Asian American Studies Annotated Bibliography

GK [name redacted]

1 November 2017

Final Project Annotated Bibliography and Methodology

I. Short Identification:

Korean American artists, including Jay Park and Eric Nam, are very popular in the South

Korean music industry, and seem to have secured fame throughout the globe while promoting as

Korean artists. However, they may not have been able to achieve this fame if they had tried to

debut in the U.S. prior to becoming famous, due to various stereotypes of Asian Americans in

the U.S., and a lack of Asian Americans in the mainstream music industry. This research paper

will try to identify the reasons why Korean Americans have not been able to easily promote in

the mainstream U.S. music scene as Americans, and why South Korea seems to be a hub for

Korean Americans to showcase their musical talents.

II. Annotated Bibliography:

1. Castro, Christi-Anne. "Voices in the Minority: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the Asian

American in Popular Music." Journal of Popular Music Studies, vol. 19, no. 3, Sept. 2007, pp.

221-238. Accessed 31 Oct. 2017.

Castro gives a slight overview of Asian American stereotypes in the media, particularly gender-

based stereotypes, and then uses the punk music genre, especially through artists Mike Park and

Magdalen Hsu-Li, to show how those stereotypes are just stereotypes, and that Asian Americans

are able to identify these stereotypes as false. Castro does, however, reiterate that what has been

obtained in the punk scene cannot be easily recreated in the mainstream music scene. Castro’s

writing will be useful for me if I need to utilize any type of gender-based argument in my

research, and this leaves me interested to see how I may be able to incorporate effeminate

masculinity trends in Asian American men in my research. However, more importantly, Mike

Park is Korean American, which means I can cross-compare him to the artists I will be analyzing

in my research.

2. “Eric Nam.” YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. Accessed 31 Oct. 2017.

I am identifying Eric Nam’s YouTube channel as one of my primary sources, because Eric Nam

will be one of the more prominent Korean American artists that I will focus on in my research

(although it is important to note that his official music videos are featured on his label’s

“CJENMUSIC Official” channel instead.) Eric Nam, a Korean American singer and entertainer

who turned down a stable consulting job in the U.S. in order to try to pursue singing as offered

by a Korean broadcasting agency, is an interesting artist to analyze because he seems to be

branching out into American music by collaborating in songs with both Gallant and Timbaland,

who are American artists, and continuously mentions in interviews across online media that he is

very interested in breaking into the American scene. His songs and image tend to fit Korean

ideals well, in that he appears to be gentle and soft-spoken, but he does enjoy R&B and seems to

be trying to use that genre instead to try and get into the American music scene. His YouTube

channel, with only approximately142,500 thousand followers, is useful to analyze because he

features a somewhat de-masculinized image in his YouTube channel overall, that may either

work for or against his advantage if he were to debut in the U.S.

3. Hogarth, Hyun-key Kim. "The Korean Wave: An Asian Reaction to Western-Dominated

Globalization." Perspectives on Global Development & Technology, vol. 12, no. 1/2, Jan.

2013, pp. 135-151. Accessed 31 Oct. 2017.

After a brief overview of the Hallyu Wave, Hogarth goes into essentially stating why Korean

dramas and Korean pop are particularly Westernized—Although he focuses on emphasizing that

K-pop is indeed Westernized, whereas K-dramas have some of their own unique advantages that

make them appealing to a global market. Although Hogarth appears to have more interest in K-

dramas versus K-pop, it is interesting and useful to see how he responds to K-pop’s globalization

efforts. He provides some good background on the Korean artists who have tried to debut in the

U.S., and also notes an insight that will prove helpful to my research—the fact that there are so

many K-pop groups versus soloists is because of the Korean collectivist ideologies, which makes

me wonder how Korean Americans would tie in, and if it would make sense that there are a

number of Korean American soloists in the Korean music industry due to their American

individualism being an influence.

4. “JAYPARKOFFICIAL.” YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. Accessed 31 Oct. 2017.

I am identifying Jay Park’s YouTube channel as one of my primary sources, because Jay Park

will be one of the more prominent Korean American artists that I will focus on. Jay Park, a

Korean American ex-K-pop group member, current musician and rapper, among other things, is

an interesting artist to analyze because he is extremely popular all over the globe, he founded his

own record label (AOMG), and has just recently been signed to Jay-Z’s, an American hip-hop

artist, record label Roc Nation, which hints that Jay Park could officially debut in the U.S. It will

also be interesting to analyze Jay Park’s YouTube channel, which is nearing 900,000 subscribers,

as many of his music videos seem more Westernized than other Korean music videos on

YouTube.

5. Jung, Eun-young. “Transnational Migrations and YouTube Sensations: Korean Americans,

Popular Music, and Social Media.” Ethnomusicology, vol. 58, no. 1, Winter 2014, pp. 54-

82. Accessed 31 Oct. 2017.

Jung presents a brief and concise overview of the fluidity of Korean American identity, but then

she explains her main point of this article, which is to examine how YouTube allowed several

Korean American musicians more leverage to become popular in the U.S. One of the course

readings, Jung’s article correlates on many different levels with my research, in terms of

YouTube and Korean Americans moving back and forth from and to Korea and the U.S., and it

accomplishes research that is parallel to my own. Although, Jung argues that online media

platforms have allowed Korean Americans to explore options besides debuting in Korea,

whereas I want to examine the fact that Korean Americans are still migrating and staying in

Korea, despite having access to these online media platforms.

6. Wang, Oliver. "Between the Notes: Finding Asian America in Popular Music." American

Music,

vol. 19, no. 4, Asian American Music, Winter 2001, p. 439-465. Accessed 31 Oct. 2017.

Wang introduces a little bit of the background of Asian American history and struggle in the U.S.,

and the ways in which Asian Americans have used music to combat societal issues. Wang seems

to particularly focus on some of the Asian American rap music of the 1990s and 2000s, and also

on the differences of Asian Americans before and after the 1965 Immigration Act. Wang’s paper

will be useful for my research because he explains some of the basics of Asian American history

in a very concise way, which will be helpful for any historical background I need to refer to, but

also because Wang directly talks about the Asian Americans who immigrated after the

Immigration Act, and how they differed from previous Asian American populations in terms of

promoting recognition as more than just a model minority. The Korean American artists I will be

examining are mostly first-and-a-half or second generation Korean Americans, which means

their parents would have migrated after the Immigration Act, and may not have instilled a sense

of ethnic and transnational pride in their children early on, which means I can use Wang’s

observations to supplement historical background information on the artists that I am analyzing.

III. Methods Statement:

In order to accomplish my research, I will mainly analyze two separate Korean American

artists currently active in the South Korean music industry, who are Jay Park and Eric Nam. I

will first attempt to research what these artists have to say themselves about their transnational

identity through any type of interviews that can be found. I will also be bringing in several other

Korean American artists when I cannot extract enough research from either Jay Park or Eric

Nam’s interviews, due to the limited number of interviews and the limited number of questions

they may have answered. These artists, listed under their ongoing stage names, will likely

include the following: Ailee, Jessi, Jessica Jung, and John Park. There are other Korean

American artists that I can, and may, utilize in my research, but these artists that I have just

named have similar circumstances to either Jay Park or Eric Nam’s stories, which can help me to

further analyze my research.

I will be paying attention to these Korean American artist’s interviews and the way in which

they promote and sell their music, and how it may differ from each other. Certain things I will

pay extra attention to in any of the online media from these artists will include transnational

experiences, American elements, evidence of discrimination in the U.S., difficulty in promoting

in the U.S., transnational fan experiences, and anything else that may come up in these

interviews and music videos. However, in order to figure out what specifically I should be

paying attention to in these media, I will need to first further ground myself in what scholars

have previously talked about in this subject, and refer to them throughout my paper.

In order to accomplish well-rounded research, I will use the articles outlined in my

Annotated Bibliography to help me understand and further analyze these Korean American

artist’s experiences and portrayals of themselves. I will likely find several other articles or books

that will also aid me in this process.