Bridging Glamour and History: Teaching Korean Art in the Age of Media Spectacle and Digital Tools

Over the past decade, the global rise of K-pop, Korean film and drama, food, and K-beauty has contributed to the significant increase of undergraduate enrollment in Korean language courses, alongside the growth of Korean studies programs across U.S. institutions. However, this cultural enthusiasm arrives untethered from historical context, with students’ perceptions shaped by the glamorized portrayals circulating through mass and social media. In response to this disconnect, Korean art history courses at the University of Kansas, such as “Modern Korean Art and Culture” and “K-Pop and the Arts,” aim to reconcile romanticized views of modern Korea by engaging with its twentieth-century history, including the colonial period and authoritarian regimes.

The limited availability of comprehensive English textbooks on Korean art history, coupled with the rise of AI tools that bypass critical thinking, has hindered traditional learning methods, particularly the art of looking, reading, and writing. To enhance student engagement and retention, I propose using Timeline JS, a digital humanities tool that allows students to create interactive, visual timelines as research blogs. Requiring minimal technical proficiency, this approach fosters active learning and encourages students to contextualize Korean art within a global context. This method supports critical, historically grounded inquiry while equipping students with digital literacy skills essential for expanding contemporary humanities scholarship.