In the wake of globalization, popular culture travels faster across national boundaries than ever before. In this emerging global culture, Asian countries play an increasingly important role, challenging the predominance of the American entertainment industry. From anime and soap opera to pop music and online gaming communities, popular culture exports from three nations in particular--Japan, South Korea, and China--are capturing the attention of audiences everywhere.

Emerging from these lively exchanges is a new political, economic, and cultural sphere that cuts across the old geographic boundary of the Pacific Ocean, the divide between Asia and America, and the older categorical distinction between East and West. Just as cultural studies has largely abandoned the concept of "America" in favor of "the Americas," so this new transpacific space poses challenges to scholars and thinkers to re-imagine global spaces and their cultures.

However, defining China, South Korea, and Japan and their respective popular cultures exclusively in relationship to "the West" falls short of the complexity of the new global culture; each of these cultures also provides an insight into different stages or models of modernization. Japan has long been regarded as, in the words of William Gibson, "a future we can do business with," while China, as the gradually but inevitably emerging superpower of the 21st century, is providing fascinating glimpses into what seems like a history of popular culture unfolding before our eyes. South Korea, meanwhile, remains located ambiguously somewhere in the unexplored territory in between, with a low cultural profile, as it is seen in the West, that is growing increasingly irreconcilable with its expanding global economic and technological reach.

In order to explore the popular cultures of Japan, South Korea, and China individually, as well as their interrelations with each other and/or with the West, Paradoxa invites essays, reviews, and interviews for a Special Topics issue entitled "Three Asias." We are particularly interested in current and recent developments in new and largely unexplored areas. In all cases, however, editorial emphasis is on the popular culture -- literature, film, television, digital culture, etc. -- of Japan, China, and South Korea.

The issue will be divided into three sections, each devoted to one of the three countries, overseen by a section editor invited specifically for this issue. Each section will accommodate work on aspects of popular culture within the respective country, but also on work that explores the flow of cultural production across national boundaries. Especially encouraged is also work that explores specifically Western perceptions of, as well as critical and creative responses to, Asian popular culture, and vice versa.

China section co-editor: Zhen Zhang, New York University
S. Korea section co-editor: Jina Kim, Smith College
Japan section co-editor: Takayuki Tatsumi, Keio University
Paradoxa publisher: David Willingham

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