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Cold War Cosmopolitanism
Period Style in 1950s Korean Cinema
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Book Presentation:
South Korea in the 1950s was home to a burgeoning film culture, one of the many “Golden Age cinemas” that flourished in Asia during the postwar years. Cold War Cosmopolitanism offers a transnational cultural history of South Korean film style in this period, focusing on the works of Han Hyung-mo, director of the era’s most glamorous and popular women’s pictures, including the blockbuster Madame Freedom (1956). Christina Klein provides a unique approach to the study of film style, illuminating how Han’s films took shape within a “free world” network of aesthetic and material ties created by the legacies of Japanese colonialism, the construction of US military bases, the waging of the cultural Cold War by the CIA, the forging of regional political alliances, and the import of popular cultures from around the world. Klein combines nuanced readings of Han’s sophisticated style with careful attention to key issues of modernity—such as feminism, cosmopolitanism, and consumerism—in the first monograph devoted to this major Korean director.
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.
About the Author:
Christina Klein is Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Boston College.
Press Reviews:
"With this meticulous study, Christina Klein has created a unique product that systematically and in great detail deals with changes in film culture, so I warmly recommend the book."— New Review of Film and Television Studies
"Overall, Cold War Cosmopolitanism is an exciting and welcome addition to interdisciplinary and transnational Korean studies. It is well documented, convincingly argued, and a pleasure to read."
— Acta Koreana
"A clearly written and forcefully argued study of the interplay between the transnational forces of the Cold War and the local cultural formation of South Korean cinema. Through astute analysis of film director Han Hyung-mo’s postwar works with concepts drawn from art history, material culture studies, and cultural studies, Klein brings to light the overlooked importance of the 1950s in Korea’s encounter with the Korean War and modernization and their complex linkage to the cultural developments of Free Asia. This book belongs on the bookshelf of everyone interested in the Cold War culture of Asia."
—Poshek Fu, author of Between Shanghai and Hong Kong: The Politics of Chinese Cinemas
"Klein shines a brilliant klieg light on the still largely unknown South Korean classic films of the 1950s by placing them in a global context of Cold War culture and politics. This is an original and engaging study with broad scholarly and popular appeal."—
Carter J. Eckert, author of Park Chung Hee and Modern Korea
"Although following Han Hyung-mo’s corpus of works, Cold War Cosmopolitanism is not a traditional auteur study. Christina Klein uses Han's career and female characters as a discursive springboard to chart out both historical and theoretical trajectories of the formation of Cold War cosmopolitanism in 1950s Korea under US hegemony?—a unique contribution to multiple fields."
—Hye Seung Chung, author of Movie Migrations: Transnational Genre Flows and South Korean Cinema
"Engaging, nuanced, and bold, Klein's study offers a comprehensive exploration of Han Hyung-mo's films in their proper transnational, sociopolitical and cultural context. Bringing 'film style' to the forefront, Klein illustrates the importance of a broad cultural approach to the Cold War that centers art, gender, geopolitical dynamics, and historical legacies in the narrative."—Theodore Jun Yoo, author of It's Madness: The Politics of Mental Health in Colonial Korea
"Klein gives us not only a wonderful study of Han Hyung-mo but also a fascinating glimpse into the cultural realm of South Korea in the 1950s. It is highly recommended for anyone with an interest in Asian film, South Korea, or the cultural Cold War."
—Gregg Brazinsky, author of Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry During the Cold War
See the publisher website: University of California Press
> On a related topic:
Cinema under National Reconstruction (2024)
State Censorship and South Korea's Cold War Film Culture
Political Moods (2023)
Film Melodrama and the Cold War in the Two Koreas
Literature and Film in Cold War South Korea (2012)
Freedom's Frontier
Impossible Speech (2024)
The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film
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