thebtseffect

[thebtseffect]

Learn Korean with BTS Lessons and Materials

Hi everyone! I previously developed a companion course for Learn Korean with BTS. The lesson videos have been public on YouTube for a while, but now I'm also making the supplemental materials I made (quizzes, worksheets, other exercises) available for my newsletter subscribers.

If you'd like to watch the videos, here's a link to the playlist.

If you'd like to get the other materials, this page contains a sign up box. After signing up, you'll get an automatic email with the downloads. (Check your spam and promotions folders...the email tends to end up there a lot, probably because I've attached files.)

I hope these materials are helpful to those on a Korean language learning journey! The videos and materials were meant for the books, but you can also use them without.

[thebtseffect]

Here's my essay posted on And Philosophy, a website for a book series that examines popular culture topics in relation to philosophy. This is an expansion of my ethics of care project~

[thebtseffect]

Care-full Fandom: BTS, ARMY, and the Ethics of Care 

originally presented at the 2022 Northeast and American Popular Culture Association conference

BTS's impeccable performances, healing messages, and never-ending list of "firsts" are a testament to the group's impact on the global pop culture landscape. Although the scale of their success has led to discussions surrounding the "BTS phenomenon" and ARMY fandom, there is a need for deeper considerations of BTS's impact on the nature of their fandom. How and why are ARMY influenced by BTS? Drawing on the concept of ethics of care, this presentation aims to delve into how BTS embodies care and how ARMY reflects those expressions of care.

[thebtseffect]

"He Too Was a Tempter": Desire and Homoerotic Subtext in "Blood, Sweat, & Tears"

originally presented at the 2022 BTS Interdisciplinary Conference

The media surrounding "Blood, Sweat, & Tears," off BTS's 2016 album WINGS, was a stark visual and thematic departure from the group's prior releases. In this dark era of BTS's "reflection of youth" timeline, the characters introduced in the HYYH series are plunged into a conflicting world of temptation. While there is much to explore and pull apart in this content, a close read of the concept's themes is one particularly intriguing option.

Though "Blood, Sweat, & Tears" has a clear focus on themes of desire and temptation, the song's lyrics are genderless, and the music videos and performances only feature interactions between male characters. This deliberate production choice wraps "Blood, Sweat, & Tears" and its central themes in a homoerotic subtext. While subtle, the use of this subtext is one of the more convincing within BTS's content, adding a new layer to the narrative of the HYYH characters. Additionally, as homoerotic subtext has historically served as a method for hidden arguments for social freedom and expressions of equality, this subtext lends itself to BTS’s tendency towards socially conscious lyricism. With the purposeful choice to steer "Blood, Sweat, & Tears" from the mainstream heteronormative coming-of-age story, the construction of this concept acts as another outlet for such ideas.

This presentation aims to delve deeply into the music videos, lyrics, and performance produced for "Blood, Sweat, & Tears" to discuss how the homoerotic undertones are central to amplifying the work's themes, rather than homoeroticism for the sake of fanservice or stage play. I will also explore the media's thematic links with Hermann Hesse's novel Demian, and argue that this coded desire, while not outright representation, is a quietly visible and important extension of BTS's ongoing social commentary.

[thebtseffect]

apologizing in advance because I'm probably gonna use tumblr and IG as if they were twitter lol

[thebtseffect]

Comp Reading Lists

In an attempt to self-study several areas and expand my own knowledge, improve my ability to do research, and keep current with fields of interest, I'm building my own "comps list" here of relevant books. There are so many academic articles that I'm not sure if I'll include them here, but I'd like to at least track my reading of books. Comps lists are typically for Ph.D. students studying for exams, but I thought it might be a useful tool for me too. If you have suggestions, I welcome them.

BTS Studies

BTS, Art Revolution, Jiyoung Lee.

BTS and ARMY Culture, Jeeheng Lee.

BTS: The Review, Youngdae Kim.

Philosophizing about BTS, Cha Minju.

Bumping into BTS, Ji Kim, Mick Shin, and Jane Do.

Map of the Soul - Persona: Our Many Faces, Murray Stein.

Fan Studies

Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Henry Jenkins.

A Fan Studies Primer: Method, Research, Ethics, Paul Booth and Rebecca Williams.

Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan Culture, Mark Duffett.

A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies, Paul Booth and Rebecca Williams.

Exploiting Fandom: How the Media Industry Seeks to Manipulate Fans, Mel Stanfill.

Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, Jonathan Gray, Cornell Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington.

Fan Cultures, Matt Hills.

Fame and Fandom: Functioning On and Offline, Celia Lam and Jackie Raphael.

The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, Lisa Lewis.

The Fan Fiction Studies Reader, Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse.

Loving Fanfiction: Exploring the Role of Emotion in Online Fandoms, Brit Kelley.

Fandom as Classroom Practice: A Teaching Guide, Katherine Anderson Howell.

Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies, Jungmin Kwon.

Emo: How Fans Defined a Subculture, Judith Fathallah.

Squee from the Margins: Fandom and Race, Rukmini Pande.

Game Studies

Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Gendered Battle for Online Culture, Megan Condis.

Learning in Video Game Affinity Spaces, Sean Duncan.

Ready Player Two: Women Gamers and Designed Identity, Shira Chess.

Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming, T.L. Taylor.

Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Video Games, Stephanie Boluk and Patrick Lemieux.

The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games: Why Gaming Culture is the Worst, Christopher Paul.

My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft, Bonnie Nardi.

Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds, Celia Pearce.

Ethics, Psychology, & Philosophy

Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care, Joan Tronto.

Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction, Murray Stein.

The Ethics of Care, Virginia Held.

Research Ethics in the Real World, Helen Kara.

The Portable Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Kaufmann.

General Reading & Methods

Where Research Begins: Choosing a Research Project that Matters to You, Thomas Mullaney and Christopher Rea.

The Practice of Qualitative Research: Engaging Students in the Research Process, Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber.

Destination Dissertation: A Traveler's Guide to a Done Dissertation, Sonja Foss and William Waters.

Getting It Published: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Series Books, William Germano.

Learning to Make a Difference: Value Creation in Social Learning Spaces, Etienne Wenger-Trayner and Beverly Wenger-Trayner.

Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method, Tom Boellstorff and Bonnie Nardi, et. al.

An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method, James Paul Gee.

[thebtseffect]

Introduction

Hello! My name is Courtney. I've been an ARMY since 2015, and I spend my free time writing and researching about BTS and ARMY topics. This tumblr is for my ARMY activity, and occasionally for more personal writings and such. Here are my other links!

Twitter (@/courtneylazore)

Instagram (@/shipsintheharbor)

The BTS Effect website

My YouTube (BTS video essays, Learn Korean with BTS, etc)

My profile site and my CV

Academia.edu page

Goodreads

Medium

Pardon the tumblr being a bit bare. I'll work on fleshing it out =)