East Asian Studies

General introduction to major themes in the cultural, intellectual, and institutional history of China and Japan, with some attention to Korea and Southeast Asia. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

An introduction to the history of modern East Asia, examining the inter-related histories of Korea, Japan, and China since 1800 and their relationships with the wider world. Major topics include: trade, cultural exchanges, reform and revolution, war, colonialism, Cold War geopolitics, socialism. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

Thematic introduction to the role of painting in Chinese cultural history, with attention to the interaction of stylistic standards, materials, and techniques; the impact of regional geographies on landscape painting; the influence of class, gender, and social behavior on figure painting; the engagement of art with traditional philosophies and 20th-century socialism; and the shape of time in art-historical development. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 2 distribution requirement. Three lectures.

Surveys arts of Japan from the pre-historic period through the present day. Painting, sculpture, and architecture form the core of study. Examines critical role of other forms, including calligraphy, lacquer, and ceramics. Takes close account of the broader cultural and historical contexts in which art was made. Topics include ongoing tension in Japanese art between foreign and indigenous, role of ritual in Japan's visual arts, re-uses of the past, changing loci of patronage, and formats and materials of Japanese art. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 1, 2, or 3 distribution requirement. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

This course is designed to introduce the culture and history of Japan, and to examine how one understands and interprets the past. In addition to considering how a culture, a society, and a state develop, we will try to reconstruct the tenor of life in "ancient" and "medieval" Japan and chart how patterns of Japanese civilization shifted through time.

This course provides an introduction to the Japanese literary tradition, with a focus on narratives of passion and renunciation. Love poems are found among the earliest Japanese writings, but they stand side-by-side with Buddhist-influenced works that stress the suffering inherent in emotional attachment. We will trace this binary of longing and denial through early folksongs, palace gossip, pious sermons, and ghostly pantomimes, against the changing backdrop of Japan's social and intellectual history. No knowledge of Japanese required.

The course will cover major writers and works of the 20th century. We will examine how Japanese writers responded to modern fictional and linguistic forms imported from the West, how they negotiated what they had inherited from their long and illustrious literary past, and how postwar writers view their newly "democratized" world.

An exploration of Japanese labor, gender and feminism, crime and social control, race and notions of homogeneity, nationalism and youth culture. The course considers Japan's struggle to come to terms with the West while at the same time integrating its past. It also looks at American misperceptions of Japanese society and economics. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

A thematic introduction to the history of Chinese religion. Topics include: cosmology, family, shamanism, divination, mortuary ritual, and women. Readings are drawn from a wide range of sources, including sacred scriptures, popular literature, and modern ethnography. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

An introduction to Japanese religion from ancient to modern times, focusing on its role in culture and history. Representative aspects of Shinto, Buddhist, Christian, and other traditions will be studied, as well as such topics as politics, death, myth, asceticism, and secularism. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

This course provides an overview of Chinese martial arts fiction and film from earliest times to the present day. The focus will be on the close-reading of literary, art-historical, and cinematic texts, but will also include discussion of the significance of these works against their broader historical and social background. Topics to be discussed: the literary/cinematic pleasure of watching violence, the relationship between violence and the law, gender ambiguity and the woman warrior, the imperial and (trans)national order of martial arts cinema, and the moral and physical economy of vengeance.

The development of classical Chinese literature, traced through close readings of original texts in English translation. Topics include the nature of the Chinese language and writing system, classical literary thought, religious and philosophical influences, dominance of poetry, emergence of historical writing, and vernacular fiction. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

An introduction to the literature, art, religion, and philosophy of China, Japan, and Korea from antiquity to ca. 1400. Readings are focused on primary texts in translation and complemented by museum visits, films, and other materials from the visual arts. The lecturers include faculty members from East Asian studies, comparative literature, art and archaeology, and religion. Students are encouraged to enroll in HUM 234 in the spring, which continues the course from ca. 1400 into the 20th century.

An introduction to the literary, philosophical, religious, and artistic traditions of East Asia. Readings are focused on primary texts in translation. Lectures and discussions are accompanied by films, concerts, and museum visits. Lecturers include faculty members from East Asian studies, comparative literature, art and archaeology, and religion.

An intensive, documents-based introduction to methods and issues in Asian history, focusing on topics that embed Asia in the wider context of world history. Especially recommended for prospective concentrators. The problems investigated (Marco Polo in Asia, Jesuits in China, Russo-Japanese War, Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, etc.) will vary. Emphasis will be on interpreting primary sources, framing historical questions, and constructing historical explanations. Two 90-minute classes.

Designed to introduce departmental majors, in the fall of their junior year, to the tools, methodologies, and topics related to the study of East Asian history and culture. The focus of the course will vary each year, and will be cross-national and multidisciplinary, covering both premodern and modern periods. One three-hour seminar.

The seminar will encourage students to think critically about the documentary as artistic medium and as socio-political practice. Some important questions will focus on the form itself: who has produced and watched these films and through what sorts of technologies? What are the codes through which documentaries make sense of their subjects and how do these change? Other questions will have wider scope: how can filmmaking impact politics and culture? How does it deal with the gap between reality and representation? What are the ethical issues of such work? What, if anything, is distinct about the life of documentary films in East Asia?

Translation is at the core of our engagement with China, Japan, and Korea, influencing our reading choices and shaping our understanding of East Asia. From translations of the classics to the grass-root subtitling of contemporary Anime movies, from the formation of the modern East Asian cultural discourse to cross-cultural references in theater and film, the seminar poses fundamental questions to our encounters with East Asian cultural artifacts, reflecting on what "translation" of "original works" means in a global world where the "original" is often already located in its projected "translation."

A review of the stages of communism, including reform and dismantling. Comparisons of social classes and ethnic groups under the old system and their readiness for recent changes. Treatment of workers, farmers, intellectuals, officials, and new entrepreneurs. Comparative approach to China, Russia, and other countries formed from the Soviet Union. Two ninety-minute classes.

This course will examine modern Japanese fiction and film that engaged with Japan's shift from "empire" to "nation" (roughly from 1930s to 1960s) with a specific focus on identity formation via race, ethnicity, and nationalism.

The seminar will examine key concepts of the mind, the body, and the nature-culture distinction. We will study these issues in the context of Japanese beliefs about the good society, making connections between "lay culture," Japanese notions of social democracy, and "science culture." Topics include: styles of care for the mentally ill, the politics of disability, notions of human life and death, responses to bio-technology, the management of human materials (such as organs), cultural definitions of addiction and "co-dependency," and the ethics of human enhancement.

The history of Japan from the origins of the Japanese people to the establishment of Tokugawa rule in 1600, using the epic war tale The Tale of the Heike as a lens. Particular emphasis will be placed on institutional and cultural history. One three-hour seminar.

The history of Japan during the period of Samurai rule. Distinctive features of Tokugawa society and culture from the foundation of the regime in 1600 to its decline in the 19th century, the opening of Japan to Western contact, the course of economic development, and the consolidation of the Meiji State. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

An examination of representative aspects of Buddhist thought and practice in Japan from the sixth century to the present. Possible topics include: major Buddhist traditions (Lotus, Pure Land, Zen, and Tantrism), meditation, ritual, cosmology, ethics, influence on literature, and interaction with other religions. Two 90-minute seminars.

An analysis of change and continuity in modern Japanese society, with emphasis on industrialization, social discontent, parliamentary democracy, war, defeat, the "economic miracle," and Japanese preoccupation with national identity in a Western-dominated world. Divided between the prewar and postwar periods. Two lectures, one preceptorial.