Department of British and American Cultural Studies

This study includes three students’ whose country origin is of a political and economic success, therefore the pursuit to learn English is important. The participants evaluated in this study are two students of Korean descent and one Chinese student. The purpose was to evaluate their overall language learning experiences outside of their home country. While the participants in this study share similar cultures and learning styles their process towards second language readiness is different. The internal factors (readiness) that motivated them to study abroad were synonymous. However, the classroom situations (assessment), social settings (environment), and strategies used were disparate. The methodology of this paper used a holistic approach with a snowball sampling technique.  The responses were collected by a prepared questionnaire and unstructured interviews, then later analyzed by the inductive reasoning process. The 3 specific categories identified were despondency, culture and communication conflict. The present study revealed that the participants’ earlier preparation from their home country plays a significant contribution to their success abroad.

Through the use of speech software technology, this paper examines the effects of voice interactions within the inner circle of English. The fundamental frequency (F0) was obtained by analyzing native speakers (aged 30-55) speech effects based on nationality, age, and gender. The findings within this study reveal that the Caucasian British female (age 33) and the Caucasian American male (age 55) produced the most interactive speech. The contributing factor is the students' experience with various language styles throughout their language acquisition studies. The results of this study are compatible with Traunmüller & Eriksson (1995) and previous studies which agree that continuous speech above average is paramount towards student engagement and interactions.

This case study examines the experiences of an African American student’s successful second language acquisition in Korea. There is an increasing number of multicultural families in Korea; but few research on African American students’ second language learning. In the past, some American researchers have analyzed African American students as academic underachievers for learning and there is a scarcity of research on African American students’ successfully acquiring a second language. With this qualitative research design, the researchers interviewed, and observed an African American girl named Mary. The researchers also interviewed Mary’s mother, teacher, and peers about Mary’s Korean language development. The results of this study revealed Mary’s determined efforts to become a fluent Korean speaker with support from family, community and friends. Mary underwent unique social and systematic supports for her language development. This paper concludes with the educational implication ...

Michel Chion's concept of the "acousmêtre" is useful when exploring the spectator's cinematic experience in regard to the juxtaposition of sound and image, as the acousmatic presence troubles the false sense of unity that is created by the synchronization of sound and image by its invocation of off-screen space through sound. The acousmêtre neither prioritizes sound nor image but calls attention to the disjunction between them. Also, the acousmêtre leaves the source of the sound open to imagination and interpretation. Thus the presence of the acousmêtre destabilizes the seemingly unified, contained realm of the film by expanding the temporal and spatial boundaries of the diegesis. In this essay I explore how the power of this ghostly voice of the acousmêtre is manifested in cinema, and the significance of its power to the spectators in their relationship to the film, by asking questions regarding the function and effect of the disembodied voice and spectral presence of the acousmêtre, the scope of the acousmêtre's power, and what can be created from the disequilibrium that is provoked by this power. I explore possible answers by analyzing the use of the acousmatic voice in Y Tu Mama Tambien (dir. Alfonso Cuaron, 2001) and Calendar (dir. Atom Egoyan, 1993).

In this essay I examine the tension among the varying levels of global mobility associated with multiple spectral bodies that haunt the textual, intertextual and production spaces of the film, Shutter (2008), a Hollywood/Japanese remake of a popular Thai movie with the same title. I identify three types of spectral incarnations that are invoked or generated by the film: the Asian ghost figure in the narrative, the textual body of the Thai film that served as its source material, and Thai laborers that produced this earlier version. I argue that these spectralized forms of labor are materially present in the textual body of the film, and are perceptible to those who cultivate a "spectral vision" via uncanny effects created by ghostly doubles.

This book challenges the widespread tendency among audiences and critics to disregard the material conditions of digital film production. Drawing on interviews with directors, producers, special effects supervisors, and other film industry workers, I trace how the rhetorical and visual emphasis on seamlessness masks the social, political, and economic realities of global filmmaking and digital labor. In films such as Avatar (2009), Interstellar (2014), and The Host (2006)—which combine live action footage with CGI to create new hybrid environments—filmmaking techniques and "seamless" digital effects allow the globally dispersed labor involved to go unnoticed by audiences. I adapt Foucault's notion of heterotopic spaces to foreground this labor and to theorize cinematic space as a textured, multilayered assemblage in which filmmaking occurs in transnational collaborations that depend upon the global movement of bodies, resources, images, and commodities. Acknowledging cinema's increasingly digitized and globalized workflow, I reconnect digitally constructed and composited imagery with the reality of production spaces and laboring bodies to highlight the political, social, ethical, and aesthetic stakes in recognizing the materiality of collaborative filmmaking.

This essay analyzes two Korean films, Coin Locker Girl (Chinatown, Han Jun-hee, 2015) and Missing (Missing: Sarajin Yeoja, Lee Eon-hie, 2016), to consider how the films’ spaces exhibit traces of transnational mobility. Considering how various forms of border crossing and transnational exchanges affect changes in Korean society, this paper examines changing perceptions of kinship and alternative notions of family and home. These changes in networks of kinship and ideas of “homely” and “unhomely” spaces, I argue, is indicative of one’s shifting status or position in the “imagined community” of contemporary South Korea. I focus on “unhomely spaces,” or spaces that are “made strange,” in a broader attempt to analyze the spatial relations and representations of space in Korean films. These spaces, I contend, function as an emblem of complex networks of kinship that are created and maintained, or sometimes threatened and disintegrated by transnational exchanges that occur in contemporary Korean society.

This essay analyzes Korean films, Traffickers (Gongmojadeul, Hong-seon Kim, 2012), Sea Fog (Haemoo, Sungbo Shim, 2014), and The Yellow Sea (Hwanghae, Na Hong-jin, 2010), to examine the motif of fragmented bodies and perilous cross-border migrations. These films depict vulnerable bodies that are at risk of being brutalized, mutilated, and dismembered according to the calculating logic of global capital.

This article examines how contemporary media art and popular culture, vernacular cultural practices, and digital technologies express and actualize aspirations for global mobility. This task is propelled by the need to question the limited scope of how we envision globalization. Here I explore how people use forms of visual media to “perform the global” through mediated experiences of mobility. I propose the concept of “virtual cosmopolitans” to describe those who participate in the experience of global citizenship through their use of photography, film, and digital media. Although they do not have access to conventional forms of cosmopolitan mobility, these virtual cosmopolitans find ways to envision or simulate cosmopolitan experiences by inserting themselves into the global imaginary via mediated networks of images. This article discusses how these virtual cosmopolitans participate in the discourse and experience of globalization, and considers ways to manifest and actualize cosmopolitan desires through vernacular forms of media. I focus on two documentary films that engage with the photographic medium to consider diverse forms of mediated mobility: Born into Brothels (Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski, 2004) and City of Photos (Nishtha Jain, 2005). Although both films illustrate how disadvantaged subjects in contemporary Indian society negotiate their desires of mobility, they propose different ways to assert their identity as a cosmopolitan, deploying varying levels of imagination. This discussion illustrates how marginalized subjects engage with global forces in local spaces by cultivating media literacy and demonstrating creative uses of visual media.

In this essay I examine the tension among the varying levels of global mobility associated with multiple spectral bodies that haunt the textual, intertextual and production spaces of the film, Shutter (2008), a Hollywood/Japanese remake of a popular Thai movie with the same title. I identify three types of spectral incarnations that are invoked or generated by the film: the Asian ghost figure in the narrative, the textual body of the Thai film that served as its source material, and Thai laborers that produced this earlier version. I argue that these spectralized forms of labor are materially present in the textual body of the film, and are perceptible to those who cultivate a “spectral vision” via uncanny effects created

This article mobilizes the motif of digital reincarnation to examine the
regenerating bodies and the multiple lives of the mummy in The Mummy
franchise.
I read the body of the mummy as a cyborg hybrid because it
features enhanced powers of rejuvenation that are indicative of malleable,
porous, and networked bodies of our digital era. This updated version of
a computer-generated mummy infuses digital aesthetics and logic into the
mummy complex of cinema. Assembled in the virtual production pipeline of
global Hollywood, this contemporary mummy is a heterogeneous amalgam
of media forms: organic flesh, synthetic prosthetics, and digital bytes.