Jenny Wang Medina
Assistant Professor
Modern Languages Building 318
Office Hours: Tues/Wed. 2:00 - 3:00
404-727-2518
About Me
I received a Ph.D. in East Asian Lang. and Cultures from Columbia University and specialize in Modern Korean literature and culture. I amcurrently working on a book manuscript titled K-World: South Korea and the Reinvention of National Cultures. The book traces the evolution of the contentious relationship between state and cultural producers in their efforts to instrumentalize national culture, an emerging developmental economy, and information technology to create a specifically South Korean image of “Global Korea”. I analyze literature, film, television, translation institutes, and cultural policy to explore the assumptions of cultural continuity and representation in a society moving from the idea of a homogeneous ethnonation divided by the Cold War to a post-developmental multicultural global entity.
In addition to my research on global Korea, I am more broadly interested in theories of trans/national culture, globalization, ethnic identity construction, and canon formation. I am involved with literary translation and international literary exchange, and am a translator of Korean literary fiction. I am also interested in the intersection of visuality, food, technology, race, and the body. I teach courses in East Asian Studies, Asian-American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Film, Literature, Media and Cultural Studies, and Food Studies.
Courses
Examples of Courses Taught (Outside Emory)
Introduction to Korean Culture
East Asian Civilization
Introduction to Modern Korean Literature
Modern Korean Literature and Film: Multiculturalism, Migration, and Identity
Special Topics in Korean Literature: Post-Modernity and Its Discontents
Korean Cinema: Mass Media and Collective Memory
Master Narratives in Korean Cinema: Version and Subversion
Consuming Culture: Food and Ethnicity in Asian America