What Taylor Swift, BTS, and Stromae Can Teach Us About Mental Health
Taylor Swift, BTS, and Stromae are at the frontlines of de-stigmatizing mental health challenges as something so relatable that they can make a hit song about it.
Christine Ma
Christine Ma-Kellams is a Pushcart-nominated writer, Harvard-trained cultural psychologist, and college professor who occupies the rare intersection where story-telling meets an empirical understanding of what makes people tick. She received her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and completed two postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University before her current position as an associate professor at San Jose State University. Her empirical studies on culture, social perception and relationships have also been widely covered in GQ (Australia), Esquire (Middle East), Boston Globe, Vice News, Elle Magazine (UK), the Atlantic, Yahoo News, MSN News, Fox News, New York Post, and Daily Mail. Her academic textbook, Cultural Psychology: Cross- and Multicultural Perspectives, has been adopted in classes at college campuses across the U.S. and overseas. Her debut novel, The Band, is forthcoming in April 2024 from Simon & Schuster (Atria Books). In its indicting portrayal of mental health/public obsession/fandom/cancel culture, The Band considers how old tribal allegiances disrupts modern celebrity.
K-Pop: Who Gets Canceled and Why
You can tell what bedevils a society by whom its members try to forcibly remove from the spotlight. In K-Pop, here’s who gets canceled and why.
K-Pop: Race in the Music Industry
Why do K-pop’s Asian pop stars get less recognition in the Land of the Free than non-Asian pop stars in the Land of the Morning Calm?