sunyoungyang

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SunyoungYang
sunyoungyang@arizona.edu
Phone
(520) 621-0632
Office
Learning Services Building 106
Yang, Sunyoung
Associate Professor

Sunyoung Yang is an Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, Canada, and her B.A. and M.A. from the Department of Sociology at Yonsei University, South Korea.

As a cultural anthropologist, she has conducted in-depth research on Internet development since 1999, specializing in South Korea and the Asia Pacific region. She is one of the founding members of the Haja Center (Seoul Youth Factory for Alternative Culture), run by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and Yonsei University. As a member of the Asia Pacific Next Generation (APNG), she organized the second and third Asia Pacific Next Generation Camps, holding the positions of chair and vice chair in 2002 and 2003, and revived the APNG Camp as chair in 2024. She has also participated in the Internet Governance Forum as a member of the Internet Society.

Sunyoung's research and teaching interests focus on the influence of new media and digital technologies on society, with a particular emphasis on youth, labor, and gender issues in Korea and East Asia. She is currently writing a book manuscript titled Online User Communities and Cultural Politics in South Korea, which examines the interwoven processes between Internet development and political-economic and socio-cultural changes in South Korea through the formation of new subjectivities of Internet users. Her second book project, tentatively titled Making the Future Meaningful: Asia Pacific, Youths, and New Technologies, examines the enduring technological utopianism, aiming not to discard it but to deconstruct and redirect people's shared yearning for a better future.

Sunyoung also directs the Korean Studies program in her department and is a member of a university-wide collaborative and cross-disciplinary group that is forging exciting research agendas in the area of Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (TELL).

Her long-term goal is to conduct ongoing participant observations and write the real-time history of digital technologies and beyond, including the Internet, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing.

Currently Teaching

EAS 491 – Preceptorship

Specialized work on an individual basis, consisting of instruction and practice in actual service in a department, program, or discipline. Requires faculty member approval, preceptor application on file with department.

KOR 251 – Introduction to Korea through Films

This course offers a thematic introduction to Korea using film as a window to Korean society. Korea has experienced a compressed modernity in reaction to complex international dynamics, which include colonialism, the Cold War, and globalization. Its rich historical and social particularities have been a valuable source for cultural products such as film production. Film enables us to see beyond our own experiences and reflect on our world and other people's lives through various aesthetic mediations. Through the medium of film, students will be able to learn about the country through vivid imagery. This course will also allow students to understand important issues related to class, gender, capitalism, and democracy that our contemporary world is facing using Korean films to illustrate these key concerns.

KOR 352 – Class, Gender, and Family in Korea

This course aims to allow students to learn about Korea using the three focuses of class, gender, and family. Reading ethnographic literature will be a tool to understand how class, gender, and family have been formed in Korea. Korea has transformed from one of the world's poorest agriculturally based countries to a postindustrial country in a very short time period. More than 80% of the entire population redefined itself as middle class, which shows Korean people's strong desire for upward mobility. Family has played an important role in realizing upward mobility and forming a middle-class identity. The gender-division of labor based on the separation between public and private spheres has functioned as an effective system for fast economic development while deepening gender discrimination. Marginalization of women has resulted in the abnormal growth of the private sphere where an extremely competitive education system and real estate speculation have been formed as family strategies for upward mobility. The particularity of Korean modernity can be found in the process of the interwoven formation of class, gender, and family.

EAS 491H – Honors Preceptorship

Specialized work on an individual basis, consisting of instruction and practice in actual service in a department, program, or discipline. Teaching formats may include seminars, in-depth studies, laboratory work and patient study.

KOR 245 – K-pop, Webtoons, Ethnic Food, and More: Understanding Korean Popular Culture

In this course, we will explore our contemporary world through the lens of popular culture that has saturated our everyday life. In so many ways, we are spectators, be it movies, TV shows, popular music, animation, video games, etc. Sometimes, we go beyond being just spectators and actively engage in producing, circulating, and re- creating such cultural forms as fans or users. How does popular culture affect the way in which we see our world and define who we are? How do the values of cultural industries become the dominant economic logic of our era? How does popular culture interact with politics? This course will allow us to explore these questions. The focus on Korea will offer us unique contexts in which we situate our questions and answers. We will use our personal experiences as motivation to delve deeper into this topic and consider an extensive range of Korean pop culture from music to drama, cinema, online gaming, and Internet culture.

In this course, we will explore our contemporary world through a lens of popular culture that has saturated our everyday life. In so many ways, we are spectators, be it movies, TV shows, popular music, animation, video games, etc. Sometimes, we go beyond being just spectators and actively engage in producing, circulating, and re-creating such cultural forms as fans or users. How does popular culture affect the way in which we see our world and define who we are? How do the values of cultural industries become the dominant economic logic of our era? How does popular culture interact with politics? This course will allow us to explore these questions. The focus on Korea will offer us unique contexts in which we situate our questions and answers. We will use our personal experiences as motivation to delve deeper into this topic and consider an extensive range of Korean pop culture from music to drama, cinema, online gaming, and Internet culture.