
JASON BARKER
Professor of Global Communication at Kyung Hee University
study in 2025
Choose the following undergraduate classes in the 2025-1 semester
Globalisation and Multiculturalism / 세계화와 다문화주의 ELC25300Understanding the history of globalisation, its positive and negative impacts on our economy, multicultural society and natural world. There is no midterm or final examination for this class.최근 세계화의 역사, 세계화가 우리 경제, 다문화 사회, 자연계에 미친 긍정적 및 부정적 영향을 이해합니다. 본 수업은 중간고사나 기말고사를 치르지 않는다.Credits: 3Professor: Jason BarkerLocation: Kyung Hee University, College of Foreign Language & Literature, Global CampusStart/end date: 1 March/30 June 2025This class is taught in EnglishNote: study arrangements may be possible for Exchange Students who are unable to attend the Global Campus in personFor all enquiries please contact Professor Jason Barker:
039716 [at] khu.ac.kr

Understanding Character / 캐릭터의이해 ELC25100A study of drama in ancient and modern literature and culture. There is no midterm or final examination for this class.본 수업은 고대와 근대 문화, 문학에서의 드라마에 대한 입문을 다룬다. 본 수업은 중간고사나 기말고사를 치르지 않는다.Credits: 3Professor: Jason BarkerLocation: Kyung Hee University, College of Foreign Language & Literature, Global CampusStart/end date: 1 March/30 June 2025This class is taught in EnglishNote: study arrangements may be possible for Exchange Students who are unable to attend the Global Campus in personFor all enquiries please contact Professor Jason Barker:
039716 [at] khu.ac.kr
jason's cv

I am author of the children's illustrated novel Justine & Jacquie (forthcoming), the novel Marx Returns (2018) and writer-director and co-producer of the German documentary Marx Reloaded (2011).I am interested in all forms of critical and creative writing and have published essays in the New York Times, Le Monde diplomatique, New Left Review, angelaki, animation and Meanjin. I have edited diacritics, Filozofski vestnik and the LA Review of Books. I am the translator of Alain Badiou's Metapolitics (2005) and author of Alain Badiou: A Critical Introduction (2002), the first book-length study of Badiou's philosophy to appear in any language.
graduate study
Study for a masters degree in the Department of British & American Language and Culture (Graduate School)
Marxism and Literature / 맑시즘과 문학 ELC73200Professor: Jason Barker (with Ray Brassier)Credits: 3Karl Marx is no more acknowledged as a writer of prose than Marxism is as literature. Where their literary merits are remarked upon the question of "style" dominates, as if the appearance of spectres, vampires and were-wolves in Marx's texts, and his appeal to classical sources from Homer to Dante, were the mere ornament of an otherwise scientific enterprise. In this class we attempt to bridge the gap between fiction and non-fiction, literature and science, creative and critical writing in both Marx's own works as well as "Marxist" (including pre- and post-Marxist) global literatures.Location: Kyung Hee University, College of Foreign Language & Literature, Global CampusStart/end date: 2025 (semester tbc)
Horror Studies / 공포서사연구 ELC75400Professor: Jason BarkerCredits: 3Horror is a cliché of genre conventions: gothic fiction, the slasher movie, portrait of a serial killer. In this class we set out from the premise that horror is an anthropological phenomenon, not a genre, originating in the separation of oikos and polis in ancient Athens - "the birth of tragedy" - and culminating in the lockdown society of Covid 19. We also consider horror through Enlightenment thinking (in Descartes, Spinoza, Kant); Romanticism (Thomas De Quincey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge); the Industrial Revolution (Marx and Engels); phenomenology (Thomas Ligotti); psychoanalysis (Freud, Lacan) and postmodern cinema (David Lynch, Jordan Peele, Jonathan Glazer).Location: Kyung Hee University, College of Foreign Language & Literature, Global CampusStart/end date: 2025 (semester tbc)
MA Cultural Studies in the Department of British & American Language and Culture (Graduate School) is a two year taught course with a final thesis requirement. As the only graduate course of its kind in Korea, it comprises a diverse syllabus of modern and contemporary literature, Korean media, philosophy, feminism, psychoanalysis and critical theory. The course is taught entirely in English. Graduate School professors include Jason Barker, Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, Myong-ho Lee, and Hye Jean Chung. Past visiting professors include Slavoj Žižek and Gregg Lambert, and future invited professors confirmed for the 2025 academic year include Ray Brassier.Successful overseas applicants receive a Kyung Hee University scholarship covering their course tuition fees. In addition overseas students may be eligible for a Global Korea Scholarship (this is a separate financial assistance package for graduate students run by the Korean Ministry of Education).For initial enquiries contact Professor Jason Barker in the Department of British & American Language and Culture (Graduate School): 039716 [at] khu.ac.kr
seminars in 2025
Marx's Enigmas of FreedomWith Jason Barker and Ray BrassierWhat is the status of "freedom" in Karl Marx's critique of capitalism? The false freedoms of free labour and the free market go without saying. But what of true freedoms beyond the "real movement" of communism "which abolishes the present state of things" - including communism itself as organised resistance to capitalism?This 12-week seminar will explore these questions both critically and creatively using ideas from Jason Barker's novel Marx Returns (2018) and Ray Brassier's forthcoming work Freedom and Fatality after Marx (2025).Course delivery: Online (weekly livestream)Dates: Friday 28 February - Friday 16 May 2025 (12 x 3 hour seminars inc. class discussion)Registration fee: 90.00 euros per personOnline registration will be open on this page from 1 October 2024 to 31 January 2025.Please direct all inquiries to filmsnoirs [at] gmail.com