Final Essay

[Sophia Kang]

This seminar utilizing the gender and generation lens in East Asia helped me to start considering the complexity of the government and media’s involvement in issues revolving this topic. To start off, the most eye opening was the “One Child Nation” documentary by Nanfu Wang. Studying this issue through a woman’s lens was vital to raising questions about freedom, independence, and social obligations such as the essential questions I am using for my lesson plans—

• To what extent do we have freedom over ourselves? How does the government control the family as an institution and use it to its advantage?
• How is propaganda used to control families? 
• In an increasingly globalizing world, how are the roles of women merging across cultures?

I have often considered this topic of gender because I am a woman myself, but I had never considered it in relationship to the economy and the fact that a population number can be controlled by an institution in the name of benefiting all. The deinstitutionalization of family in the modern society and its relationship to money and education is also a topic I hope to explore in the future.

Since the class that I teach is American Literature, the main method to incorporate what I’ve learned from this seminar is using essential questions that I’ve formulated and then taking a comparative approach to East Asian and America. I would like to use Professor Brian Bernards’ materials—Folding Beijing and Wandering Earth—to discuss climate change, especially since China is already involved in the discussion of that topic. Since declining marriage is global trend, I would like to discuss the changing family dynamics and its possible effects on the economy.

Furthermore, I would like to use the article about the Escape the Corset movement to discuss what true independence looks like for a woman, and to also compare makeover shows in each country to explore ideal standards of these countries. For example, shows like “Queen Eye” in America, “Ten Years Younger” in the UK, and “Let Me In” in Korea.

The topics of beauty, freedom and independence in today’s age versus back then is relevant to American Literature because a prominent theme in American anthology is freedom. What does freedom mean for different identities? And does achieving that desired freedom mean losing that identity?