors. The result of the study are as follows: First, based on standard of color hue and tone, in terms of color hue, PB, YR, Y were frequently shown up but G, BG series were not found much after analyzing overall women's pants suit color characteristics shown in $2004{\sim}2006$ Paris, London, New York and Milan collection. Second, the color analysis about 3years of $2004{\sim}2006$ tells that achromatic colors have been most widely used in every year. In terms of color hue, PB, YR, Y series were appeared most popular and G, BG classes weren't appeared frequently. In addition, once looking at yearly color tone distribution trend, like overall color tone distribution result, Bk, w, dkg, g, p were highly used as sequential and b, v, dp, sf, ItGy series show low distribution level. And such a distribution level of low and high in frequency has been showed continuously as a similar style. Accordingly, through the study, as a tool to express masculinity in women's suit, achromatic colors like black and white series and PB, YR, Y series color were investigated as most popular uses. And as color tones, Bk, w, dkg, g, p were used frequently.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.215-240
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• 2009

This paper focuses on how Younghill Kang internalizes whiteness ideology through interracial romance to build himself as an oriental Yankee and recover his masculinity in his autobiographical novel East Goes West. This paper also focuses on Kang's strategy of racial and cultural hybridity presented in this novel. The theoretical basis of my argument is a mixture of Fanon's psychoanalysis in his Black Skin, White Masks, Bhabha's notion of mimicry in The Location of Culture, and notions related to race and gender of some Asian critics such as Patricia Chu, Jinqi Ling, and Lisa Lowe. In East Goes West, white women appear as "ladder of success" of successful assimilation and serve as cultural mediators and instructors and sometimes adversaries who Korean male immigrants have to win to establish identities in which Americanness, ethnicity, and masculinity are integrated. However, three Korean men, Chungpa Han, To Wan Kim, George Jum, who fall in love with white women fail to win their beloveds in marriage. George Jum fails to sustain a white dancer, Jun' interest. Kim wins the affection of Helen Hancock, a New England lady, but Kim commits suicide when he knows Helen killed herself because her family doesn't approve their relationship. Han's love for Trip remains vague, but Kang implies Han will continue his quest for "the spiritual home" as the name of "Trip." In East Goes West, Kang also attempts to challenge the imagining of a pure, monolithic, and naturalized white dominant U.S. Culture by exploring the cultural and racial hybridity shown by June and the various scenes of Halem in the 1920s. June who works for a Harlem cabaret is a white woman but she wears dark makeup. Kang questions the white face of America's self-understanding and racial constitution of a unified white American culture through June's racial masquerade. Kang shows that like Asian and black Americans, the white American also has an ambivalent racial identity through June's black mimicry and there is no natural and unchanging essence behind one's gender and race identity constitution.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.55 no.2 s.92
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• pp.92-104
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• 2005

This study aimed to reveal the concept and background of emergence of black leather jacket that began appearing in full-scale among youth sub-culture from 1950's, and to research its styles and aesthetic features on the basis of that. The researcher has intended to a theoretical frame to recreate black leather jacket which has been developing in youth sub-culture style as a resource of new design in modern fashion trend through this study There are 5 styles of black leather jacket in youth sub-culture after 1950's. Firstly, biker style black leather jacket showed ruined war heroes substituting for military uniform. Secondly, rocker style black leather jacket brought the conversion in definition of masculinity. Thirdly, greaser style black leather jacket showed the beauty of uncleanness expressing resistance and violence with tattered dirty materials and excessive metal ornaments. Fourthly, headbanger style black leather jacket was prominent in various and compound decoration due to combination of rocker and hippie features. fifthly, punk style black leather jacket was influenced greatly by Sex Pistols. There are broadly three ecstatic features oi black leather jacket among youth sub-culture. With regard to displaying terrorism, black leather jacket displayed threatening aspects with black color, formative beauty of inverted triangle, additional decoration, and animal & brutal feelings. Paradoxical trophyism showed Nihilism, disorder, and resistance through black color that symbolize bad luck and unstability, trophyism with bad flavor, tattered material effect, and destructive message painting. Masculine eroticism appeared in accordance with pursuing after pleasure and masculine sexuality through exposure of buttocks and focused penis due to jacket's short length, and fetish of black.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.127-147
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• 2010

In Faulkner's many works, most Mulattoes are represented as tragic characters who feel confused with their racial identity and are sacrificed by the Southern racism in the end. However, in Go Down, Moses Lucas Beauchamp is an exceptional mulatto in that he survives the Southern racism and achieves some dignity as a human. It is because he maintains the relationship with his family and environment as a skilled farmer. Although Southerners idealized their lives in plantations as nature-friendly and ecological way of life, plantation owners had little direct relationship with land as plantations were cultivated by black slaves' labor. Therefore, white landowners had little knowledge about cultivation and ecological awareness. Although Lucas Beauchamp is criticized as he has the strong will to power and patriarchal attitude, it is partly caused from endeavor to overcome the suppression as a black male whose masculinity is denied in the Southern society. In spite of his limitation, he shows the possibility to escape from the curse prevailing in the South, which abuses land and other races through the relationship with others and land. He has positive aspects in that he has genuine relationship with land and others and takes his responsibility for others, searching the most suitable way to survive as a black.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.169-191
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• 2014

This explores an African American male poet, Etheridge Knight, and his poems. He died in 1991 and had been wounded in the battle field during the Korean War (1950-1953). Particularly, engaged in the war as a boy soldier, due to his wound, he had turned to a drug addict. Despite his experience in the war, Knight didn't write poems much about the war and wartime experience. Rather than war experience, for Knight, the prison gave him a strong motivation to be a poet with Gwendolyn Brooks' help. Further, Korean scholars are not familiar with contemporary African American poets, and my study is an introduction of those poets. Since in Korea researches on African American poets have been relatively rare, it is needed to sincerely work on those poets. The none-white writers, above all, penetrate the undercurrent of canonized American poets and poems. By examining Knight's poems, I eventually align a notion of the ethnic with racial minorities in the U. S.