2025-2026

EALC 28102 Sociology of K-pop: Theorizing and Researching Popular Culture

(SOCI 28102)

This course introduces students to sociological approaches to the study of culture, using K-pop (South Korean popular music) as a central case. The course draws from a wide repertoire of disciplines, with a thematic focus on gender and labor and a methodological focus on qualitative methods. Such a design helps students understand the analytical power of different approaches while developing their own sensibilities toward theorizing and researching popular culture from a sociological standpoint. The first half of the course covers foundational frameworks such as the production of culture perspective, art worlds, and field theory, while the latter half engages with newer topics including fandom, branding, aesthetic labor/socialization, celebrity, and platforms. The course does not assume prior knowledge of sociology or K-pop, although they are welcome. Students will be expected to post weekly reflections on the readings, which will eventually help them develop a research proposal or a short research paper. The course will be generally helpful to those interested in sociology of culture or K-pop/Korean popular culture, but it will be especially well-suited for students who are considering a B.A. thesis or want to conduct a pilot study before embarking on a larger project.

So Yoon Lee
2025-2026 Spring

EALC 23400/33400 Treaty Ports and Modern East Asia

(RDIN 23400/33400, HIST 24715/34715)
Treaty ports shaped modern East Asia by providing key venues for colonial encounter, commercial expansion, and cultural exchange. This course explores how the (forced) opening of treaty ports in the 19th and early 20th centuries reconfigured the political, social, and spatial order of China and Japan. Focusing on cities such as Yokohama, Nagasaki, Tianjin, and Shanghai, we’ll examine how foreign concessions, extraterritoriality, and new institutions of governance met with local practices and resistance. Key topics to be investigated include urban development and administration, transnational networks, racial and ethnic relations, and everyday life under (semi-)colonialism. The course also considers how treaty port legacies continue to influence contemporary East Asia and the wider world.
Jiakai Sheng
2025-2026 Autumn

EALC 24409 Tracing Korea’s Twentieth-Century Diasporas

(HIST 24409)

This course explores Korea’s many diasporas in the twentieth century. What factors shaped twentieth-century Korean migration? How were individuals and families impacted by their diasporic contexts? We will examine migration trajectories from Korea to other parts of the Asia-Pacific, to Europe, and to the Americas, tracing the historical processes of colonization, war, marriage migration, international adoption, and labor migration. We will also engage with questions of citizenship, identity, and memory. Readings will include a range of primary sources such as personal letters, diaries, interviews, and artwork, as well as selected excerpts from literature and film. By the end of the course, students will have a deeper understanding of the diversity of experiences within Korea’s twentieth-century diasporas.

Hannah Park
2025-2026 Autumn

EALC 25867 Sound and Listening in Modern Chinese Literature

Prerequisites

How does literature capture transient sounds? What can literature tell us about how sounds are experienced in different historical periods? What are the limits and potentials of language as a medium of articulating aural experiences? In this class, we pursue the answers to these questions through reading modern Chinese literature alongside the history of modern Chinese sonic cultures. Sonic culture in its various forms and transformations has long left its imprint on modern Chinese literary imaginations, whether it is the depiction of urban sounds and noises in Eileen Chang’s prose about 1930s Shanghai, the imitation of bombing sounds on the printed page in wartime poems, the borrowing of folk songs in political lyrics during the Mao era, or Western pop and rock music in experimental fictions from the 1980s. We will experiment with approaching literary texts as historical archives of sonic experiences, and explore the entanglements between sound and writing in twentieth-century China.

 

Siting Jiang
2025-2026 Spring

EALC 18823 Archaeology, Antiquity, and Antiquarianism in Ancient China

(ANTH 18823)

What can the world’s earliest known pottery shards tell us about human survival and creativity? How was earliest Chinese writing invented and used? Why were thousands of life-sized soldiers (Terracotta Army) buried in silence beneath the earth near Xi’an? This course introduces students to the archaeology of China, from the Neolithic period (c. 8000 BCE) to the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). Over the course of the term, we will examine current stage of archaeological research while surveying major sites, artifacts, and architectural remains to explore key aspects of culture, society, and history in early China. A class visit to the Art Institute of Chicago will offer students the opportunity to engage directly with objects from the periods we study.  Beyond cataloging discoveries, the course challenges students to critically examine how archaeology constructs narratives of the past—and how those narratives are reinterpreted over time. With a touch on antiquarianism and the impact of modern archaeology in the Chinese context, we will explore how the ancient past has been used as a symbolic resource by people in the past and the present—elites, antiquarians, the state, archaeologists, and ourselves.  Prior knowledge of Chinese language or history is not required.

Yuwei Zhou
2025-2026 Winter

EALC 21545/31545 Global China: Mobility, Infrastructure, and Networks

(MAPS 21545/31545/ANTH 1545/31545)

This course is designed to explore the notion of “global China” and examine its role and impact in
global society. China’s increasing presence concerns not only its economic power and massive
investments in the Global South, but also its growing cultural, social, and religious influence—its socalled
soft power in the world. This course will look at major scholarly discussions of Chinese global
engagements from both historical and contemporary perspectives to explore how we can advance an
understanding of global China that is no longer restricted to a nation-state framework, or to a linear
or singular approach. By combining theoretical discussion with ethnographic studies on diaspora,
migration, Chinese capital, soft power, race, and racism in global Chinese contexts, the course will
offer useful frameworks and perspectives for raising critical inquiries and tackling cutting-edge issues
related to global China. By the end of the course, the students will develop their own research
subject on a topic that is related to global China; write a thorough literature review on their chosen
topic; and present their research to the class.

Yasmin Cho
2025-2026 Autumn

EALC 48011 Readings in Korean Film and Media

(CMST 48011)

 

This graduate seminar examines key English-language scholarship on Korean film and media from the recent decade. The goal is to cultivate critical insight into the theoretical frameworks, critical debates and historical inquiries of this evolving field. Core readings will include major monographs and edited collections, alongside select critical essays as well as relevant film and media objects.

Yoonbin Cho
2025-2026 Spring

EALC 20627/30627 Contemporary China: Institutions, Transformations and Everyday Life

(SOCI 20627/30627)

This course aims to provide a comprehensive social science perspective on contemporary China. Here, contemporary Chinese society is loosely defined as the society that emerged after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The course takes an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating readings from various social science disciplines, including history, sociology, political science, anthropology, economics, and law.

Xiangyi Ren
2025-2026 Spring

EALC 48011 Readings in Korean Film and Media

This graduate seminar examines key English-language scholarship on Korean film and media from the recent decade. The goal is to cultivate critical insight into the theoretical frameworks, critical debates and historical inquiries of this evolving field. Core readings will include major monographs and edited collections, alongside select critical essays as well as relevant film and media objects.

 

2025-2026 Spring

EALC 23255/33255 Adapting East Asia

In an era of globalization and rapid technological innovation, “adaptations” are becoming increasingly widespread and diverse. In addition to discussions of an adapted work’s fidelity to the prior material, this advanced seminar aims to develop multiple approaches to adaptation by conceptualizing it as a process of negotiating with changes across time, space and medium. By examining a variety of selected materials including poems, short stories, novels, films, theater performances, TV series, animations, webtoons, online games and short form videos from or about East Asia, students will practice analyzing a cultural product’s narrative and form in relation to the sociopolitical contexts of its production, circulation and reception. In the course of the semester, students will de-Westernize adaptation studies while generating nuanced understandings of Korea, China, and Japan as relational constructs emerging as a result of negotiating with other cultures and wielding various technologies. All required readings will be in English, either originally or in translation, and all viewing materials will be available with English subtitles. This seminar is open to graduate students in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Cinema and Media Studies, and the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities. Advanced undergraduate students can apply to join the course by submitting a paragraph-length description of their knowledge and experience with East Asian culture or film and media studies.

Prerequisites

Consent required for Undergraduates

2025-2026 Winter
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