This course explores how gender has figured in the
economic “miracles” of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, and Hong
Kong in the 20th and 21st centuries.  Focusing on the linked nexus
of factory work, sex work, and service work, it examines the
relationship between wage labor participation and gender roles by
asking how cultural ideologies regarding gender and family have
shaped the meaning of non-domestic labor for different generations
of East Asian women and men.  How do work and gender identities
influence, and potentially reconfigure, one another?  What is the
relationship among work, family, education, and social status in
different Asian contexts and across time?  How have the various
political-economic systems in the region (socialist, capitalist,
colonial) shaped the gendering of work and bodily capacities?  The
course will integrate theoretical readings on gender, labor, class,
and globalization with historical and contemporary case studies from
the region.