• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.26
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• pp.249-272
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• 2012

Diaspora studies has become one of the fastest growing field in the humanities over the past several decades, and the use of term diaspora has been widening to include almost any population on the move. Diaspora literature not only mirrors but actively incorporates this new notion of diaspora with characters "at the threshold" navigating new territories and identities. Querying how diaspora studies intersects with theatre and performance, this paper attempts to probe how recent Korean American drama parallels and promotes diaspora studies' radical departure from traditional notions of identities and territories. For this purpose, this essay 1) examines theoretical affinities between diaspora studies and performance studies 2) investigates how Sung Rno's plays, Cleveland Raining and wAve, explore and embody multiple and evolving meanings of Korean diaspora on the stage 3) examines how theatre can create the third space that transcends both Korean and American nationalism and 4) speculates possibilities of reframing Asian American Studies as Asian diaspora studies. Korean American characters in Rno's play redirect diasporic identities, as their concern gradually moves from "where I come from" to "where I go to." Instead of remaining in the dark as a mere spectator, both Rno and his characters choose to be 'on' the stage where they can imagine, perform, and realize (however temporarily) "unimaginable community" by confronting their own social, political, and cultural ambivalence. Stage, the threshold between reality and fiction, Korea and America, and past and future, becomes their true 'home' where they incubate and precipitate "nation in transformation" that Yan Haiping argues for as "another transnational."

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.44
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• pp.144-179
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• 2008

This paper explores the formation of global responsibility discourses in the elite US media used in promoting NATO's military interventions in the post-Cold War era. The case study of global responsibility discourses surrounding the Bosnian War (1992-1995) and the Kosovo Conflict (1998-1999) offers an account of the roles of the elite US media in foreign policy. The construction and articulation of global responsibility discourses in the elite US media were closely related to the US government's policy and were formed within the framework of US national interest and domestic responsibility. The cases of military intervention in the post-Cold War period imply that there were more fundamental structure and patterns by which the elite US media approached the 'humanitarian crises': 'benevolent domination' and the subsequent construction of a 'melodramatic national identity' in the war narratives. Presuming that the elite US media's discourse is a primary site for the public for experiencing and understanding distant suffering, this paper concludes that global responsibility discourses within the media may have dangerous ramifications for global democracy because the discourse of responsibility can potentially absorb the creative, progressive energies created by the public's awareness of responsibility on a global scale in order to reinforce the relations of domination.