2023-2024

This course centers around the Smart Museum’s preparations to host the exhibition Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan. Reading primary and secondary sources in Japanese and European languages, we will assess the history of collecting and exhibiting Meiji art and debate the relevance of a long nineteenth-century approach that emphasizes continuities across the Edo-Meiji divide. Ample attention will be paid to craft, three dimensional objects, and the built environment in addition to paintings and prints. Themes include: gender and the body; the development of a metalanguage through which to discuss art; the changing position of Chinese art and culture; issues of “orientalism” and “occidentalism;” and the designation of “craft” and “calligraphy” as new fields on the margins of the beaux-arts.

What do we mean when we talk about participatory culture in Japan? This course will explore this question through the lenses of film, television, and fan studies, focusing on the participatory nature of each medium. Material will build on itself both thematically and chronologically throughout the quarter, and include readings that explore participatory/fan culture in both Japan-specific and broader global contexts. Students will be introduced to multiple theories and reading practices for each media form, and encouraged to reflect on their own consumption habits.

How does Spirited Away reflect teachings of Japanese Buddhism and Shinto? Or what about Neon Genesis Evangelion? What can pop culture tell us about religion? In this course, we will consider what Japanese religions are (and are not) by looking at their representations in popular cultural forms of past and present. Sources are drawn from a range of popular cultural forms including anime and manga, but also literature, artistic performances, visual arts, and live-action movies. The course covers foundational aspects of Japanese religious life through non-traditional sources like Bleach, The Tale of Genji, and Your Name. At the end of the course, students will be able to speak to the great diversity of religious practices and viewpoints in Japan, not only its centers but also its peripheries and minorities. Meanwhile, we will consider broader questions about the complex connections between religion and popular culture. No prior knowledge of Buddhism, Shinto, or Japanese history is expected.

In this seminar we will explore the intellectual history and social contexts of fundamental motifs of Buddhist thought in, especially but not exclusively, premodern Japan. Eschewing narrow sectarian boundaries, we will focus on the four traditions of the Lotus sūtra, the Pure Land, the tantric teachings and Zen construed inclusively as trans-sectarian sources of religious meaning and models of cultivation. Building on an initial exploration of the wider East Asian context of Japanese Buddhism, we will deepen our understanding of these four traditions through a careful examination of primary sources in translation. The course will also incorporate field trips to Japanese Buddhist groups in the Chicago area.

From the Satipaṭṭhāna sutta of the Pāli canon to the “mindfulness” boom of recent years, Buddhism and meditation often appear inseparable. The aim of this seminar is to historicize and critically question this seemingly natural intimacy, for while it certainly cannot be denied that the various Buddhist traditions have always had on offer a plethora of techniques for mental (and physical) cultivation, it is far from clear how or even if all these could be subsumed under the in its current usage relatively recent category of “meditation”. Drawing on Buddhist meditation literature from various traditions, historical periods, and literary genre, in this seminar we will take up a twofold question: First, how has the encounter with Buddhist techniques of cultivation shaped the modern understanding of “meditation”, and second, up to which extend, and at what cost, has this very modern understanding conversely conditioned us to see Buddhism as a “meditative religion” par excellence?

This course will explore the processes that led to the present situation of Japanese religions both within and outside of Japan. It focuses on the encounter and exchanges between Japanese and non-Japanese actors in order to question overly simplified models of globalization and modernization from the point of view of a global history of religions. We will first consider the formation of the concept of “religion” itself in the second half of the nineteenth century in both Europe and Japan. Building on these considerations, we will consider a selection of  primary sources to trace the main developments of Japanese religious traditions and institutions into the present. Particular attention will be paid to both the inculturation of “foreign” religious traditions in Japan and the spread of “Japanese” religious traditions outside of Japan. If possible, the course will also incorporate field trips to Japanese religious groups in the Chicago area.

The goal of this course is to read and explore primary sources (in classical Chinese) in Daoist philosophical thought written after the founding documents of the classical period (i.e., the Daodejing and Zhuangzi). Texts to be read will most likely be selected from such sources as the Liezi 列子，the Yinfujing 陰符經，and the Guanyinzi 關尹子 （文始真經).

Philosophical activity across cultures and times has been closely associated with the management of affective states. One common goal is to minimize negative emotions by changing how events are interpreted and appraised. This course will focus on three strategies that appear across different traditions. The first argues that events are outside of our control, in some cases appealing to fate but in other cases appealing to chance. The second strategy is a skeptical approach that attacks our ability to judge any event as bad or good. The third strategy undermines the ontological status of the kinds of things we become attached to, either by rejecting the ultimate reality of individual substances or arguing that diverse things form a single whole. All of these strategies appear prominently in the classical Chinese text the Zhuangzi. The core of this course will consist of a close reading of parts of the Zhuangzi, considering these strategies as they intersect with and shed light on its various philosophies. We will also read in a comparative context. The other traditions used will be guided by student interest, but the most likely choices would be Stoicism and Epicureanism (for the first strategy), Sextus Empiricus (for the second), and arguments appearing South Asian Buddhist philosophies (for the third). Aside from better understanding the Zhuangzi, the goal of the course is to consider how similar strategies function in significantly different cultural contexts.

This course examines the ideas of thinkers with vastly different responses to the question: What is the life well lived? In our study, we will focus on early China (5th century to 221 BCE), a seminal and vibrant period in Chinese thought. Some thinkers (such as “Laozi”) argue the good life is the simple one, others (Xunzi) insist that it is the life of achieved great intellectual, aesthetic, or moral ambition. Yet others argue that central to the life well lived are rich, nuanced, and strong ties to family (Confucius), acting on one’s developed intuitions (Mengzi), or developing one’s capacity to play in the moment whatever the circumstances (Zhuangzi). Two thinkers we will study focus on the means for making the social world supportive of a life that is good. Hanfeizi argues for the importance of well-defined, objective, enforced laws. Sunzi illuminates the art of war. We will explore topics such as notions of the self, conceptions of the greater cosmos, the role of rituals, ideas about human nature, and the tension between tradition and self-expression. The course includes lectures, class discussions, self-designed spiritual exercises, creating a class “Commentary” on the Analects, essays of varied lengths, and writers’ circles.

A distinctive feature of Tibetan religion is its tradition of ‘Treasure discovery’ (gter ma), in which prophesied individuals reveal hidden treasures of sacred texts, sacred objects, and sundry other items, concealed in the landscape, the elements, or even the mind. Much of Tibet’s most influential religious literature is revealed in this way, so the Treasure traditions have attracted considerable academic interest. Why and how did this unique tradition arise? Early scholars tried to explain it predominantly as a device for religious innovation that drew on the pre-Buddhist burial cults of the ancient emperors, but neither of these propositions now remain entirely tenable. By contrast, many more salient features have so far remained under explored: gter ma’s dense intersections with the cosmologies of Tibet's non-elite indigenous ‘nameless’ religion; its cultural interconnectedness with the contemporaneous textual revelatory traditions of the non-dual Śaivism of Kashmir; the efforts of early gter ma apologists to present it as a continuation of the Indian traditions of nidhi, including the nidhiśāstra materials shared by Śaiva and Buddhist tantrists in India; the widespread adaptation of Mahāyāna narrative tropes of prophesied dharmabhāṇakas that characterised much early Tibetan tradition-building; and more. This course will present materials from a book in progress that rethinks the nature and origins of gter ma.