An examination of interpretations of Japan, Japanese thought, religion, culture, art, society from the sixteenth through the twenty-first centuries with a particular focus on critical readings of Orientalism, Buddhist historiography, modernization theories, and indigeneity.
This course examines the history of Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910) from its establishment in the wake of the disintegration of the Mongol empire until its annexation by Japan in the early twentieth century. We will explore topics such as status and gender, ideology and law, diplomacy and invasion, and court politics and rebellion, with an eye to understanding issues including Chosŏn’s social hierarchy and its discontents, slavery, Confucianization, factionalism, obstacles to reform, and the longevity of the dynasty. Readings include recent secondary scholarship and primary sources such as official histories, diaries, law codes, letters, official documents, and inquest records, as well as visual materials. Lecture is combined with discussion. Assignments are a short paper, a Wikipedia project, and a longer final paper. All readings in English. No prior knowledge of Korean history or language is required.
This seminar offers an overview of the development and history of the “book” and its physical forms, broadly conceived, in East Asia from ancient times to the present. Drawing on recent scholarship, selected primary sources, and rare books housed within the library system, this course familiarizes students with the evolution of the book and methods of book production in China, Korea, and Japan, the principles and practices of material bibliography and the application of such to physical and digital objects, and selected topics salient to the social and cultural meanings of books: authorship, the book trade, reading, censorship, and more. Assignments include a short paper, a short presentation, and a longer final paper. All readings in English, but knowledge of East Asian history or languages helpful.
This course will look at the four great novels of the Ming dynasty: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West, and Plum in the Golden Vase. Deeply self-conscious about the process of their own creation and their place within the larger literary canon, these novels deploy multiple frames, philosophical disquisitions, invented histories, and false starts before the story can properly begin. By focusing on the first twelve chapters of each novel, this course will serve as both an introduction to the masterworks of Chinese vernacular literature and an exploration of the fraught beginnings of a new genre.
The aim of this course is to introduce a history of contemporary art from China since the 1970s. The course begins with a brief overview of modern art activities in China during the early 20th century along with art production amidst the Cultural Revolution era (1966-1976), under Mao. The course will then focus on contemporary avant-garde movements during the 1970s and 1980s, the response to urbanization in art at the onset of the new millennium, the influence of globalization since 2000, and a new generation of young artists from China as well as Chinese diasporic artists working transnationally. Critical attention will be paid to ways in which artists respond to the obsolescence of physical environments and interactions due to major investments in robotics, AI technologies, online communication platforms, and virtual monetary exchange applications. In addition to working with important secondary texts focused on contemporary art from China, students will have the unique opportunity to examine primary documents that I have obtained during my ongoing research activities in China. These include video footage, photo documentation, archival materials, and real artworks. We will also access Gao Minglu's extensive archives of contemporary Chinese art documents.
Edmund Buckley was one of the first recipients of the Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago. His dissertation was published in 1895 with the title Phallicism in Japan. As a practitioner of the new “science of religions,” Buckley carried out his field work in Japan and collected hundreds of objects to supplement his historical and comparative research with copious examples of contemporary material culture. These talismans, ritual objects, amulets, maps and guides to Buddhist and Shinto pilgrimage sites, portable statues, shrines for traveling and the home, as well as numerous folk curios (such as phalli and kteis related to his research), were kept by the University of Chicago and, over the decades, were moved many times. They now, or much of them at any rate, reside within the Smart Museum of Art. They are uncatalogued, merely stored there, and are largely unknown.
This course will be an examination of the discipline of religionswissenschaft as it was applied to Japan and the religious worlds therein. Buckley’s work, as well as the remnants of his collection, will serve as a major resource. Moreover, close readings of the works of Anesaki Masaharu, Hori Ichiro, Joseph Kitagawa, Helen Hardacre, and others, will enhance our understanding of the history of this discipline as applied to the religious world of Japan.
This course will focus on Confucius, both the historical man and the legendary figure, and on the Analects, which purports to record his teachings. Through readings of the Analects in translation and of secondary scholarship in English, we will seek to determine to what extent it is possible to understand the relationship between the man and the book. For students with a basic knowledge of classical Chinese, extra sessions will be arranged to read the Analects in Chinese.
From premodern to modern societies, human beings have been producing material objects that support or enrich their lives in particular social and cultural expressions. In this course, we will investigate the history of craft production and discuss the materials, methods, contexts, and meanings of skilled craft in East Asia. The making of material objects can take numerous forms, and usually involve multiple social groups who rely on different methods of knowing (e.g., tacit or explicit, individually embodied or widely shared). From the imperial and official workshop of early China to the silk weaving household in post-Meiji Japan, and from the handicraft communities in rural China of the twentieth century to the contemporary Korean Hanji paper artist – we will study a diverse range of crafts and consider various ways of making and knowing in relation to creativity and innovation, labor organizations, social structures, as well as statecraft and political power. By engaging with scholarships in history, anthropology, archaeology, art history, material culture, and history of science and technology, we will ask: How are the processes of object-, self-, and world-making intertwined? What is the relationship between making and knowing? How have these different approaches in making and/or knowing evolved alongside broader changes in the history of East Asia? What can they tell us about people’s lives and experiences in a given culture and society?
For the final project, students will have the creative option to remake a historical artifact of East Asia and reflect upon their hands-on experience in this process. All readings will be provided in English.
In this class we will read and analyze the key texts (in English translation) of the two great classical "sinifying" Chinese Buddhist theoretical schools of the Sui, Tang and Song dynasties: Tiantai and Huayan, with special attention to what is arguably their biggest shared innovation: the development of the classical Mahāyāna Buddhist idea of Emptiness (sūnyata) into the "omnicentric" idea that each entity, precisely through its emptiness, is in some sense present in all times and places, is eternal and omnipresent--and the controversies arising from the different justifications and implications advanced by the two schools for this shared doctrine. Readings will include the works of Zhiyi, Zhanran and Zhili from the Tiantai school, and Dushun, Zhiyan, Chengguan and Zongmi. Some basic background in Buddhist thought is recommended. Readings will be in English, but an optional reading group working with the original texts in classical texts will likely also be convened.
The goal of this course is to introduce you to the central themes and texts of classical Confucian and Neo-Confucian traditions, both as philosophical works to be evaluated and digested for their doctrinal content and as literary artifacts from a perhaps unfamiliar cultural sphere. This will call for the development of two distinct but related sets of skills, namely, the ability to think through and comprehend philosophical arguments and ideas, and the equally crucial ability to reflect on one's own assumptions as they come into play in one's reaction to and evaluation of those ideas. Readings will include, from the classical period, the Four Books (Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean, Analects of Confucius, Mencius), Xunzi, the Book of Changes, and from Sung-Ming Neo-Confucian writings of Zhou Dunyi, Zhang Zai, the Cheng Brothers, Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming.
