Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer:
Paper Instructions:
read: Selections from K- Popping: Korean Women, K-Pop, and Fandom,by Jungwon Kim (9 pages total) 
A Feminist Ethnomusicologist’s Autoethnographic Study of Korean Popular Music
Fandom ........................................................................................................................... 5
Fan, Fannish, and Fandom .......................................................................................... 5
Musicking and Fandom ............................................................................................... 9
Applying a Feminist Lens to Popular Music Studies ................................................ 29-32
"Taiko, Erotics, and Anger," Deborah Wong (37 pages)

watch: https://content.lib.washington.edu/wwrweb/write-to-rock/bioWong_Deborah.html
https://www.vulture.com/2020/06/k-pop-stans-successfully-sabotaged-trumps-tulsa-rally.html

write: Paragraph 1 - choose a few of the following questions to address on Taiko:
When instruments are gendered, such as the flute/trumpet/trombone, what musical aspects are being used to justify this gendering? Have you experienced this in your own life?
Internment camps/community silence/internalizing silence: Why does Wong claim that Asian and Asian American women experience silencing? Why the Asian American community more broadly?
Can loudness be feminine?
Why do you think Wong states that Western classical music can lead to an unhealthy community and what she calls “competitive neurosis”?
Masculinist assumptions: What is valuable about having a different space, specifically for women in Taiko? Even if her male teachers were highly regarded, what can they not provide?
In her chapter, Wong states, “Asian American masculinity is always in conversation with effeminacy. These young men gender Asian America by engaging implicitly rather than explicitly with long histories of violence and emasculation. They offer a whimsical response that flies in the face of expectation and inverts its ‘authentic’ source” (153). How does she claim this is enacted or refuted within Taiko communities?
According to Wong’s chapter, why are 75% of North American Taiko players women?

Paragraph 2: Choose a few of the following questions to address on K-Pop: 
What is the difference between a “normal” fan and a “fan girl”?
What is the use of “pure joy” in fandom?
What is able to be communicated across the lingual barrier of K-Pop? What is not able to be communicated? Which do you think is more important?
How might the “instant camaraderie” of K-Pop align with the principles of community discussed by Deborah Wong?
What problems do you see arising when K-Pop is perpetuated outside of Korean culture? How does this align or not align with Dr. Wong’s idea that Taiko is in danger of becoming everything to everyone, and working to maintain its socio-cultural specificity?
How does Kim define the word “musicking” in her dissertation?
Why do you think it is important to study not only the performers/composers of music, but also the fans? What can be said about gender and K-Pop (or any music usually enjoyed by younger girls and women) - how does the discourse around gender contribute to a feminist ideal?