UMass Boston

Icons of East Asia: Stereotypes, gender, & cultural history from geisha girls to martial masters

Course #: ASIAN 265L, Class #: 4773, Section #: 01

Description

The purpose of this class is to explore, critically and comparatively, various discourses about popular cultural icons of East Asia. We will focus on two specific well-known examples - women entertainers and male figures adapt at martial arts- with the following aims: 1) to focus on specific historical contexts, which suggest how and why these categories were formed and became important; 2) to understand how dynamic and motivated these seemingly unchanging and timeless icons actually are; and 3) to investigate how gendered identities are constructed and manipulated for particular goals.