East Asian Studies

Selected topics in Chinese political, institutional, and cultural history in the pre-Qin period and Qin and Han dynasties. Focus on sources, traditional historical scholarship, and modern interpretations.

This course covers advanced topics in the history of Chinese philosophy, broadly understood.

This course examines classical Chinese texts and their commentary traditions, with commentary selections and additional readings from the earliest periods through the early twentieth century.

Methods, sources, and problems of research in Chinese thought, including examination of some broad interpretations of intellectual development in China. A reading knowledge of Chinese or Japanese is required for the study of selected problem areas through seminar discussion, oral reports, and research papers.

Methods, sources, and problems of research in Chinese thought, including examination of some broad interpretations of intellectual development in China. A reading knowledge of Chinese or Japanese is required for the study of selected problem areas through seminar discussion, oral reports, and research papers.

Selected problems on the historiography of the early, medieval, or late empires with a focus on literati thought, religion, or literature in historical context. Working knowledge of classical Chinese strongly recommended.

This research seminar introduces graduate students to the history and bibliography of archival documents produced during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), with chronological extensions also into the pre-Conquest period and transition to the early Republican era. Emphasis is on government papers, and students gain essential knowledge of the Qing state from a survey of what primary sources have survived from this period. The second half of this course focuses on the craft of close reading, annotation and translation of original documents, and offers in-class instructions on research, writing and presentation skills.

Topics in Chinese social and cultural history, 1600-1900, ranging from material culture, popular religion, and education to the history of science.

This seminar will examine the major historiographical and methodological issues in Chinese history for the period 1600-1900. We will read and evaluate the most important historians and consider the issues that seem especially provocative or interesting.

Selected topics in the institutional and intellectual history of Tokugawa and Meiji Japan. Students attend the meetings of 321 and take part in a special graduate discussion group.

Selected topics in Japanese social and economic history since 1900.

This course provides an introduction to the written sources of Japanese history from 750-1600. Instruction focuses on reading and translating a variety of documentary genres, and court chronicles, although visual sources (e.g. maps, scrolls, and screens) are introduced in class as well. Each week entails a translation of five or six short documents and a library research assignment. Research resources and methods are also emphasized. A substantial research assignment, involving primary source research, is due at the end of the semester. The final week of class is devoted to presentations about the research project.

This course is a research and writing seminar that introduces major historical methods of research in ancient and medieval Japan. In addition to weekly research assignments, students identify a research topic by the third week of the class, and complete a research paper at the end of the semester (entailing 15-20 pages). Instruction focuses on research methods and topics, although some reading of sources also occurs.

This seminar explores the oceanic imaginary of space and the spatial technologies of islanding in the modern world-including the emergence of mega-ports, artificial islands, and the creation of political and economic zones of exception and military bases, with an emphasis on East and Southeast Asia. Posing islanding in the verb form, the readings deconstruct "island" as a natural geographic setting and probe its role in mediating the relations between individual and totality, insularity and world, mainland and periphery, land and sea, etc. We explore different mediations of oceanic imaginary and work toward theories of resistance.

Critical and historical studies of classical poetry and poetics, with particular stress on the application of linguistic theory and other tools of literary analysis to Chinese poetry.

A study of the development of Chinese narrative and dramatic literature, with emphasis on generic and thematic analysis.

To suit the particular interests of students and instructor, a subject for intensive study is selected from classical or vernacular literature based on genres, periods, or individual writers, such as the prose of the Six Dynasties, the poetry of Tu Fu, the plays of Kuan Han-ch'ing, or Dream of the Red Chamber.

To suit the particular interests of students and instructor, a subject for intensive study is selected from classical or vernacular literature based on genres, periods, or individual writers, such as the prose of the Six Dynasties, the poetry of Tu Fu, the plays of Kuan Han-ch'ing, or Dream of the Red Chamber.

This seminar will introduce representative primary texts in classical Japanese and kanbun from the medieval Japanese Buddhist tradition. It will focus on introducing students to a range of genres, such as doctrinal writings, ritual manuals, temple and shrine origin legends, vernacular sermons, didactic tales, and personal letters. Some readings may be selected to accommodate the research interests of seminar participants. Attention will be given to grammar, vocabulary, genre, literary and philosophical issues, and research methods.

This class explores games and the culture of play through a variety of angles, ranging from the aesthetic to the ideological, from the historical to the technological. By doing so, we familiarize ourselves with the increasingly prolific literature on (video) games as well as the longer history of game theory. Though the class serves foremost to explore the theoretical readings within this new discipline, game studies, it also allows the hands-on exploration of particular games, entertains the question of how to teach games, and encourages students to apply game theory beyond the realm of games studies itself.

This course introduces students to the location, handling, and interpretation of primary sources in the study of premodern Japanese literature and intellectual history. This semester the course focuses on the genre of the love letter, with peripheral attention to broader categories of erotic verse and epistolary writing. Using documents from the fourteenth through nineteenth centuries, students develop proficiency in reading handwritten and woodblock-printed texts using hentaigana and other cursive forms. Students must have prior training in classical Japanese.

Aspects of the development of the narrative tradition in Japan, with an emphasis on analytical discussion of selected texts.

A study of selected major authors and literary trends in modern Japan, with an emphasis on the Meiji and Taisho^? periods. Possible topics include the development of the modern novel, "inter-war" literature, and Taisho modernism

Man'yo shu the Imperial Anthologies, and the works of Basho.

This course examines Japanese literary modernism through twentieth-century narrative and criticism. Analysis of texts are augmented through discussion of contemporary literary, theoretical, and historical developments.