Stephanie Trinidad

Breakout Stars Korean Artist, K-Pop, and the American Music Industry          The emergence of Korean culture in the United States isn’t something that is new. For years artist from South Korea have slowly become a part of American culture, such as Rain a K-Pop and R&B artist who starred in the movie Ninja Assassin and was named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People Who Shape Our World.” Bryan Walsh wrote in the 2006 article on Rain that, “ Rain is the face — and well-muscled torso — of pop globalism” (time.com). Although Rain didn’t debut with an English language album he was able to establish himself in the United States and bring over the Hallyu Wave to the Western World. In Choe Sang-Hun and Mark Russell’s article “Bringing K-Pop to the West” they describe what K-Pop means “ K-pop is part of a broader trend known as the Korean Wave and called ''hallyu'' in Korean. The Taiwanese were among the first to notic...

            Kitty Fane, a young wife of bacteriologist Walter Fane finds herself in a world where her former life as a debutante in upper-middle class England isn’t sufficient. In a land where the cholera epidemic runs rampant and children are orphaned by the disease. W Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil , follows her story, as a young wife who is caught in an affair with another man, betrayed by her lover, and is suddenly thrusted into a world filled with disease and death. What make’s Maugham’s novel interesting is that it isn’t about the affair but about the growth of the character who suddenly realizes that her life isn’t a closed world filled with parties and becoming the wife of a respectable man. Kitty’s growth within the novel is about how the world around her shapes who she becomes once she’s away from the life that she had known. The Church and the disease within the town made her realize that life wasn’t only ab...

            The role of women in novels is one that always changes as the world itself changes, histories are altered, women are liberated, and the past comes to light as a time that had once oppressed women. Chinua Achebe’s novels Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease both center on male characters and women are in the background pushing the story along and changing the lives of the male protagonist. As an answer to Achebe’s novels Chimamanda Adichie wrote the short story “The Headstrong Historian”, unlike the male protagonist of Achebe’s Africa Adichie’s story is centered on a female character from the same Ibo village from Things Fall Apart . All of the female characters in these three stories live in a patriarchal society that is created from traditions and religious influences. Though they influence the male characters and have strong personalities they’re still tied down to the male heirs, husbands, and sons.

When pop music hit the airways in the mid-twentieth it changed everything around the world. Music expressed the feelings of the masses, it gave a voice to the voiceless, and gave artist the power to influence the world. One way that music has become a major influence for the people of the United States and Britain was that it gave a voice to those who worked. Whether they were restaurant workers, office workers, women, or men music voiced their problems to the world and made it known that the hardships they faced were faced by everyone who didn’t live in the top tier of society. The theme of work for many musicians was a personal battle for others they saw how hard those around them worked to make a meager salary. How many would turn to a life of crime in order to feed their families. For women music and the workplace was a double edged sword at time because many of them still had to deal with gender roles that would place them under a man. If a woman was a musician there was in...

Video games have long lived a life as being just a recreational tool for people to get away from the hassles of everyday life. People sit at home in front of a console and play for hours and in some cases days without stopping. Yet the thought of video games as a tool for literary theory is still new for many people. Most believe that games don’t have stories and perpetuate violence to younger generations, the characters are two dimensional, and the story just isn’t a substantial literary device. There is often a misconception that for something to be a work of literature it must be written in a book and studied in classrooms. Within the past few years the gaming industry has introduced many video games that have had long storylines that parallel many novels that have been written throughout the years.   Many of these games are also being adapted to film just as many books have. So has the industry of literature as a medium for entertainment expanded to include video games? ...

            If there is something that New York City is well known for it is the fact that people will gather there to celebrate or use it as a stop to a bigger journey. The central area of their journey is in midtown and the center of the city, Grand Central Station. It’s where business men go through on their way to work, and where immigrants stop to meet someone who will help them on their journey in their new world. What makes this place integral to the city is that no matter who a person is or where they’re from in this one building everyone is equal because they’re all on their way to their destination. Yet during the early years of the station the crowds and people who came and went were no different from those who live in the 21 st century, except that they would face a great many hardships that aren’t known in the modern world. What does looking back one hundred years tell a person in the 21 st Century about New Yo...

            A person’s feelings can be expressed through many different forms and in many different ways. The Renaissance artist and writers were no different in this aspect but there was a silent war going on between the two sides. One side of the argument comes from Leonardo da Vinci who believed that it was better to express the feelings and emotions of the time in art, using colors to capture people and nature. The other side of the argument came from William Shakespeare who used words to express the situations and feelings of the time and whether art and nature can be altered. Lastly there was also those like Michelangelo who both wrote poetry, painted, and sculpted the nature of life but also understood the true significance of life, nature, art and poetry. Was there one form that was superior to the other? Or did these men not understand the significance of all the forms of art whether drawn, sculpted or written and ho...

            Psychoanalysis is one of the most well-known critical approaches in literature, it shows the literary critic the mental state of not only the main character, but the author as well. In the book Critical Theory Today , Lois Tyson describes psychoanalytic criticism as “The notion that human beings are motivated even driven by desires, fears, needs, and conflicts of which they are unaware – that is, unconscious.” (Tyson, 12) This theoretical approach was created by Sigmund Freud from his theories on the unconscious mind and that people repress the things they don’t want to remember and that they go through several stages when they trying to repress memories. Almost as if a person is dealing with the five stages of grief, the stages of repression follow a similar pattern these stages include selective “perception, selective memory, denial, avoidance, displacement, and projection.” (15) These stages come from what a ...

            The United States in the nineteenth century was still a new country struggling to show that becoming independent from England was the right path for them to take. While under the careful scrutiny of other world powers the United States needed to show the world that they were as powerful and as culturally renowned as the rest of the world. During this time, Reverend Sydney Smith said “under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a Slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy and sell and torture.” (Smith 6) Smith was telling the world that the United States policy on slavery was the same as the old governments of Europe, and therefore the United States didn’t share the same mentality as the new world order of freeing slaves. Even though Smith’s argument towards slavery was the same as how the rest of the world viewed the practice he had yet to realize how quickly the young country was ...

The theories of how a child develops throughout their childhood and into their years before they become adults is something that has been studied by many psychologist. It is a topic that fascinates many theorist because this is when a person learns and adapts the most during these years. One such theorist is Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky who developed a theory in which is based on who children learn from their community and their culture and how these are important factors in how a child develops. The Three major parts of the theory are the Zone of Proximal Development also known as the ZPD, the More Knowledgeable Other known as MKO, and Scaffolding. Each of these three are part of the theory work together in the development of the child’s mind and can be used in a classroom setting in order to further the education of the student.

Note: I feel like this is probably not my best paper but I'm posting it anyway.             Hamlet is considered one of the most flawed characters in English Literature. After the death of his father, and his mother remarrying immediately afterwards to of all people his Uncle Claudius, Hamlet is pushed towards the brink trying to deal with all of these sudden changes. All of these changes put together can create instability in Hamlet’s mind as his world is shaken by the sudden changes. When psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud wrote T he Interpretation of Dreams he introduced the world to the ideas of the id , the ego and the superego in which encompass the way the mind is influenced by events from their younger years. Freud said that “the predominantly passionate, irrational, unknown, and unconscious part of the psyche the id, or “it.” The ego, or “I,” was his term for the predominantly rational, logical, orderly, conscious par...

            The French Revolution is known as one of the greatest social movements of all time, as well as one of the most tragic. As France fought to change the order of the monarchy and change it into a possible democracy the world reacted in different ways. The United States which had just gained their independence from Great Britain saw the revolution as a direct strike against a monarch’s rule. For Great Britain the reactions to the revolution were mixed between those who were for the revolution and those who saw it as an attack on the sanctity of the rule of the monarchy. The escalating tensions between the people of France and the monarchy over a broken tax system and an economic crisis caused the Estates General to convene for the first time since 1614 to deal with the problems that were arising in France.   The artisans hungry from the lack of food wanted a way to fight for a chance at gaining ground against tho...

            When people think about Asian popular culture the term Hallyu Wave comes to mind for many people who live within East Asia. The origin of the term is highly debated as many scholars don’t know where or how the term came to be. The overall definition is that it is a wave of popular culture that has over taken East-Asia encompassing a variety of different forms of entertainment. Yet the success of Hallyu stars both within the reaches of East Asia and overall globally has yet to be truly determined. Jeongmee Kim’s article “Why Does Hallyu Matter? The Significance of the Korean Wave in South Korea” determines that the overall success should be attributed to Korean dramas and how the people from neighboring countries are attracted to the conservative nature of the shows. While Solee I. Shin and Lanu Kim’s article “Organizing K-Pop: Emergence and Market Making of Large Korean Entertainment Houses, 1980-2010” states th...

When the name Don Juan is uttered in modern society people think about a suave, good looking, and womanizing man. In the literary world Don Juan is the name Lord Byron's mock epic that was written during the early 19 th century. Lord Byron is considered to be one of the great second generation romantic poets, alongside Percy Shelley and John Keats. The story of Don Juan is written into 16 separate cantos that Lord Byron wrote throughout the last six years of his life. The epic poem breaks off in the 16 th canto even though it is said that he started the 17th before his death "but even in its unfinished state Don Juan is the longest satirical poem, and indeed one of the longest poems of any kind in English." [1] The combined epic is 16,000 lines long not counting the seventeenth canto and is written in ottava Rima which was "Originally an Italian stanza of eight 11-syllable lines, with a rhyme scheme of ABABABCC." [2] The narrative is told in the ...

            Novels written during a period of time depicting the hardships of those eras become voices of those who lived through them. Lydia Chukovskaya’s novella “Sofia Petrovna” is that kind of work. The story’s protagonist and title character lives her life as normally as she can while caring for her only son Kolya. When he’s arrested the heart of the novel is Sofia’s endless attempts to find out why, and how to get him out. As a historical narrative as well as a work of literature the novel is a kin to many novels written during times of great strife.

            The early 20 th century brought about a change in the perception of women both in their public and private lives. Throughout the world women were going from being the homemaker to becoming a working class modern woman. This change also happened in Japan were the term moga was created to describe the modern girl that was starting to appear throughout the country. The novel Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki describes the evolution of the modern girl through the eyes of the story’s main protagonist Joji who finds himself enthralled with the concept of western culture and the modern girl. Through Joji the reader meets Naomi who looks western in appearance but is Japanese born. The novel starts when Joji meets Naomi who is 15 at the time and from there he attempts to make her a well-rounded young woman who is cultured and educated. Joji learns though his experiences with Naomi how truly the frightening the modern Japanes...

            At the beginning of the 18 th century in Japan when the politics of the country were shifting towards a more peaceful time there was one event that would be spoken about throughout the country for years to come. The story of the 47 Ronin who went to avenge their disgraced leader Lord Asano. Lord Asano was asked to entertain Lord Kira who was an imperial emissary visiting from Kyoto. The story of what truly happened during their encounter isn’t clear all that is truly known is that Lord Asano was outraged at Lord Kira and drew his sword and cut Kira who wasn’t able to draw his sword in time to defend himself. Lord Asano was sentenced to commit seppuku for his actions against Lord Kira as well as his crime against the shogunate by attacking someone who worked for the Shogun. Thus prompting the 47 now masterless samurai to avenge Lord Asano and take the life of the person who had caused their master’s land and domai...

            The written word has always been a means of communication whether it’s written in novels, letters, diaries, or even writing a post on Facebook. During the 10 th century C.E. the written language in Japan took on a different form entirely that would still be relevant during the Modern Era. The Heian Period in Japan spanned nearly four centuries would spawn two of the most known books in literature and would show how life inside the Japanese imperial court was like. Two of the most well-known books of the time were written by women who lived within the Japanese court. Wealthy Women during this time in Japanese history were well educated and often worked within the imperial court as ladies in waiting serving the imperial family. One very surprising aspect of this time in Japanese history is that some women were as educated as men, and men weren’t given preference when it came to higher education. The Kana wri...

            What would be considered the greatest battle in the history of the Civil War would also be one that many of the soldiers who survived it would never forget. Even as it’s taught to students in the 21 st century and studied by historians what happened on the battlefield at Gettysburg would change the course of the Civil War. The battle and its aftermath were witnessed by not only the soldiers who fought on the fields of Gettysburg but also by the people of the town as well as the countless civilian nurses and doctors who traveled to the front lines to heal the wounded. Many soldiers and civilians recorded their experiences at Gettysburg as to attest of their existence at the battle and the significance of the experience they gained while on the battlefield. Union Soldier Elisha Hunt Rhodes knew that all the troops would be needed in this upcoming battle saying “The troops that have been stationed here have been ord...

         Junot Díaz’s first full length novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is critically one of the most praised novels of the new millennia but it’s also one giant pop culture reference. The book has over two hundred references to pop culture, history, writers, and novels from multiple genres that span several decades. The biggest references are towards J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings which parallels much of the novel. Though the novel isn’t so much about the life and untimely death of the title character but more about a family history that goes back three generations the backgrounds themselves are filled with references to different times in the lives of this family. Under all of the historical knowledge about dictators and comic book characters there’s also a reference to a curse that many of the characters believe has plagued the family since the early twentieth century. The references to popular culture in the...