Department of Transnational Asian Studies

Sonia Ryang

T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Asian Studies

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Average rating

4.2

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Difficulty

2.2

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Courses

in seeded sections

Public profile

Research areas

Sonia Ryang has recently completed a manuscript titled "Do You Still Love the Great Leader? Autoethnographic Fragments of an Anthropologist," a polyvocal exploration that revisits her original field site—Koreans in Japan—three decades later. Currently, she is pursuing a multi-year, multi-sited project, "The Chronicle of Thirteen," which examines the agency of girls and young women in South Korea across four thirteen-year intervals (1976–2015), focusing respectively on garment factory workers, the collective suicide of four sisters, the deaths of two schoolgirls struck by a U.S. military vehicle, and the labor and alienation of K-Pop stars and fandom.

Courses taught

ASIA 103

Asian Food

Through the lens of Asian food, this course examines broader issues such as historical and social disparities, contemporary inequalities, globalization, immigration and displacement, and the question of cultural authenticity. Students are encouraged to explore how the act of simply “eating food” can become a process of “critically thinking about food,” and how the sensory and personal experiences of eating intersect with social, political, and historical analysis.

Asian StudiesD13 credits

4.48.4hRyang, Sonia

ASIA 215

Korean Wave

In the wake of twenty-first century Korean Wave became a global phenomenon overnight. Its popularity first started in Asian continent, notably in Japan, China, followed by Southeastern Asian countries, then South Asia, reaching Middle East and Europe, while reflecting the immigration route, it reached North America by a different route and medium. This course takes a close look at transnational journey of Korea Wave, identifying the mechanism and material conditions of transition from the Cold War fundamentalism to global capitalism. Exploring K-pop, K-drama, K-cinema, K-Webtoons, and K-beauty in close comparisons to concepts such as power, community, aesthetics, race, gender, and sexuality, the course invites students to critically examine the transnational phenomenon of Korean wave in Asia and beyond.