Foreign but Familiar

The global rise of the South Korean entertainment industry, commonly described as the Korean wave or hallyu, has been the subject of scholarly study because it presents a challenge to Western media hegemony. This chapter uses mixed methods to assess how hybridized genre conventions and familiar storytelling structures in South Korean television dramas create a media product that is accessible to a diverse fandom. The Korean drama fandom extends beyond Eastern Asia and the Asian diaspora, and there is a dearth of research on this larger global audience. Theories of cultural proximity are insufficient to explain a popularity that transcends culture and language. The importance of a media text's structure is also under-studied in research on fandom. By combining survey data from Korean drama fans living outside of South Korea with a critical assessment of the use of melodrama and other genre conventions in Korean dramas, this chapter argues that the shared symbolic language of genre plays an important role in building a global fanbase.

Cultivating STEAM Literacy: Emphasizing the Implementation of the Arts through Reading Practices Supporting the Asian Diaspora

This paper explores the cultivation of STEAM literacy through the employment of practices derived from traditional reading strategies. This teaching and learning framework focuses on utilizing multimodal texts to increase exposure and opportunities for students to creatively explore diverse realms of STEM through the arts. Featuring student-centered endeavors through self-selected texts and in-class reading practices followed by tiered scaffolded discourse engagements, this framework initiates greater interest, autonomy, and culturally and linguistically authentic practices enhancing STEAM literacy. Embedded in the implications is the deconstruction of frequently aggregated STEM data that “overrepresents” the Asian demographic. Using the lens of the model minority myth, this paper attempts to disaggregate the Asian category, illuminating the actual diaspora that makes up the Asian and Asian American communities, many of which are not represented in STEM fields. Through more reading opportunities and fostering discourse practices, the arts contribute greater inclusion, cultivating STEAM literacy for all students.

‘All Tee, No Shade’: A manifesto for a subtle critical practice negotiating queer, East Asian masculinities through T-shirts

‘All Tee, No Shade’ is a practice-led research project that explores the use of the men’s T-shirt to challenge and disrupt hegemonic subjectivities that contribute to the marginalization and discrimination of the queer Asian diaspora. Through an exploration of my pilot project of the same name, produced as part of the arts programme of Virgin Australian Melbourne Fashion Festival in 2020, I propose that norm-critical design methodologies exploring intersectional experiences of fashion and dress can produce material outcomes that challenge the discrimination and oppression associated with compounding conditions of race and sexuality. I use the notion of ‘subtle’ traits as a condition of the East Asian diasporic experience to reveal how race and sexuality might be expressed through fashion production to disrupt conceptions of ‘otherness’. This is achieved with T-shirts that have printed graphic configurations that align with contemporary streetwear but with ‘subtle’ signifiers embedded through the signs and lexicons of Asian and queer communities. Using an autoethnographic approach, the work is informed by my past fashion design industry experience and reflects on racial and queer marginalization and discrimination through styling and fit. The project contributes to broader discourses aimed at decentralizing dominant narratives in fashion practice and responds to a lack of academic research into diasporic Asian experiences of dress and, more specifically, queer diasporic Asian dress.

Being Away from Home in Australia: The Indonesian Diaspora in Canberra

The study of diasporas has been given relatively little attention by Indonesian scholars. A likely reason is the high cost of funding diaspora research in the host countries, motivating scholars to instead focus on other, less resource-intensive topics. Although the significance of this research on the Indonesian diaspora may not be immediately evident, its importance lies in how Indonesians maintain their nationalism when living overseas. Two problems particularly felt by them are homesickness and anxiety. Using an ethnographic approach, this research therefore sought to highlight how the Indonesian diaspora based in Canberra, Australia, make social bonds with each other. These bonds serve to make Canberra a second home for Indonesians, especially students and their families, permanent residents, and even naturalised citizens who have Indonesian backgrounds. A main finding was that there are various senses of Indonesianess between groups in the Canberra-based diaspora. While students are much more likely to maintain a feeling of nationalism due to scholarship policies, other groups in the diaspora, such as permanent residents and naturalised citizens, appear to hold onto their Indonesianess less tightly. Although they still engage with Indonesia, they view the country more critically, including on sensitive issues that are labelled as taboo in Indonesia. Despite the existence of these two different conceptions of Indonesianess, Canberra is their home away from home in Australia. These results consequently aid in our understanding of the significance of family ties to shaping most Asian diaspora communities living abroad.