Courses
10000- and 20000- level courses are undergraduate; 30000-level and above are graduate.
Course offerings and times are subject to change.
Autumn 2011
EALC 10800. Introduction to the Civilizations of East Asia I. (=HIST 15100, SOSC 23500)
G. Alitto
This is part of a three-quarter sequence on the civilizations of China, Japan, and Korea, with emphasis on major transformation in these cultures and societies from the Middle Ages to the present. Taking these courses in sequence is not required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.
MWF, 10:30-11:20
EALC 16100. Art of the East: China. (=ARTH 16100)
Q. Ngan
MW 1:30-2:50
EALC 24110/34110. Buddhism and the West. (=HIST 24110/34110)
P. Copp and J. Ketelaar
Buddhism is a transnational phenomenon and as such can be found in vast array of cultures and times. This course, focussing on East Asian Buddhism, looks at Buddhist history in China, Korea and Japan and the interpretation and reception of these traditions by and in "the West." Topics to be discussed include, but are not limited to, orientalism, occidentalism, esoteric and exoteric traditions, Chan/Son/Zen, problems of translation, the roles of culture, history, nation and nationalism in religion, etcetera.
Th 1:30-4:20
EALC 24500/34500. Reading Ching Documents. (=HIST 24500/34500)
G. Alitto
PQ: CHIN 21000 or equivalent. Reading and discussion of 19th century and early 20th century historical political documents, including such forms as memorials, decrees, local gazetteers, diplomatic communications, essays, and the like.
MWF 12:30-1:20
EALC 24755/34755. The Art of Communication in Modern Japanese Literature.
H. Long
This course will survey a range of modern Japanese literary texts with two key concerns in mind. First, how has the introduction of various communication technologies (letter, postcard, telephone, cell phone, email) since the late-nineteenth century been felt at the levels of literary form and narrative voice? Second, what can the representations of these technologies in literature tell us about their impact on social relations in Japan, both lived and imagined? Our goal will be to develop a set of broader, comparative questions about shifting notions of “communication,” about the innately human desire to “connect” with absent others, and about the ways that language and technology have been seen as either aiding or frustrating this desire. In addition to literary texts, we will engage with several theoretical works on epistolarity, on the idea of communication, and on the intersection of language and media at different historical moments. All readings in English.
M 1:30-4:20
EALC 24950/34950. The Inner Self in Modern Japanese Literature.
M. Bourdaghs
As Japanese leaders in the mid 19th century faced the threat of colonization at the hands of the Western powers, they launched a project to achieve "Civilization and Enlightenment," quickly transforming Japan into a global power that possessed its own empire. In the process fiction became a site for both political engagement and retreat. A civilized country, it was argued, was supposed to boast "literature" as one of its Fine Arts. This literature was charged with representing the inner life of its characters, doing so in a modern national language that was supposed to be a transparent medium of communication. Between the 1880s and the early 1900s, a new language, new literary techniques, and a new set of ideologies were constructed to produce the "inner life" in novels and short stories. As soon as these new practices were developed, however, they became the objects of parody and ironic deconstruction. Reading key literary texts from the 1880s through the 1930s, as well as recent scholarship, this course will re-trace this historical and literary unfolding, paying special attention to the relationship between language and subjectivity. All readings will be in English.
TTh 12:00-1:20
EALC 26206/36206. The Yi Jing.
E.Shaughnessy
In this course, we will survey the creation and development of the I Ching or Yi Jing, one of the most unique classics in world literature. Originally used as a divination manual, the Yi Jing came to be viewed as the paramount wisdom text in the Chinese intellectual tradition. We will pay equal attention to how the text was first created and to how it came to be interpreted over the course of Chinese history. All readings will be in English, though students taking the course for graduate credit will be encouraged to extend their readings to Chinese sources.
TTh 1:30-2:50
EALC 27307. Cold War in Japan and Korea: Structures, Representations & Legacies.
J. Glade
This course will examine the formation and subsequent transformations of Cold War political and social structures in Japan and Korea, placing a particular focus on discursive strategies used to represent, contest, and come to terms with the Cold War. Literature and film of post-World War II Japan and Korea are usually categorized and analyzed based on their relation to domestic factors and events. This periodization produces the notion of a national culture that is distinctly separate from all others. In this course, we will attempt to blur those boundaries by looking at cultural expression in the context of the Cold War, analyzing both contemporary and retroactive representations.
TTh 1:30-2:50
EALC 28459/38459. Performance/Theory/East Asia. (=TAPS 28459)
R. Jackson
This course introduces students to the field of performance studies through East Asian performance. We will consider the relationship between performance, critical theory, and the discursive production of "East Asia"" as an object of study. The two main goals of the course will be 1) to introduce students to the major texts and methodological approaches of Perfomance Studies and 2) to consider the role performance plays in discussions of East Asian cultural production. In particular we will consider the disciplinary formations of Performance Studies and East Asian Studies in relation to one another as we explore theories of embodiment.
W 1:30-4:20; screening F 1:30-2:50
EALC 29401. The Ghost Tradition in Chinese Literature, Opera and Film.(=EALC 39401,GNDR 29401,GNDR 39401,TAPS 28491)
J. Zeitlin
What is a ghost? How and why are ghosts represented in particular forms in a particular culture at particular moments? This course will explore the complex meanings, both literal and figurative, of the ghost in Chinese culture across history, focusing on the ghost story, opera, and film. Issues to be explored include: 1) the individual's confrontation with mortality; 2) the relationship between death, gender, and sexuality; 3) anxieties of the loss of the cultural past, and 4) the politics of ghosts in modern times. Course readings will be in English translation, and no prior background is required.
EALC 29421. Gender, Culture and the Political in Chinese Women's Literature: From the 17th to 20th Century.(=GNRD 22503)
A. Grewal
This is an undergraduate level course on women’s writing and the question of gendered expression in literature in China, from the 17th c to the 20th c. The course asks the question of the relationship between women and writing as well as the making of literary, cultural and political communities in these centuries. It brings the “pre-modern” and the “modern” into conversation in an attempt to understand how ‘woman’ as a gendered social category becomes a subject of cultural production and historical change in and through the medium of writing and publishing. We will look at how seventeenth-century loyalism to twentieth-century nationalism and modern revolution converged with other forces that were re-shaping gendered spheres – especially in the realm of print culture and technologies and women’s relation to writing and publishing – to create spaces for the construction of gendered identities. This space may be described as one in which political and cultural modes of identification interacted, interrogated, and were interrogated by, shifting modes of gender identification. This interaction allowed women writers to stake out a position in the cultural, political and historical spheres as women in different ways, or to question prevalent gender ideologies. Another crucial aim of this course is to interrogate how Chinese “women’s literature” or a “women’s literary tradition” was shaped and re-configured over time. We start with the questioning of interpretations of women’s writing and the cultural past by self-consciously modernist reformers in the early 20th century. We end with another period of deep re-valuation of the relationship between women’s literary subjectivity, culture and political community in the 1980s.
MW 1:30-2:50
EALC 29500. Senior Thesis Tutorial-I.
PQ: signed consent form. For this course students are required to obtain a “College Reading and Research Course Form” from their College adviser and have it signed both by their faculty reader and by the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Two quarters of this sequence may count as one credit for the EALC major, and are required for any undergraduate writing a B.A. Honors Thesis in EALC. It is highly recommended that students take this sequence autumn and winter, but a spring quarter course is offered for unusual circumstances.
EALC 41400. The Literary Life of Things in China.
J. Zeitlin
This course investigates traditional literary strategies in China through which objects are depicted and animated. Our emphasis will be on reading in primary sources, but we’ll also draw on secondary sources from anthropology, the history of material culture, iterary theory, and art history, both from within and outside China studies. Each week will introduce some basic genre and key literary works while also foregrounding certain conceptual issues. Students will select a case study to work on throughut the quarter, which will become their final research paper and which will also help orient their shorter class presentations. The choice of subject for the case study is quite open, so that each student can pursue a project that relates to his or her own central interests. It might be a cultural biography of a real object or class of objects; it might be a study of how objects are deployed in a novel or play, encyclopedia or connoisseurship manual, but there are many other possibilities.
EALC 42400. Seminar: Modern Korean History 1. (=HIST 75601)
B. Cumings
This is the first of a two-quarter course. By modern, we mean Korea since its "opening" in 1876. We read about one book per week in the autumn. Before each session, one student will write a 3-4 page paper on the reading, with another student commenting on it. In the winter, students present the subject, method, and rationale for a significant research paper. Papers should be about forty pages and based in primary materials; ideally this means Korean materials, but ability to read scholarly materials in Korean, Japanese, or Chinese is not a requirement for taking the seminar. Students may also choose a comparative and theoretical approach, examining some problems in modern Korean history in the light of similar problems elsewhere, or through the vision of a body of theory.
EALC 44001. A Young Person's Guide to East Asian Humanities at the University of Chicago.
M. Bourdaghs
This course will provide an introduction to the history of and future possibilities for East Asian humanities research at the University of Chicago. It is particularly targeted at graduate students in the first or second year of their studies. We will survey the work of a number of important Chicago scholars from the past several decades, with a special emphasis on reseach that focuses on 1920s and 30s Japan, but we will also look at innovative Chicago scholarship on China, Korea, and Taiwan. We will also explore innovative scholarly approaches in the humanities currently being pursued in various disciplines on our campus. All readings will be available in English, although some will also be provided in Japanese.
T 3:00-5:00
EALC 45530. Manuscript Culture in Ancient & Medieval China.
D. Harper
Thousands of Chinese manuscripts dating between the fifth century B.C. and the tenth century A.D. have been discovered since the beginning of the twentieth century, with new discoveries continuing to the present. This seminar addresses theoretical and methodological approaches to engaging in research on the manuscripts.
W 1:30-4:20
EALC 52300. Seminar: Modern Japanese History 1. (=HIST 76601)
J. Ketelar
(This is a two-quarter course: those who sign up for autumn must also sign up for EALC 52301 in winter quarter.) Reading and research in Japanese history, which culminates in a major seminar paper at the end of winter term.
Winter 2012
EALC 11000. Introduction to the Civilizations of East Asia-3: Korea. (=HIST 15300, SOSC 23700)
K.Choi
This is part of a three-quarter sequence on the civilizations of China, Japan, and Korea, with emphasis on major transformation in these cultures and societies from the Middle Ages to the present. Taking these courses in sequence is not required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.
EALC 16100. Art of Asia: China. (=ARTH 16100)
H. Wu.
This course ia an introduction to the arts of China focusing on the bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the Chinese appropriation of the Buddha image, and the evolution of landscape and figure painting traditions. We consider objects in contexts (from the archaeological sites from which they were unearthed to the material culture that surrounded them) to reconstruct the functions and the meanings of objects, and to better understand Chinese culture through the objects it produced.
EALC 17110. Sinotopos: Chinese Landscape Representation and Interpretation. (=ARTH 17710)
P. Foong
This course surveys major areas of study in the Chinese landscape painting tradition, focusing on the history of its pictorial representation during pre-modern eras. Areas for consideration may include: first emergence and subsequent developments of the genre in court and literati arenas; landscape aesthetics and theoretical foundations; major attributed works in relation to archaeological evidence. Emphasis is on artistic options and the exercise of choice within the context of social, political, religious, and economic forces. Students are expected to gain skills in formal analysis through looking with reading, and a critical perspective on the processes of art historical placement and interpretation based on assigned readings in secondary literature.
EALC 17211. Arts of Medieval Japan. (=ARTH 17211)
C. Foxwell
The arts of medieval Japan are known for their material luxury and otherworldly splendor, as in images of Buddhist paradise, and, conversely, for their rusticity and understatement, as exemplified by developments in ink painting, architecture, and ceramics. This course will examine the worldviews, historical circumstances, and practices of making and appreciation that underscore both trends. We will explore how the aesthetic tensions within and between objects relate to the social and political tensions among groups during this age of unrest and instability. The course spans the period between 1200 and 1550.
EALC 20101/30101. Skills and Methods in Chinese Painting History. (=ARTH 22609/32609)
P. Foong
This course aims to provide groundwork skills for conducting primary research in Chinese painting history. Emphasis will be on sinological tools and standard resources relevant to the study of early periods, especially the Song and Yuan Dynasty. To develop proficiencies in analyzing materials (silk, paper, mounting, ink, color) and investigating provenance (identifying seals, inscriptions). To gain familiarity with the scholarship on issues of connoisseurship, authenticity and quality judgment. Weekly task-based reports. Final research paper.
EALC 22500/32500. The Rise of Writing in East Asia.
E. Shaughnessy
This course will survey the uses to which writing has been put in East Asia (China, Korea and Japan) through the end of the first millennium of the common era, essentially down to the time of the onset of printing. We will be concerned both with the mechanics of writing itself and with its role in society. All readings will be in English, but we will look at Chinese, Korean and Japanese texts as appropriate to see what they looked like, if nothing else; no familiarity with any of these languages is required.
EALC 24250/34250. China in Revolution, 1927-1976. (=HIST 24205/34205)
J. Eyferth
Rather than starting with the customary date of 1949, this course looks at continuities and changes across the 1949 divide. We will compare China's rival revolutionary regimes the Nationalist Guomindang and the CCP with each other and with other late modernizing regimes. What were the similarities and differences in their attempts to modernize China's economy and transform its social structures? How did they extend their power into villages, factories, and families? How did they mobilize and organize the population? We will look at GMD social policies and industrialization strategies before moving on to CCP political campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s. We will also ask in how far Maoist policies after 1958 represented a break with the top-down developmentalism that characterized earlier CCP and GMD approaches. All readings are in English and will be available on CHALK.
EALC 24622/34622 Mediums and Contexts of Chinese Pictorial Art (=ARTH 24602/34602)
H. Wu.
In this course, pictorial representations are approached and interpreted, first and foremost, as concrete, image-bearing objects and architectural structures---as portable scrolls, screens, albums, and fans, as well as murals in Buddhist cave-temples and tombs, and relief carvings on offering shrines and sarcophagi. The lectures and discussion investigate the inherent features of these forms, as well as their histories, viewing conventions, audiences, ritual/social functions, and the roles these forms played in the construction and development of pictorial images.
EALC 24730. Imagining Environment in East Asia. (=HIST 24209)
H. Long
This course explores some of the ways that nature and environment have been narrated, aestheticized, conceptualized, and exploited in East Asia, with specific emphasis given to Japan and China. We begin with basic questions of what it is to imagine environment and one’s relation to it: what gets included in the concept and what gets left out? How has the idea of “environment” been imagined historically in East Asia? What can we learn about our own perceptions of the non-human world by studying those that belong to other times and places? To get at these questions, we will be looking at ethical and religious attitudes toward nature as found in traditional philosophical thought (Buddhism, Confucianism); changing literary responses to the natural world; the rise of environmental awareness in Japan and China; the social and human impact of industrial pollution; popular practices of environmentalism (eco-tourism, conservation); and the imagining of environmental futures. Materials will be drawn from literature, science, sociology, history, philosophy, environmental policy, and film. All readings in English.
EALC 25305. Dream of the Red Chamber and the Culture of Late-Imperial China. (=FNDL 24314)
Y. He
This course will be built around a careful reading of Cao Xueqin's Honglou meng (The Dream of the Red Chamber). In the process, we will examine some of the range of texts, images, and issues across various literary and cultural genres in late-imperial China that this immensely complex novel draws on. The hope is that in doing so we will gain a deeper appreciation both of the novel itself and of the culture of late-imperial China. We will read about and discuss such topics as gender, erotic desire, relations between text and commentary, the world of theater and performance, as well as dimensions of material culture, and theories of medicine and illness. Screenings from the 80's Chinese TV soap opera Honglou meng will also be incorporated into class discussions. All required readings are in English. Prior knowledge of Chinese language and literature is not required. Depending on class interest, arrangements may be made to explore issues related to the Chinese text.
EALC 25811. Chinese Buddhism.
P. Copp
An introduction to the history and culture of Buddhism in premodern China, examined through lenses of philosophy, texts, and art. We will examine the major currents of Chinese Buddhist thought and practice, stretching from the earliest days of the religion in China through around the 13th century, giving special consideration to major textual and artistic monuments, such as scriptures, Chan literature, and the cave-shrines of Dunhuang. No Prerequisites.
EALC 27105. Concentrators Seminar.
D. Harper
Religion and politics of East Asia.
EALC 29300/39300. Books, Prints, and Texts in Late-Imperial China.
Y. He
The specific dynamics of production, marketing, and circulation of printed materials, along with the various modes of their reception and use, are central to our understanding of late imperial Chinese culture. In this course we will read a wide range of popular texts and images against the specific conditions of the book trade and other forms of textual circulation during the period. We will address issues such as the culture and technology of printing, the dialogue between page and stage, texts as physical artifacts and aesthetic objects, and the values, life styles, and tastes Chinese books and prints came to reflect and embody. We will also consider relevant scholarship on the history of books in general and the history of Chinese books in particular, including the field of banben studies.
EALC 29600. Senior Thesis Tutorial-II.
PQ: signed consent form. For this course students are required to obtain a “College Reading and Research Course Form” from their College adviser and have it signed both by their faculty reader and by the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Two quarters of this sequence may count as one credit for the EALC major, and are required for any undergraduate writing a B.A. Honors Thesis in EALC. It is highly recommended that students take this sequence autumn and winter, but a spring quarter course is offered for unusual circumstances.
EALC 35600. Gender and Modernity in Colonial Korea (=GNDR 35600, KORE 35600)
K. Choi
What are the salient forms, manifestations, and performances that can be discussed as aspects of Korean colonial modernity? This graduate seminar aims at identifying the characteristics of Japanese- or colonially-mediated modernization that Koreans experienced in the first half of the twentieth century in order to ultimately generate a broadly meaningful discussion on the texture of colonial cultural experience under Japan and its abiding colonial legacy. While considering the universal questions of modernized gender, gendered consciousness, and personal/private spaces, readings and discussions will respond to the diverse interests and backgrounds of student participants so as to best facilitate comparative and theoretical discussions on colonial modernity and its postcolonial manifestations.
EALC 42101. Modern Korean History 2. (=HIST 75602)
B. Cumings
This is the second part of a two-quarter course. Students present the subject, method, and rationale for a significant research paper. Papers should be about forty pages and based in primary materials; ideally this means Korean materials, but ability to read scholarly materials in Korean, Japanese, or Chinese is not a requirement for taking the seminar. Students may also choose a comparative and theoretical approach, examinign some problems in modern Korean history in the light of similar problems elsewhere, or through the vision of a body of theory.
EALC 42612. The Sacred Precinct in Japan. (=ARTH 42612)
C. Foxwell
How are sacred sites framed and represented in medieval and early modern Japan? What can site-based studies reveal about the changing relationships between landscape, building, painting, mapping, travel, and the body? This course will examine major sacred precincts in Japan through the analysis of architecture, painting, devotional practice, and historical documents. We will focus on recent writings in English, evaluating their methodological and theoretical contributions. Themes include: ways in which images of a site are formed and distributed; the political dimensions of the sacred; effects of urbanization and commodification on pilgrimage; the use of landscape to reinforce ideas of the liminal and the foreign; memory and the physical and metaphorical reshaping of sacred sites. All readings will be in English. Students without prior background in Japanese art are welcome.
EALC 44622. Keywords in Chinese Literary and Cultural Criticism.
P. Iovene
An investigation of the key concepts in 20th Century Chinese literary and cultural criticism, and of the ways in which they have been transformed over time. Concepts to be discussed may include "science," "world," "modern," in their various Chinese renditions. Some of the course readings will be in Chinese.
EALC 45820. Chinese Buddhist Texts and Thought.
P.Copp
This course is intended as an introduction to the major textual and philosophical currents of Chinese Buddhism for Ph.D. students of Chinese art, history, and literature (though it is in principle open to anyone who can read literary Chinese). We will read sections from important scriptures such as the Vimalakirti, Lotus, and Heart sutras, as well as from Chan literature, with the primary goal of understanding basic Buddhist doctrines (such as "expedient means," "emptiness," "conditioned arising," "Buddha-nature," etc), as well as to gain familiarity with the language and styles of Chinese Buddhist texts and thought.
EALC 52301. Seminar: Modern Japanese History 2. (=HIST 76602)
J. Ketelaar
This is a two-quarter course: those who sign up for autumn must also sign up for EALC 52301 in winter quarter. Reading and research in Japanese history, which culminates in a major seminar paper at the end of winter term.
Spring 2012
EALC 10900. Introduction to the Civilizations of East Asia II. (=HIST 15200, SOSC 23600)
J. Ketelaar
This is part of a three-quarter sequence on the civilizations of China, Japan, and Korea, with emphasis on major transformation in these cultures and societies from the Middle Ages to the present. Taking these courses in sequence is not required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.
EALC 16806. Art of Asia: Japan. (=ARTH 16800)
C. Foxwell
This course surveys the arts of the Japanese archipelago through the study of selected major sites and artifacts. We will consider objects in their original contexts and in the course of transmission and reinterpretation across space and time. How did Japanese visual culture develop in the interaction with objects and ideas from China, Korea, and the West? Prehistoric artifacts, the Buddhist temple, imperial court culture, the narrative handscroll, the tea ceremony, folding screens, and early modern prints are among the topics covered.
EALC 16910. Chinese Archeology and Approaches to China's Past.
Yi Wang
The modern fields of Chinese historical studies and Chinese archaeology were first articulated at the turn of the 20th century, and the relationship between the two has always been close. The purpose of this class is to introduce students to key figures, events, and findings in the fields of Chinese historical studies and archaeology. Students will deepen their knowledge of Chinese history and learn some basic methods and approaches that scholars in China have adopted to interpret their own past.
EALC 17107. Chinese Calligraphy and Civilization. (=ARTH 17107)
P. Foong
If the invention of writing is regarded a mark of early civilization; the practice of calligraphy is a unique and sustaining aspect of Chinese culture. This course will introduce concepts central to the study of Chinese calligraphy from pre-history to the present. For discussion: materials and techniques, aesthetics and communication, copying/reproduction/schema and creativity/expression/personal style, public values and the scholar's production, orthodoxy and eccentricity, official scripts and the transmission of elite culture, wild and magic writing by mad monks.
EALC 22001/32001. Translating Modern Japanese Poetry.
N. Field
In this course, to be run in workshop format, we will be reading and translating into English a range of Japanese poetry written from the late nineteenth-century to the present. Although we will read some translation theory as well as acquaint ourselves with standard accounts of the history of modern Japanese poetry, the emphasis will be on generating the questions ourselves through the primary activity of wrestling with the transformation of a set of words living in one language into another. We will work collectively and separately. Students will propose poems for collective translation and for individual projects. Prerequisite: Reading knowledge of modern Japanese.
EALC 22225/42225. The Legend of the White Snake: A History of Adaptations.
Yi Wang
The four Chinese folk legends--Meng Jiangnü's Bitter Weeping, Madam White Snake, Butterfly Lovers, and Cowherd & Weaving Maid---are very familiar to every Chinese person and play important roles in Chinese popular entertainment. This course will analyze one of the four legends, Madam White Snake. Students will be introduced to early versions in vernacular folk stories and in Tanci and Chuanqi, and will watch videos of Kun Opera and Peking Opera adaptations. Discussions will focus on the differences in narrative structure and characters among these different versions. In the second half of the quarter, students will watch and discuss some more recent adaptations of this legend, including films and excerpts of TV dramas from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China.
EALC 22470/32470. Survey of Chinese Texts in Archaic Scripts.
E. Shaughnessy
This course will provide a survey of Chinese textual materials from oracle-bone inscriptions of the Shang dynasty through bamboo and silk manuscripts of the Han dynasty. The focus will be to become familiar with the range of texts and kinds of scripts available, not mastery of any particular type.
EALC 24210/34210. Oral History and the Politics of Memory in Socialist China. (=HIST 24710/34710, CRES 24210)
J. Eyferth
Perhaps more than most other national histories, the history of China has been shaped by selective remembering and forgetting. This course will look at how history was and is produced in China. We will look at official sites of memory (museums and memorials) and at official historiography. At the same time, we will ask to which extent local, unofficial memories can be recovered. We will look not only at the methodology of oral history interviewing but also at the interface of written and oral cultures: who wrote, and why? What was written down and what is not? How did transcription and ritualized retelling affect memory? We will look at the numerous collections and sound recordings of oral texts and memories produced in twentieth century China: recorded folk songs and folk stories in the Republican era; the Maoist Four Histories of families, villages, communes, and factories; the memoir literature of the 1980s; the systematic cataloguing and appropriation of local cultural heritage in the last decade. The course should also provoke self-critical reflections about how our work as historians differs from state attempts to permanently fix memories for administrative and political purposes.
EALC 24255/34255. Everyday Maoism: Work, Daily Life, and Material Culture in Socialist China. (=HIST 24507/34507, CRES 24255)
J. Eyferth
The history of Maoist China is usually told as a sequence of political campaigns: land and marriage reform, nationalization of industry, anti-rightist campaign, Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, etc. Yet for the majority of the Chinese population, socialism was as much about material changes as about politics: about the two-storey brick houses, electric lights and telephones (loushang louxia, diandeng dianhua) that the revolution had promised; about new work regimes and new consumption patterns – or, to the contrary, about the absence of such change. If we want to understand what socialism meant for different groups of people, we have to look at the "new objects" of socialist modernity, at changes in dresscodes and apartment layouts, at electrification and city planning. We have to analyze workplaces and labor processes in order to understand how socialism changed the way people worked. We also have to look at the rationing of consumer goods and its effects on people's daily lives. The course has a strong comparative dimension: we will look at the literature on socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, to see how Chinese socialism differed from its cousins. Another aim is methodological. How can we understand the lives of people who wrote little and were rarely written about? To which extent can we read people's life experiences out of material objects?
EALC 24305/34305. Autobiographical Writings: Gender and Modern Korea (=GNDR 25300/35300, CRPC 24305)
K. Choi
This course explores the intersections between the genre of autobiography in a broad sense (what may be broadly called “self-writing”) and the gendered subjectivity of Koreans formed and experienced both inside and outside of Korea. The authors of these self-writings are Koreans or ethnic Koreans, but the original languages they write in include English and Japanese; the main texts include literature, confined to non-fictional genres. While closely reading selected self-writings in their English renditions, students will be simultaneously studying theoretical writings on autobiography and gender. By paying special attention to those sites in which those self-writings complicate theoretical or critical debates, this course aims to identify and explore the cultural and political specificity that characterizes the needs, desires, and contexts informing Korean autobiographical storytelling.
EALC 24312/34312. The Korean War, Family, & Generational Difference under 'Division'
K. Choi
This course examines a selection of literary and cinematic texts that engage with the Korean War and the various political, ideological, and cultural divisions that occurred against the backdrop of the Cold War. The thematic focus of the course is placed on the family as an institution and experience, as well as the generational differences with which the war, division and family matters were experienced. We will discuss texts with a view to exploring the formative and derivative effects of the war and its divisions upon the individual self-fashioning amidst disasters, crises and unavoidable dilemmas. Discussion will pay special attention to the ways in which the dynamics between the trope of family, a rhetorically unifying force, and the effects of generational difference, an often divisive factor, reinforced and/or challenged the conventional ideological discourses on the Korean War and Korea’s various divisions. All the film and literary texts chosen for the course have English translation/English subtitles.
EALC 24325/34325. Courtesan Culture and the Arts in China from Late Imperial to Modern. (=GNDR 24325)
J. Zeitlin
Skill in the arts (particularly song, poetry, painting, and games) was a prerequisite for successful courtesans in China, interactions between courtesans and their clients played an important role in generating the literary and musical forms that lay at the heart of entertainment culture. Courtesans, in turn, were a perennially favorite topic for literary and visual representation, and books and magazines related to the pleasure quarter constitute a significant branch in the history of publishing. This year we will compare two crucial and well-documented eras: 1) late Ming through early Qing; and 2) late Qing through the prewar Republican period. We will study a wide range of primary sources, including fiction, poetry, plays, film, popular song, and memoirs, tracing changes and continuities in the relation of courtesan culture to the arts between the two eras. All works will be read in English translation, but students with proficiency in modern or Literary Chinese will be encouraged to do readings in the original.
EALC 24607/34607. Chinese Independent Documentary Film. (=CMST 24607/34607)
P. Iovene
This course explores the styles and functions of Chinese independent documentary since 1989, with particular attention to the social and political contexts that underpin its flourishing in Mainland China and Taiwan. We will discuss the ways in which recent Chinese documentaries challenge current theories of the genre, how they redefine the relationship between fiction and non-fiction, and the problems of media aesthetics, political intervention, and ethics of representation that they pose. We will look at their channels of circulation in Asia and elsewhere, and will discuss the implications and limits of independent documentary. Readings will include theorizations of the documentary genre in relation to other visual media and narrative forms, analyses of specific works, and discussions on the impact of digital media.
EALC 24710/34710. Japan and the World in 19th-Century Art. (=ARTH 24710/34710)
C. Foxwell
This seminar will explore artistic interaction between Japan and the West in the late 19th century. Topics include: changing European and American views of Japan and its art, the use of Japanese pictorial sources by artists such as Monet and Van Gogh, Japan's invocation by decorative arts reformers, Japanese submissions to the world's fairs, and new forms of Japanese art made for audiences within Japan. Class sessions and a research project are designed to offer different geographical and theoretical perspectives and to provide evidence of how Japonisme appeared from late 19th-century Japanese points of view.
EALC 24720. The Japanese Empire and Nation Formation in East Asia. (=HIST 24111, CRES 24720)
W. Chen
The rise and fall of the Japanese colonial empire in the first half of the twentieth century is an event of singular important in the history of modern Japan as well as its concurrent East Asia. This course surveys the imperial or colonial roots of the formation of modern East Asian nations--mainly Japan but also Taiwan, Korea, and China--with a focus on the complex interplays between nationalism and imperialism or colonialism. By examining several key issues of colonial studies, we will look at the intertwinement and tensions between empire-building and nation-forming. All readings are in English.
EALC 27606. From Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Fukushima. (=HMRT 25401)
N. Field
In this course, we will consider the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki through literature, film, photo essays and nonfiction writing. We will grapple with the shifting understanding of the bomb and continued nuclear testing both within and without Japan during the Cold War and to the present. We will also study what many consider the current and ongoing form of nuclear war in the widespread deployment of depleted uranium in war zones and military bases, and its contested impact on civilians, soldiers, spouses, and children. In this examination, we will compare nuclear bombing with other forms of bombing, on the one hand, and with its putative peaceful use as a source of energy. No knowledge of Japanese language is necessary. Graduate students wishing to take the course should consult with the instructor.
EALC 29700. Senior Thesis Tutorial-III.
PQ: signed consent form. To be taken only if circumstances prevent a student from taking the sequence in autumn and winter.
EALC 40450. Pre-Modern Japanese Bodies.
R. Jackson
This graduate seminar will explore representations of the body and notions of embodiment in the context of pre-modern Japanese cultural production. Emphasis on reading original materials in conjunction with contemporary scholarship on embodiment and performance in Japanese and English.
EALC 42504. Chinese Economies. (=CMLT 42504)
T. Chin
Chinese Economies (graduate)
Early twentieth century Chinese asked whether the modern term “economy” could be usefully translated into the traditional Chinese context. To revisit this question, this course will examine the texts that they and historians since have taken as the main sources of early Chinese economic thought and history. These include selections from Mencius, Shiji, Hanshu, Guanzi, Debate on Salt and Iron, as well as Precepts for my Daughters. We will read these in light of traditional commentaries and modern anthropological and literary approaches to economic writing and practice, including Mauss, Polanyi, Goux, Bourdieu, Bray, Liu. Topics will include genre, rhetoric, and gender. We will ask how the early Chinese instance might affirm or revise the comparative models we engage. Some reading knowledge of classical Chinese required.
EALC 42610. Imperial Collections of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy. (=ARTH 42610)
P. Foong
This course looks at imperial art collections of painting and calligraphy and the institutions that administered them. We will survey approaches in secondary scholarship on collections amassed for the court by members of the court: emperors, empresses, clansmen, eunuchs, scholars. Readings will focus on the great collections of Emperors Tang Taizong, Li Houzhu, Song Huizong, and Yuan Wenzong (Tugh TemŸr), but research topics can be chosen from later dynastic periods. Weekly reports, discussion, and final projects may investigate extant works by addressing issues such as: art catalogs as courtly enterprise; the relationship between art and library collections; emperor as private collector/public patron; expatriated collections and imperial identity under foreign rulers, and so on.
EALC 44202. Thought and Culture in Early Modern Japan. (=ARTH 44202)
S. Burns
This course explores the intellectual history of early modern Japan from c. 1600 to 1800. Through the reading of recent scholarship and texts in translation (and potentially the original Japanese), we will examine Confucian, Nativist, and other discourses with a focus on their engagement with social and political issues. The course will be conducted as a seminar and requires a substantial paper reviewing the literature on a topic chosen by the student.
EALC 44630. The Contemporary Chinese Novel.
P. Iovene
In this course we will open up these three terms--contemporary, Chinese, and novel--to investigation and discussion. We'll read a wide range of related criticism and will conduct close readings of major works of fiction of the last decades. Some of the texts will be in Chinese, but arrangements can be made for those who don't read it.
EALC 44721. The Question of Minor Literature in Modern Japan
H. Long
This seminar looks in-depth at the question of minor literature as a structural, discursive, and conceptual problem in the Taisho and early-Showa periods. Of particular interest will be the ways in which writers sought to identify with, or assume the voice of, individuals occupying minor and marginal positions in the imagined hierarchy of the literary world. Lines of hierarchical differentiation to be considered include class, ethnicity, geography, gender, dialect, and literary form itself. Literary texts will be paired with theoretical work from the fields of world literature, postructuralism, and postcolonialism so as to acquaint students with various approaches to “minor literature” as an object of both literary as well as historical analysis. Primary texts will be read in Japanese. PG: Japanese reading ability required.
EALC 45001. Art and Visual Culture between Han and Tang 220-680. (=ARTH 45001)
H. Wu
The approximately 400 years between the Han and Tang dynasties, also known as the "Three Kingdoms, Two Jins, and Northern and Southern Dynasties," was one of the most important and complex periods in Chinese art history. The early dynasties of Qin and Han which first unified China had fallen. The break-up of the empire brought new forces into play in the development of Chinese art and culture: regional autonomy, foreign incursions, and resettlement of populations. Many important changes in art and visual culture took place and initiated subsequent developments during the Sui and Tang dynasties. This course utilizes new archaeological evidence to examine these changes, and explores new narrative modes to reflect on the specific nature of this "Period of Division." (Reading knowledge of Chinese is required.)
