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Jordan Peele’s film Get Out critically examines the “post-racial lie” within American society during the era of the first black president. To challenge the post-racial illusion, Peele focuses on the liberal racism of urban white middle-class people, rather than the overt racism prevalent in the American South. Thus, the villains in the film are not Southern rednecks but affluent white individuals in New York. By highlighting black individuals victimized by ostensibly liberal whites Peele’s psycho-horror film assaults the post-racial illusion and compels audiences to confront racial realities. This essay discusses two distinct themes presented in Peele’s film scrutinizing liberal racism in contemporary American society. First, Get Out embraces the classic motif of black abduction, drawing a connection between modern-day racism in America and the era of slavery. Within the movie, white characters abduct and auction black people to exploit their bodies. This starkly associates contemporary American society with the antebellum South. Second, Peele’s film dramatizes the racial fantasies ingrained within white consciousness. In Get Out, the abducted black people all fall victims to white people’s fantasies about blackness—fantasies involving physical strength, sexual prowess, sensual black female bodies, and atavistic instincts. By delving into these themes, this essay aims to elucidate the messages conveyed in the film Get Out to its contemporary audience, who may have been enticed by the illusion of a post-racial America.

This study aims to analyze Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy by drawing on Foucault’s concept of the aesthetics of existence, which views life as a self-constructed work of art. Lucy is a story about a black Caribbean woman of the same name, who spends a year in the US as an ‘au pair’. This paper examines Lucy’s journey of self-formation and her search for freedom based on Foucault’s concepts of self-care, conversion, and counter-conduct. Lucy is trapped in a state of subordination between her mother, who represents the colonial education and patriarchal values of her Caribbean homeland, and Mariah, Lucy’s employer and adoptive mother who represents second-wave feminism. However, Lucy demonstrates the aesthetics of existence in which she builds herself from a subordinate to an active subject through self-care.

Fowles argues that the uncertain viability of Sapiens is hazard, and that it should be recognized and overcome to evolve into Aristos. However, the multiple endings of The French Lieutenant’s Woman reveal anxiety about human free will to evolve into Aristos. The three endings of The French Lieutenant’s Woman, presented so that the reader can choose one for himself, correspond with three kinds of humanism in Homo Deus. The third ending allows us to imagine a future for evolved humanity in terms of evolutionary humanism. Aristos and Homo deus, presented as models of an evolved humanity, share the common purpose of human happiness despite their differences. If overcoming hazard for happiness breaks the free will of Sapiens, it will be a paradox that brings death, not survival. Aristos is an existentially evolved human being who can optimistically change the pessimistic situation of the future, encompassing liberalism and socialist humanism. The French Lieutenant’s Woman has a tenacious trust in Sapiens’ free will, which may be the key to overcoming the paradoxes of human evolution.

The purpose of this article is to analyze holistic development elements affecting infants from the perspective of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s naturalistic education ideas. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel The Secret Garden shows the process in which children achieve their self-esteem and positive thinking through physical exercise, social interaction, and cultivating their gardens. In this novel, Burnett reflects her empirical opinion that body-mind connectivity makes children develop healthily and holistically. This paper examines the medical and social aspects of Burnett’s era and verifies how they influence her cognition, inspiration, and perceptions of treatment. This study also discusses how physical activities such as gardening in nature affect children’s brains, feelings, behaviors and confidence. Fundamentally, Rousseau’s naturalistic education portrayed in Emile can be understood as a trend of human social development. That is, one in which people strive to raise their children as socially adept and, therefore, good and noble in accordance with nature.

This paper examines N. K. Jemisin’s novella “The Effluent Engine” from the perspective of New Materialism. “The Effluent Engine,” exploring the relational dependency between humans and non-human entities, addresses issues of imperialism, race, gender, and sexuality within a steampunk atmosphere. In turn, New Materialism, which transcends binary oppositions and constructs a new conceptualization of difference, provides a meaningful methodology for interpreting Jemisin’s narrative. As a woman of color and a writer, Jemisin actively utilizes the genre characteristics of sci-fi to express her voice. Jemisin’s narratives, which celebrate diversity as a source of wonder and admiration rather than fear and control, hold significant political implications. In Jemisin’s speculative fiction, ‘the Others’ transform dynamic agents of action. Moreover, the cross-species alliances they form with non-human entities are materially interconnected networks that demand us to reflect on who we are, and how we can maintain openness, multiplicity, and non-hierarchical perspectives as embodied collectives. Her stories empower those who have been defined as the Others. Departing from our conventional modes of thought and through an exploration of flow and interconnectedness, Jemisin’s narratives contemplate the value of diversity in cultural, political, cognitive, and ethical dimensions. This journey is a kind of materialistic mapping of situated, or embedded and embodied, positions. Jemisin’s cartography is a theoretically-based and politically-informed reading of the present. Ultimately, with the vision of Afrofuturism, Jemisin aims to offer a profound exploration within the context of a future where human and non-human elements, multiple races and genders, and sexuality are newly positioned.

The purpose of this study is to read the protagonists, an unnamed boy in The Painted Bird written by Jerzy Kosinski and Ruth Puttermesser in Puttermesser Papers written by Cynthia Ozick, as ‘subjects resisting violent reality’ through tracing their desire to preserve life, internal struggle, and division. The Painted Bird is a picaresque novel that reflects the autobiographical elements of Kosinski, who was born in Poland and experienced World War II and the Holocaust. In this work, an unnamed boy was forcibly separated from his parents and lost his ability to speak due to bullying and torture by the inhabitants of a rural Slave village. However, after the war, he reunited with his ailing parents in an orphanage in Poland and found his own voice and self. In Puttermesser Papers, Ozick describes Ruth’s life and afterlife. Ruth is a Jewish woman who was discriminated against and excluded in American society. Yet she tried to realize her Jewish self in American society and succeeded as a lawyer and politician. Unfortunately, she was raped and killed by a trespassing robber. This study examines the origins of violence utilizing Rene Girard’s scapegoat violence or victim production mechanism and Giorgio Agamben’s concept of ‘homo sacer,’ and tries to analyze the aspects of violence represented by the two writers, particularly ‘Consensual Collective Violence’ inflicted on an unknown boy in the remote Polish countryside in the context of World War II and the Holocaust in The Painted Bird, and ‘Daily Indiscriminate Violence,’ that is, rape and murder, in New York in Puttermesser Papers. This study reveals that the unnamed boy in The Painted Bird has a strong desire for survival, and Ruth in Puttermesser Papers acquires subjectivity and identity by resisting violent reality through the internalization of Jewish tradition. Furthermore, this paper tries to seek a deeper understanding of human nature and find desirable individuals, groups, and societies for coexistence, through the analysis of these two works which represent different forms of violence.

This paper explains my approach to teaching the class ‘English and Culture 2’ in the spring of 2022 by considering the pedagogy of flipped learning as a paradigm of teaching-learning. In the process of planning and organizing this class, I diverged from the ‘typical’ teaching of flipped learning, which had been specialized to science and engineering, and flexibly applied it to an English literature class. In preparation to teach Life of Pi, the novel and movie, learning materials such as English vocabulary and grammar were given to students in order to motivate them to read and understand the English novel. Secondly, the focus of the class was on reading comprehension, enhancing students’ reading skills, and improving their creativity. For the post-class, students were tested with an online quiz where they were not only asked to read a text, but to read parts of it out loud, and to concentrate on their pronunciation and accent. This series of flipped learning teaching-learning methods is the result of my new educational approach towards teaching language skills and English literature. The flipped learning teaching method can be modified and applied by undergoing meaningful trials and errors in a flipped learning class.

This essay undertakes a comparative analysis of two literary works, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale (1386-1400) and Zadie Smith’s The Wife of Willesden’s Tale (2020), with a primary focus on character portrayals and, ultimately, the utilization of the phrase “I am every woman.” Both tales centre around the pursuit of sovereignty within intimate relationships. The discussion delves into the ethereal love between the old wife and the knight, setting the stage for a parallel relationship between Alvita, the transformed old wife, and her youthful and attractive second husband, Darren, the transposed maroon, in The Wife of Willesden’s Prologue. The essay underscores the thematic significance of trust in their love, exemplified by the old wife’s assertion of her extraordinary beauty, which challenges her husband’s disbelief and fosters an elevated sense of mutual affection. Furthermore, the interchangeable roles of housewife and househusband, dependent on the breadwinner’s capacity, highlight the potential for establishing equality in the relationships in general. In its conclusion, the essay posits that Smith’s assertion, “I am every woman,” serves as a communicative device that encapsulates the concept of a just and equitable relationship in the twenty-first century.

Minjin Lee’s Pachinko unravels the characters’ life trajectories, mirroring the evolution, impact, dissemination, healing, and reconciliation of a national trauma. This paper meticulously explores the origins and development of Noa’s second-generation trauma, meticulously tracing the journey that led to his eventual collapse and tragic suicide. Noa confronted both an anxiety crisis and a mourning crisis, plunging him into the abyss of an identity crisis. Concurrently, his adoption of Japanese mannerisms embodies a hybrid strategy, actively dismantling the theoretical foundations of discrimination against Zainichi Koreans in Japanese society. This process of deconstruction serves as a pivotal catalyst in the ultimate reconciliation of the national trauma.

A potential road to peace in relationships is nonviolent communication (NVC), a universal needs-based philosophy and practice that emphasizes mutual compassion and empathy as well as openness and flexibility. A novel idea is that NVC may be delivered not only through education, training, or nonfictional materials but also through peace literature. Narrative fiction in particular offers various benefits to readers. Thus, using narrative criticism, this paper examines Blue Jasmine (2004) by Kashmira Sheth. After offering a descriptive overview of the novel and brief biographical information about the author, it analyzes the narrator’s consciousness and practice (thoughts, actions, and speech) and Sheth’s choices and use of literary devices in events demonstrating core elements of NVC as well as responses to tragic expressions of needs. In this way, the paper raises awareness of (the value of) NVC and shows how the author contributes to peaceful conflict transformation while simultaneously highlighting a special role for literature.

Currently, many universities in Korea require official English test results as a form of graduation certification. The most commonly used standard is the TOEIC test provided by the U.S.-based Educational Testing Service. In order to obtain a target score before graduation, students must learn about strategic learning methods and apply them in class. Therefore, this study sought to research the use of learning strategies used by learners identify the correlation with learners’ achievement. The study participants were 116 college students taking TOEIC lectures in university, and “Strategy Inventory for Language Learning Questionnaire” (Oxford, 1990) was used, and the study participants took a mock TOEIC test. Through this study, the results of strategy use on language learning were derived, the correlation analysis was conducted, and discussions were presented.

This study explored research trends in the field of Korean elementary English education using bibliometric analysis. It analyzed bibliographic information from 2,383 papers (from 1994 to 2023) collected from the Korea Citation Index (KCI). Network analysis of authors, affiliated institutions, and co-occurring keywords was conducted using VOSviewer. The main findings are as follows. First, there has been an explosive increase in research papers on elementary English education since 2000, with over 100 papers being published annually since 2010. Second, the publications are spread across 115 journals, covering not only Primary English Education but also various other English and interdisciplinary education journals. Third, influential researchers in the field include Jeong-ryeol Kim, Sun-Ho Park, and Kyungja Ahn. Major educational institutions such as Seoul National University of Education, Gyeongin National University of Education, and Korea National University of Education, as well as the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, have been key research hubs. There has also been active collaboration between university researchers and elementary school teachers, indicating a strong partnership between academia and practice. Lastly, dominant research keywords include ‘school⋅teaching’, ‘effect⋅assessment’, ‘textbook⋅corpus’, ‘culture⋅ curriculum’, and ‘word⋅phonics’. The implications of these findings are discussed along with further work to be done.

This paper aims to investigate whether Chinese speakers are able to distinguish between NP-level genericity and sentence-level genericity in English, and whether proficiency and L1 grammatical features have influences on their interpretation of English generic references. For this study, 155 L1-Chinese L2-English learners and 48 native English speakers participated in an acceptable judgment task to evaluate their understanding of the generic NPs. Our findings suggest that Chinese learners are sensitive to the distinctions between NP-level genericity and sentence-level genericity. In addition, this paper found the influences of L1 transfer, such as the availability of bare singulars and the [+definite] feature of the Chinese plural marker -men, but it was also shown that it is possible for learners to overcome these effects. Generally, with the development of proficiency, the Chinese learners became more target-like in their interpretational patterns of English nominals, especially in sentence-level genericity constructions.

This study aims to look into how cooperative reading affects English reading ability and academic self-efficacy. In order to implement this study, 40 undergraduate students were chosen majoring in various studies. The participants were divided into high, medium, and low group according to the result of English reading ability evaluation and asked to implement cooperative reading activity for 10 weeks. Pre- and post-reading evaluation and self-efficacy questionnaires were examined. As a result of this study, scores of English reading ability evaluation were raised. The scores of sub-area of grammar and reading comprehension had increased. All groups’ scores had raised, though the improvement in low groups was higher than the rest groups. Additionally, self-efficacy was improved in all three sub-area, and the improvement of confidence was higher than that of task difficulty preference and self-regulation efficacy. Therefore, it was confirmed that cooperative reading is effective in English reading and self-efficacy, and the results provide educational implications that they can be applied as useful teaching methodology to improve English reading skills.

Through the examination of incident(/accident) headline names of Korean and American newspapers, ‘the principles of metonymic vehicle selection’ that Langacker (1993) suggests have been supported in Choi (2020) and Choi (2021). Incidents are named with one or two elements among various elements of an event, such as PLACE, TIME, AGENT, PATIENT, CAUSE, and INSTRUMENT. The studies reveal that AGENT is one of the most frequent metonymic vehicles since agents are, in many cases, humans, confirming the human over non-human principle. Furthermore PLACE is much more frequently used than TIME, confirming the concrete over abstract principle. Based on the previous studies, this paper aims to reveal how cultural and contextual salience interact with the principles of metonymic vehicle selection. Two sets of questionnaires, one for Koreans and the other for Americans, are constructed to see how different headline names are selected based on cultures and on event elements. The result shows that cultural salience heavily influences the choice of event names, overriding the general principle of metonymic vehicle selection.

This study explores nominal metaphorical expressions utilizing CATS as the source domain and HUMANS as the target domain within the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The findings illustrate that the metaphorical mappings between the CAT source domain and the HUMANS target domain are grounded in traits such as greed, sexual behavior, resilience, timidity, and composure. Contrary to prior claims, many of these metaphors demonstrate gender neutrality, except for “tom cat.” The gender association was shown to be attributed by the target domain rather than the CAT domain. The research challenges previous notions of negative connotations linked to CAT metaphors, emphasizing the need for a broader understanding encompassing various aspects of CAT metaphors.