Korea Distinguished Speaker: Pop Goes Asia: Girl Bands, Japan, and Korea

Monday, March 23, 2015 - The Joseph C. Bancroft Conference Room (Croft 107) - Prof. John Lie, the University of California, Berkeley

Sponsored by the Croft Institute for International Studies, the College of Liberal Arts, the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the Department of Modern Languages, and the Department of Public Policy Leadership, with the financial assistance of the Korea Foundation and the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies

On Monday, March 23, 2015, the Croft Institute will host a Korea Foundation/Northeast Asia Council Korea Distinguished Speaker, Prof. John Lie of the University of California, Berkeley.  Prof. Lie will compare two pop-music groups, the Japanese AKB48 and the South Korean Girls' Generation, as a window into the divergent trajectories of Japan and South Korea, especially in terms of different reactions to cultural and economic globalization.

John Lie is C.K. Cho Professor of Sociology at University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 2003 and also served as the Dean of International and Area Studies. He was born in Seoul, reared in Tokyo and Honolulu, and studied at Harvard University. His recent books include Modern Peoplehood: On Race, Racism, Ethnicity, Nationality, and Genocide (Harvard University Press, 2004), Zainichi (Koreans in Japan): Diasporic Nationalism and Postcolonial Identity (University of California Press, 2008), and K-pop: Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia, and Economic Innovation in South Korea (University of California Press, 2014).