Harvard University Key Issues in East Asian Youth Culture Essay

For this essay you must explore a key theme or idea we have covered thus far in class, such as globalization, East Asian regional connections and flows, labor, precariousness, sex and intimacy, education, or some other issue. The goal for this essay is to establish a firm position around an issue using various arguments and examples drawn from our readings thus far. Your aim is to show the reader how something like education is a variable and complex site of youth culture, from the Red Guards to contemporary Japan and South Korea, and connected to labor markets (migrant Chinese youth excluded from education and thus produced as a class of precarious worker or Japanese high schools linked to certain corporate employers who now have a diminished interest in these historical alliances). Rather than attempting to dismantle a particular author’s argument, you should attempt to link together various texts and explore the relationships generated through history, commerce, politics, consumption, media, etc. Connection and complexity rather than reduction and refusal are your watchwords.

Remember too that the essay should return to the idea of youth culture: how does your chosen concept/issue help to (re)define, alter, shape, influence, or produce the lived realities or abstract idea of youth culture particular to East Asia (and perhaps exceeds that regional boundary!).

Essentially, your essay is a building block for the final project and as such, it needs to be aware of its limits. Clearly tell the reader what you will accomplish, what examples you will use, etc. Do not try to summarize huge amounts of history or incorporate too many sources or examples. Stay tightly focused and give yourself a narrow scope so you can be careful and thorough. You are not responsible for any grand overviews or sweeping summaries of the course thus far–your task is to synthesize what you have learned thus far.

You may include outside sources, but use them sparingly. Use of your reviewed article is encouraged but not necessary. Incorporating an additional outside academic essay may help give you more specificity or focus an idea.