Description

This lecture discusses the aesthetics of sound and the ethics of bodily practice in South Korean Christian culture. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Seoul’s Protestant churches and colleges of music, I focus specifically on the way European-style classical singing (sǒngak) has emerged an emblem modern Christian personhood and national advancement. In particular, I explore how sǒngak singing in Korean churches has moved away from the coded affect of suffering and hardship that pervaded Korea’s 20th century expressive culture, thus presenting a stark contrast to styles of vocalization normally associated with the past.

Nicholas Harkness received his PhD from the University of Chicago, specializing in the semiotic anthropology of communication. His dissertation, “The Voices of Seoul: Sound, Body, and Christianity in South Korea,” was an ethnographic study of singing and the aesthetics of progress among Korean Evangelical Christians. He also has written on language and religion, paralinguistics and affect, performance and ritual, and the role of language structure in social differentiation. His research on the human voice in culture has led him to a more general interest in the anthropology of qualitative experience, and he currently is co-editing a special journal issue on this topic. Future research topics include intimacy and status in urban South Korea, and Korean linguistic “sound symbolism” as a semiotic window into social and material change.