• anxiety: simply put, this is the feeling or experience of discomfort which a society has regarding something — its own attitudes, its history or politics, its status in the world, or whatever. For example, King Kong can be argued to be “about” (or to “encode”) American social anxieties of the time it was made, regarding the status and position of blacks in America (as an imagined “threat” to white women and to social order, as social “underdogs,” as victims and underdogs who summoned up feelings of guilt, and as symbols of America’s brutal, racist history). When a society is anxious about something, it tends not to want to “talk about it” directly (ie. to confront the object of the anxiety directly) but also tends to feel an overwhleming need to represent it in indirect ways — in metaphors, for example.
• trauma: as with personal trauma, a social trauma is the effect of a painful, shocking, or distressing event that has a deep impact  on a society and its outlook. Traumas often give rise to specific anxieties — for example, 9/11 and the immediate aftermath was a trauma that created new anxieties  (or deepened old ones) about terrorism, government control, and religious extremism. Examples of other traumas specific to South Korean society include the partitioning of Korea into North and South, the Korean War, the assassination of Park Chung Hee, the Kwangju Massacre, and the 1997 economic crisis. Each of these events has generated specific anxieties, and each (arguably) has had an important influence on the literature and popular culture of South Korea.
• trope: a familiar, common, or recognizable structure, theme, or feature of a genre or of stories in general (in literature or cinema alike). For example, the vampire trope is recognizable to us, because we all know the traits of vampies (what kills them, what their powers are, and so on). Another kind of trope is a common theme, such as, “Boy Meets Girl” or “The Underdog Overcomes Impossible Odds,” or “The Cop Must Give Up His Gun and Badge and Go It Alone” or “If You Have Sex, You Will Die” (as in many horror movies).
• cliché: this is a trope that is used in a lazy way, or in a way that is so predictable as to be insulting to the audience. It has a negative connotation, so that sometimes familiar tropes are called “cliché” simply because the speaker dislikes the trope. For example, many feminists would say that the “Smart Girl Learns To Become a Pretty Girl” trope is a cliché. Not all tropes are necessarily clichés, but most clichés are, by necessity, familiar enough to be tropes, or part of tropes. (For example, one cliché in cop/army films is when the soldier or cop says angrily, “I didn’t sign up for this sh*t!” and disobeys orders. This is part of the individualistic “Cop Disobeys Orders and Goes It Alone” trope, of which one form is the copy giving up his gun and badge.)

Another way of saying this is: tropes are conventional structures we see in a kind of story. (Wikipedia has a great list of Fantasy Tropes and Conventions, for example.) A cliché is a trope that is so overused as to become predictable, or insulting, or annoying — it’s basically a trope that someone has decided he or she does not like. Therefore, cliché is a personal value judgment describing a particular trope.

• discourse: whatever I write here will not make this idea easier to understand, but the basic point is this: a discourse is the set and structure of ideas which form a kind of hidden “story about the world” (or about people, or about life, or about nature, or whatever) which can contain tropes, anxieties and the traumas they originate from, and more. If you think about tropes, anxieties, and the rest as lego bricks, then they build two stories: there’s the obvious story — like, a love story, or a story of colonization, or a murder mystery — and then there’s the deeper story about the world that is hidden inside the story.

  For example, to say that a text contains a “Eurocentric discourse” is to say that, whatever the story it seems to tell on the surface, there is a deeper story embedded in it which claims that European people and culture are best, that non-Europeans are somehow inferior or in need of “help” (ie. Europeanization), and so on. A sexist discourse is one where there is a deeper set of assumptions and tropes or anxieties that support them, which suggest that one sex (often, but not always, male) is better than the other, that one sex or another has limited mental or social capabilities, and so on. A colonialist discourse is one that supports colonization of other societies, often by the society in which the text was produced. Because discourses are deeply embedded in narratives (stories) they often contradict the overt story. For example, a novel that argues, overtly, that men and women are equal can still have a sexist discourse embedded in it. (For example, while King Kong seems designed to make its audience feel sorry for King Kong, and by extension for African-Americans, the film also definitely contains an unarguably racist (and sexist) discourse… among others.)

I think that’s all the major terms we discussed. I hope this helps! If not, please ask me in class next time!

I have mentioned, or will mention, how we will conduct discussions in class. My explanation confused at least one student, who emailed me, so here goes:

When we are going to have a class discussion, I will usually ask you to write a “Preparation Paper”. There may be several things I ask you to think about: for example, a company, a group of people affected by that company, and an article discussing both. (Or, for example, two films and an essay discussing one of those films.) You can list off information you found in your own research, note questions you have about the assigned reading or viewing, and list questions you would like to ask the class or panel discussion participants.

You are expected to write the Preparation Paper and bring it to class for the discussion, but not to hand it in. Rather, you will keep it, and when you go home, you will write your “Response Paper” which will sum up your thoughts on the discussion, highlight what you agree and disagree with, note a few questions which you think were raised by what was said, and so on.

Then, you will staple the Preparation Paper and the Response Paper together, and hand them in. Note: they MUST be stapled. (I will throw away any Preparation or Response Paper that is not accompanied by its opposite, and if they are not stapled, I will throw them away even if I receive both. Folding corners is not an acceptable substitute to staples.) The completed Preparation/Response Paper is due the next class after a discussion.

I hope that makes everything clear for you. If not, let me know!

The new classroom is room 342 of the International Hub. We will begin meeting there from our next class, on Tuesday morning. See you there!

1. Pick up a copy of a mass-market English-language magazine. As I said, I don’t care whether you choose something simpler and more basic (and learn about structure and attention-grabbing) or choose something more intellectual (and learn more about complex, sophisticated writing). Remember, I asked you NOT to choose Time magazine for this purchase. I also recommend not choosing People magazine. Here are some magazine titles that come to my mind:
   • “Simpler” Magazines:
     • Cosmopolitan, Vogue
     • Maxim, Men’s Health
   • More Challenging Magazines:
     • The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly
     • The Economist, Newsweek
   • Specialized Magazines:
     • Guns and Ammo, Snowboarder Magazine
2. Read through the copy of the CUF magazine that you received in class today. Think about the range of styles and topics in the magazine. This is in the rough ballpark of what we’re looking for in your articles in our class, as well as the magazine in which your own work might get published, so reading the magazine is a great idea!
3. Write a list of 5-6 topics which you think would make interesting reading for your fellow CUK students. The topics don’t all need  to be serious, but they shouldn’t all be light or “puff piece” topics, either. We also need “think pieces,” like the articles on suicide and city redevelopment in Seoul which are featured in the current issue. As well, we could use a few interesting interviews, so one of your topics could be a suggested personality on campus who’d be interesting to interview for the CUF. Submit your typed list of possible topics to me in class on Tuesday next week.
4. Work with your assigned partner or group to fill out the Student Information Sheet you got in class. (Or see below to download another copy.)  You will interview your partner, and fill out his or her information; likewise, your partner will interview you and fill out your information. After the interview, rank how interesting the interview was, by rating it from 1 (really not interesting) to 5 (very, very interesting). Attach your photos and submit the Student Information Sheets next class (ie. on Tuesday).

That’s it! See you next week!

• Student Information Sheet (PDF)

The homework I assigned for next time is to bring a passport-sized photo of yourself in which you are  (a) alone and (b) recognizable. We’ll use it to fill out an information sheet, so please also bring some glue with you to Thursday’s class.

As for next week’s homework, I asked you to do one of two things:

• IF you HAVE NOT seen the film King Kong, please watch it and think about what we discussed. I am not referring to the recent (2005) Peter Jackson remake, but the original 1933 production. You can find the video online for free in several places, like here, but if you want to watch it with subtitles, you may have to pick up a copy of the DVD. Most good DVD shops can sell you a copy for not much money.
• IF you HAVE seen King Kong and are familiar with it, then please watch the original Japanese film Gojira (in English, Godzilla) from 1954, and think about the “close reading” I offered you regarding King Kong. If you carefully try to read the metaphors in Godzilla, what do you see?

See you soon!

Your homework for next class is to bring a photograph of yourself, of roughly passport-photo size, in which you are (a) alone and (b) recognizable.

See you in class!

For next week’s class, the assigned homework is to bring yourself up to speed on the conflict between Posco and the native people in the Indian state of Orissa. A starting point for your investigation is writer Vandana Singh’s recent post about the conflict, comparing it to the James Cameron film Avatar. (But make sure you move on from there, to read more articles and reports on both sides of this conflict.)

We will discuss parallels, differences, and the comparison in general, as well as the ethics and business concerns of the situation, and its coverage (or lack thereof) in the Korean media. If you have not yet seen Avatar, please do make sure you have seen it before our class next Tuesday morning (March 9th) in order to be able to participate in the discussion.

Remember, as I mentioned in class on Thursday, in response to a very good question: you are expected to write up your thoughts before and after the discussion — two separate sheets which you will staple together when handing them in each week on Thursday. For now, that means writing up your thoughts on business in Avatar, on your thoughts about the situation involving Posco in Orissa, and on Vandana Singh’s comparison of the two situations. You’ll write up a reaction afterward.

Also remember that you are expected to hand in your Student Information Sheet on Tuesday. You will have filled it out with your chosen partner and attached your photo by then.

Finally, I asked you and your partner to brainstorm a list five positive and five negative effects of business on your personal life. I’ll also be making a list, and part of our discussion will be comparing notes on these lists of ours. In any case, you are expected to hand in a typed copy of your list at the beginning of class on Tuesday, so make sure you have two copies: one for me, and one each for you and your partner, which you can use during your discussion.

See you next week!

There is a syllabus for the course available here (PDF). The week-too-week course plan is subject to revision, but in general principles it will remain as it is.

I assigned some homework for our next class, as follows:

• Think about what you want to write — what form you’re currently interested in exploring, whether poetry or fiction or creative nonfiction.
• Think about what you want to write about — as in, what sort of a story or character or emotion or whatever that you think you’d like to explore. Political or social issues, too, fit into this question.
• Be ready to talk next time about one writer that has “spoken” to you in his or her written work, and why you think this was the case. (Remember my various examples and their explanations?)
• Write a short piece of creative writing (ie. one page, single-spaced) of any style you like, dealing with any subject you like. This is for me to get a sense of what level you’re at, and to track your progress.
• Since you should know something about me as a writer, since I’m teaching you this course, please check out my latest story at Clarkesworld.com.I’ll be asking you for your feedback on the story in class next week. (It’s only fair, since I’ll be critiquing your work all semester too!)

I also mentioned to students a subpage on this website, dealing with formatting of written work. That page can be viewed here. It’s a good idea to check it out and familiarize yourself with my formatting guidelines.

I look forward to spending the semester with you studying Creative Writing!

If you’re wondering why you got the grade you did, there are a few things to consider:

1. It’s possible that I was forced by the University Administration to give you  lower grade than you really earned. This unfortunate requirement by our university is, sadly, common across Korea in Universities. It is, in my opinion, unfair although I can understand why it might have become necessary at some point in the past. In any case, regardless of my feelings and regardless of the quality of your work, there are limits to how many As and Bs can be awarded to students in classes of 20 or more students.

   The curve, combined with the inept management of this system, in handling students who drop courses, is the cause of a lot of frustration and anger, and also of painful feelings, every semester. It hurts me to give students lower grades than they have earned, but I cannot do otherwise: the computer doesn’t allow me to enter more than a limited number of As and Bs, and all I can assure you is that I work from the highest grades to the lowest to make sure that the grading is as fair as possible, given the unfair system.

   If you doubt my anger at this system, or my frustration at its unfairness, then please feel free to visit me sometime during semester and we can talk about it. I will turn red in the face very quickly, and probably start shouting at the walls within ten minutes. I hate this system, but there seems to be nothing I can do about it. Maybe as students, you can do something about it?

2. The University’s definition of “classes of 20 or more students” is also problematic. Students who stop attending but don’t bother to drop a class are counted as a member of the class. This is relevant for my Listening & Speaking class this semester, in which there were only 19 students in the course, but 23 on the class list. While I cannot publish the names of the students who quit attending the course but didn’t bother to drop the course officially, they are the problem in this case. I’m told that there is nothing I can do, and therefore a number of students deserving of As and Bs received Bs and Cs.
3. It’s possible that you missed some specific homework or other factor. Some students performed extremely well on major course tasks, but participated poorly. Some students participated well but missed a few homework assignments. A and A+ grades are for students who excel in all aspects of the course, managing assignments, participation, performance on exams or essays, and so forth. Indeed, not all completed homework assignments are equal: a checkmark is okay, but a check-plus is better, and a check-plus-plus is the optimal score. Missing small assignments seems like a little thing, but it adds up. Doing small assignments just well enough to receive a check-mark (but not check-plus or check-plus-plus) is simply not competing with others for the chance to receive the limited A and B grades available in the class.
4. When it comes down to a choice between two people of the same grade for the last A or B available, then all things being equal, class participation, engagement with course topics, and quality of homework are always more important than attendance, exams or essays.
5. If you stumbled in a major way — not coming to a midterm or final exam, missing more than ten hours of class (which is my limit), didn’t participate once in class, or otherwise, then you should receive an F, plain and simple. If you didn’t, then be grateful! If you ask me to reconsider your grade in that case, you’ll probably receive the F you deserve!

To sum up: I spend hours and hours every semester grading, tracking grades, inputting grades into my system, thinking about participation marks, and thinking about how to improve my system for grading each of my classes. While I think grading and grades are detrimental to education, I take them seriously, I work hard to make sure they are fair, and I spend a lot of time on them. So before you ask me whether you got the grade you deserve, please think over what I’ve written above. Check out this page, too, for more observations on grading.

One last thing: if you got a grade lower than you would like in my class, it doesn’t mean getting the grade you want is impossible with me. A number of students who have gotten Cs, Bs, or even A0s with me have gone on to get A+ in a later class, when they are more used to my teaching methods and ready to work at it. So please don’t give up! You can do it, and I am eager to work with you.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas (I was grading!) and a marvellous New Year’s! Good luck, and hopefully I’ll see you next semester.