Fashioning Seoul: Everyday Practices of Dress in the Korean Wave

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

Publication of an Internet-accessible database resource for Arts et Metiers graphiques

Arts et Metiers graphiques (AMG) was a prominent French graphic arts magazine that was published in 68 issues from 1927 to 1939. Charles Peignot, head of the French typefoundry Deberny et Peignot, created the publication. Deberny et Peignot was the leading company of its kind in France. It manufactured not only thousands of metal type designs, but also machinery, furniture, and accessories for sale to the typesetting and printing industries. Charles Peignot, a young visionary with presses, metal type, and personal connections at his disposal secured his legacy in graphic arts history with the publication of Arts et Metiers graphiques. In it, he wanted to cover all the subjects near or far from printing, of its history, and its diverse contemporary manifestations. In over ten years of publication Peignot\u27s wide editorial goal encompassed subjects ranging from illustration, the history of the book and printing techniques and the then-expanding disciplines of advertising design and modern art photography. The magazine also featured regular reviews of fine limited-edition books and reprints of classical literature excerpts in typographically innovative layouts. Each edition was printed on high-quality papers with frequent tipped-in plates and inserts. Until the Second World War forced the magazine to cease production, Arts et Metiers graphiques was one of the highest standards for graphic arts magazines of its time. This thesis describes the creation and implementation of a web-based database providing access to the digitized content of Arts et Metiers graphiques

A Soulful Egg Can Break a Rock: A Case Study of a South Korean Social Movement Leader\u27s Rhetoric

This dissertation introduces and analyzes Ven. Hyemoon’s rhetoric emanating from his leadership of the civic group, the Committee for the Return of Korean Cultural Property in South Korea. On the surface, he seems focused on retrieving cultural artifacts, pillaged by the Japanese colonial invasion. His work, upon deeper analysis, emerges to be about regaining a Korean cultural and national identity that is historically grounded, civically engaged and morally reflective. This study is informed by multiple theories (i.e., framing, narrative, social semiotics, critical geography, rhetoric, and social movement) to examine aspects of a phenomenon in depth – involving nationalism, social movement, rhetoric, repatriation, colonialism, and cultural resources – that work together to dissect or dismantle the complex construction of meanings and processes of specific social movement rhetoric. The central focus is on the examination of Hyemoon’s discursive construction of what it means to be authentic Koreans within the context of South Korea situated within a post-colonial, post-cold war, and post-democratizing movement as well as within global capitalism. The primary focus is on how historical, cultural, and moral landscapes mediated by Korean cultural artifacts are constructed and represented to the public in Hyemoon’s rhetoric and performance. In particular, the ways in which Korean collective-identity landscapes are depicted by relating cultural artifacts to specific places in history is considered. Moreover, the study examines discursive and performative practices and strategies that Hyemoon has adopted and developed to construct and represent his message by using linguistic, visual, and other material signs and symbols. Each chapter explores Hyemoon’s discourse by adopting different theories and focusing on specific events. The study concludes that Hyemoon’s discourse and performance appeals to the Korean public, engaging this audience in associating particular cultural assets with experiential, historic, and social collective memory. Most importantly, he reframes the meaning of cultural artifacts while also searching for cultural assets in terms of morality and civic agency. By offering a new interpretive framework, this work also finds that Hyemoon’s activism is effective in specific historic, political contexts of South Korea, in particular during the extension of the previous democratization social movement that had become quiescent

Taking Purikura: Vernacular Photography and Contested Female Visibility in Japan

This thesis is an exploration of purikura, a type of Japanese photo booth that has been prevalent since the 1990s - these machines, which utilize a broad variety of technologies to allow users to draw on, manipulate or beautify their appearance, serve as a popular form of vernacular photography among young women in Japan. It has been theorized that purikura machines serve as a means of public display of relationship networks, as a form of social capital, and as a tool for the crafting of new friendships. Through the use of these machines as a participant observer, as well as an engagement with the social media, magazines, films, music and manga (comics) favored by interlocutors, this thesis expands on the mediascape purikura persists within to better contextualize this practice. Through participant observation, this thesis expands on the kata, or practiced coordination required in purikura production, demanding an attention to poses, symmetry and group camaraderie. These photographs, which are often utilized for the commemoration of fashion and leisure activities, also serve as a form of conspicuous consumption - this is further enhanced through the beauty practices that these machines work in tandem with, creating an exaggerated gender performance of emphatic femininity in retaliation against larger social expectations of marriage and motherhood for young women in Japan. As a form of digitally enhanced photography that is circulated broadly across social media, this thesis also explores the potential for the proliferation of purikura photographs to be understood as a technologically-mediated cyborg selfhood with a global audience. Through purikura, many young women in Japan are using self-directed photography to describe meaningful life events, peer relationships, and emotions - purikura users challenge normative classification, choosing instead to align themselves within their own subcultures in ways that are unreadable to those who do not participate, where beauty practices have been utilized for in-group classification, further questioning the boundaries of normative Japanese femininity

Reforming the Law of Reputation

Unfair and deceptive practices of controllers and processors of data have adversely affected many citizens. New threats to individuals’ reputations have seriously undermined the efficacy of extant regulation concerning health privacy, credit reporting, and expungement. The common thread is automated, algorithmic arrangements of information, which could render data properly removed or obscured in one records system, nevertheless highly visible or dominant in other, more important ones. As policymakers reform the law of reputation, they should closely consult European approaches to what is now called the “right to be forgotten.” Health privacy law, credit reporting, and criminal conviction expungement need to be modernized for the digital age to reflect the power of aggregating intermediaries. Search engines, social networks, and other digital tools may maintain the salience and power of certain information long after formal processes have determined it to be untrue, irrelevant, or unfair. They must take on new responsibilities in order to reflect the values inherent in older schemes of reputation regulation

Photography and Social Life: An Ethnography of Chinese Amateur Photography Online

This dissertation explores the ‘middle-brow’ (Bourdieu, 1990) photography practices of contemporary Chinese people in the digital era and how they produce, circulate, and consume photographic images on and off the Internet. Through participant observation and interviews with Chinese photo hobbyists and professionals working in the visual-Internet industry based in London, Beijing, or in the virtual world, it asks how the marriage between photography and the Internet in China has been similar to, or distinct from, its counterparts in the rest of the world, consolidating a vernacular photo-scape that has emerged alongside China’s booming Internet economy and socio-economic transformation over the past forty years. The research further addresses the agencies of both individuals and images, which determine what people want from photography in today’s China and what photography wants from this new networked, mediated society. The dissertation moves across persons, communities, organisations, and real and virtual sites, making it a multi-sited ethnography that traces social relations and ‘the circulation of cultural meanings, objects, and identities in diffuse time-space’ (Marcus, 1995: 96). The thesis presents a panoramic picture of the everyday practices carried out by Chinese amateur photographers, who are often imagined and categorised as the country’s middle class. The study focuses on two main aspects. The first is the activity of amateur photography, including the conspicuous consumption of photographic equipment and participation in relevant events, as well as social behaviours on and off of Internet photography platforms. The second involves the judgement and appreciation of photographic images on sites such as Tuchong, focusing on various kinds of aesthetic strategies around and within photographic images. The combination of the two has helped photo hobbyists in China to shape their values, career paths, and new identities in the context of digitalisation and the rise of social media

Chinese Stardom in Participatory Cyberculture

As Chinese performers have become more visible on global screens, their professional images - once the preserve of studios and agents - have been increasingly relayed and reworked by film fans. Web technology has made searching, poaching, editing, posting and sharing texts significantly easier, and by using a variety of seamless and innovative methods a new mode of personality construction has been developed. With case studies of high-profile stars like Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Donnie Yen, this ground-breaking book examines transnational Chinese stardom as a Web-based phenomenon, and as an outcome of the participatory practices of cyber fans

Algorithmic Jim Crow

This Article contends that current immigration- and security-related vetting protocols risk promulgating an algorithmically driven form of Jim Crow. Under the “separate but equal” discrimination of a historic Jim Crow regime, state laws required mandatory separation and discrimination on the front end, while purportedly establishing equality on the back end. In contrast, an Algorithmic Jim Crow regime allows for “equal but separate” discrimination. Under Algorithmic Jim Crow, equal vetting and database screening of all citizens and noncitizens will make it appear that fairness and equality principles are preserved on the front end. Algorithmic Jim Crow, however, will enable discrimination on the back end in the form of designing, interpreting, and acting upon vetting and screening systems in ways that result in a disparate impact

2003-2007 Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination Against Arab Americans

Analyzes rates, patterns, and sources of anti-Arab-American hate crimes and discrimination, including detainee abuse, delays in naturalization, and threats; civil liberties concerns; bias in schools; and defamation in the media. Includes case summaries