Courses

This is the first year of a three-year program designed to provide students with a thorough grounding in Modern Japanese. Grammar, idiomatic expressions, and vocabulary are learned through oral work, reading, and writing in and out of class. Daily practice in speaking, listening, reading and writing is crucial. Students should plan to continue their language study through at least the second-year level to make their skills practical. The class meets for five fifty-minute periods a week.

This three-quarter sequence introduces the fundamentals of modern Chinese. By the end of the spring quarter, students should have a basic knowledge of Chinese grammar and vocabulary. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing are equally emphasized. Accurate pronunciation is also stressed. A video project is required in spring quarter, which will be entered in the competition for the Chinese Video Project Award. Class meets for five one-hour sessions each week.

KORE 10100 is the first segment of the first-year Korean sequence, designed to establish a strong foundation in modern Korean language and culture. Students will learn to  read, write, and type in Hangeul (the Korean writing system), while actively engaging in communication on diverse daily topics such as self, family, location, food, and activities. Through integrated listening, reading, speaking, and writing tasks, students will enhance their ability to navigate real-life scenarios using acquired vocabulary, grammar, and cultural knowledge. Additionally, students will have the opportunity to participate in cultural activities and events hosted by the University of Chicago Korean Program. This course meets Monday through Friday for fifty minutes.

Part 2 of this three-quarter sequence introduces the fundamentals of modern Chinese. By the end of the spring quarter, students should have a basic knowledge of Chinese grammar and vocabulary. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing are equally emphasized. Accurate pronunciation is also stressed. A video project is required in spring quarter, which will be entered in the competition for the Chinese Video Project Award. Class meets for five one-hour sessions each week. Additional small group discussions of 40 minutes per week will be arranged. Maximum enrollment for each section is 18. Must be taken for a letter grade. No auditors permitted.

KORE 10200 is the second course in the first-year Korean sequence, designed to continue building a solid foundation in modern Korean language and culture. Students will learn to communicate on various daily topics, such as self, family, daily routines, school activities, weekend plans, and holiday or birthday celebrations. Through integrated listening, reading, speaking, and writing tasks, students will enhance their ability to navigate real-life scenarios using acquired vocabulary, grammar, and cultural knowledge. Additionally, the course will introduce Korean culture through media, music, and other cultural activities. This course meets Monday through Friday for fifty minutes.

Must be taken for a letter grade. No auditors permitted. This is the first year of a three-year program designed to provide students with a thorough grounding in Modern Japanese. Grammar, idiomatic expressions, and vocabulary are learned through oral work, reading, and writing in and out of class. Daily practice in speaking, listening, reading and writing is crucial. Students should plan to continue their language study through at least the second-year level to make their skills practical. The class meets for five fifty-minute periods a week.

KORE 10300 is the third course in the first-year Korean sequence, designed to continue building a solid foundation in modern Korean language and culture. This course focuses on reinforcing well-rounded proficiency, encompassing interpersonal communication, interpretive skills in listening and reading comprehension, and presentational abilities in formal speech and writing. Through integrated listening, reading, speaking, and writing tasks, students will enhance their ability to navigate real-life scenarios using acquired vocabulary, grammar, and cultural knowledge. The course also offers an exploration of Korean culture, delving into diverse mediums such as media, written texts, and cultural activities. This course meets Monday through Friday for fifty minutes.

Part 3 of this three-quarter sequence introduces the fundamentals of modern Chinese. By the end of the spring quarter, students should have a basic knowledge of Chinese grammar and vocabulary. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing are equally emphasized. Accurate pronunciation is also stressed. A video project is required in spring quarter, which will be entered in the competition for the Chinese Video Project Award. Class meets for five one-hour sessions each week. Additional small group discussions of 40 minutes per week will be arranged. Maximum enrollment for each section is 18. Must be taken for a letter grade. No auditors permitted.

This is the first year of a three-year program designed to provide students with a thorough grounding in Modern Japanese. Grammar, idiomatic expressions, and vocabulary are learned through oral work, reading, and writing in and out of class. Daily practice in speaking, listening, reading and writing is crucial. Students should plan to continue their language study through at least the second-year level to make their skills practical. The class meets for five fifty-minute periods a week.

This course is about ways some fundamental questions about life have been asked and answered in Chinese traditions. What is the world—especially what we today might call the “natural” or “living” world? How should one live, and see one’s life, within it? What is our relationship with it? How can we best understand it? How should our understanding guide our own lives and practices? We’ll explore some traditional Chinese responses to these questions as they have been expressed in religious practice, painting, literature, philosophy, gardening, and travel. Programmatically, the course is a hybrid: a “great works” course in the classic mold grafted onto a survey of some recent writings in the “environmental humanities.” These texts will both provide a set of conversation partners for our classic Chinese works and outline possible resources for reading and thinking about them here in our present age of ecological catastrophe generated, in large part, by our modern human practices.

Part 2 of this three-quarter sequence introduces the fundamentals of modern Chinese to bilingual speakers. Bilingual Speakers are those who can speak Chinese but do not know how to read or write. By the end of the spring quarter, students should have a basic knowledge of Chinese grammar and vocabulary. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing are equally emphasized. Accurate pronunciation is also stressed. A video project is required in spring quarter, which will be entered in the competition for the Chinese Video Project Award. Class meets for three one-hour sessions each week MWF.

Part 3 of this three-quarter sequence introduces the fundamentals of modern Chinese to bilingual speakers. Bilingual Speakers are those who can speak Chinese but do not know how to read or write. By the end of the spring quarter, students should have a basic knowledge of Chinese grammar and vocabulary. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing are equally emphasized. Accurate pronunciation is also stressed. A video project is required in spring quarter, which will be entered in the competition for the Chinese Video Project Award. Class meets for three one-hour sessions each week MWF.

This course explores Korea's modern history through a variety of media, such as short stories, comics, magazines, films, and webtoons. Covering events ranging from colonization by Japan, mobilization during the second world war, the Korean War, to dictatorships, development, democratization, and the tensions on the peninsula today, our focus will be on examining selected media produced from the period under discussion paired with retrospective portrayals. By mixing past and present media together, the course tackles both historical events and historical memory, examining how history is created and remembered through different media.

“Everyday” is easily perceived as too trivial to discuss its importance or mundane to have no historical value. In contrast, postcolonial, postmodern, poststructural, and even posthuman seem to have attempted to deconstruct pre-existing systems, social structures, our relationships with other people, objects (either living or not living), environment, and cultures (from ideology to affects, you name it). Yet, what we easily call macro-level or meta-narratives feels too heavy to lift. We will try to learn how to fill the gap between abstract and concrete and try to understand history as something specific and commonplace: Everyday. Using modern Korea as a lens, this course will address topics related to everyday—from what we do everyday (housing, eating, and clothes) to how we do everyday (earning, spending, meeting, thinking, feeling, etc.) How does food reflect the history of any society’s culture? What historical situations have created so-called “the Apartment Republic” in South Korea? Why did the Korean public become crazy about dancing in the 1950s? How has SPAM become a popular holiday gift set?  Likewise, we can ask various questions about our notions of everydayness and discuss the multiple meanings of everydayness, the politics of everyday, and its relationships in modern Korean History.

Performance exists in repetition. Theater is a space where we continue to bring the past to the present, making new moments while maintaining old memories. In this class, we will explore the relationship between performance and repetition by looking at how classical performance in East Asia continue/discontinue on modern stages. From Royal Shakespeare Company’s translation and adaptation of Yuan drama to avant-garde Japanese theatre’ artists recycling of classical performance training techniques, from museum performances that breathe life into the collected theatrical objects to underground variety theater that revives Edo-kabuki––all the materials in the class center on the ways in which modern East Asia negotiates with the disruption of traditions as well as social and personal dislocations that modernity has brought about. By closely looking at a variety of cases, we will consider: How does performance provide us alternative lens to probe into the changing cultural values, historical backgrounds, and social identities in East Asia? What are some ways that we can rethink the premodern/modern divide in East Asian Studies? How can the studies of East Asian performance, both classical and modern, enrich our understandings of the interplay between theater, history, and memory?

The course introduces both women’s history and theories concerning production and reproduction in modern China, Japan, and Korea. By bringing both production and reproduction into the discussion, the course extends the definition of “work” from workplaces to households, from formal work settings to informalities. We will read and analyze women’s economic engagements in different contexts and localities (e.g. factories, households, political mobilizations, global trade, and sex work) together with scholarships from socio-economic historians, anthropologists, and feminist scholars.

Historians have provided a broad chronological framework and empirical studies, such as the birth of feminist movements in twentieth-century East Asia, the pattern of gendered and highly specialized economic development, and women’s work as handicraft makers, factory employers, and sex workers. Anthropologists have established such analytical categories as “skill,” “practical knowledge,” and “gynotechnics” that were largely overlooked when discussing women’s work. Recent Marxist feminist scholars have extended Marxist examination of value to female labor, and contributed to our understanding of social reproduction by theorizing capitalism and its supporting system. With different concepts and frameworks, students are encouraged to reassess the complex meanings of differences outside of contemporary Western feminist theories.

This course will explore contending strands of feminist thought and practice in modern Korea. Building on previous coursework on feminism and the postcolonial critique of Western feminism, we will consider how various Korean expressions of women’s equality developed in historically contiguous and critical relation to other global feminist ideals and movements (e.g., “The New Woman”, “revolutionary motherhood”, Women of Asia, #MeToo, radical militant feminism, transfeminism, etc…). We will engage a diverse range of historical, literary, and ethnographic sources that probe feminist, proto-feminist, and anti-feminist ideas throughout different periods from Japanese colonialism to the North-South division to the neoliberal South Korean present.

This course introduces big problems created by the movement, relocation or displacement of objects that are assigned special cultural, artistic, and historical values in new contexts. Such objects are often used as historical sources to justify the present, generating competing claims about the past while also raising problems and questions of preservation, ownership, copyright, and access. This class will ask how objects move from their original place to modern collections. How do they become art or part of cultural heritages? And how do they become historical sources? To address these complex issues, we will examine case studies of “moving objects” from two different geographies and historical contexts, China and the Middle East, in a comparative framework. We will discuss both historical and art historical questions stemming from specific objects and their stories in those two regions. We will talk about objects that were forced to move, relocated, or displaced, thereby their significance and value transform or take on new meanings. The dispersal and replication of moving objects in various collections is especially relevant today, with the creation of different types of digital replicas.

This course engages with the various techniques and practices associated with sound in Japanese culture, ranging from the 18th century through the contemporary era. The media covered will include literature, language reform movements, theater, cinema (both silent and sound), recorded music, radio broadcasting, manga, video games and anime. We will also read recent sound-oriented approaches to literary and cultural studies from scholars from both Japan and elsewhere. All readings will be in English.

This course focuses on the idea of the modern in Japanese literature, how it is envisioned, construed, complicated, and debated through the century from 1840 to 1945. We will read texts from decades before the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which is commonly seen as the starting point of “modern Japan,” up until the end of WWII in 1945. This course introduces key texts, both literary and critical, and asks the students to critically think about what the “modern” means across different time periods, from different points of view, and against different historical, political, and cultural backgrounds.

The purpose of this course is threefold: 1) to familiarize students with the knowledge of Japanese literature and Japanese cultural history of this time; 2) to prompt students to think about literary and cultural history in a critical and informed manner, especially in the case where they are not familiar with the culture; 3) to train students with skills in close reading and in critically examining scholarly discourses. All required readings will be provided in English. Proficiency in the Japanese language is not required.

JAPN20100 continues to work on building a solid foundation for basic Japanese language skills while preparing students to progress to an Intermediate level. The emphasis on the spoken language gradually shifts toward reading and writing in JAPN 20200 and 20300, but spoken Japanese continues to be enriched throughout the sequence. Students at this level will be able to handle successfully a variety of uncomplicated communicative tasks in straightforward social situations. The class meets for five fifty-minute sessions each week, conducted mostly in Japanese.

Part 1 of this sequence aims to enhance students' reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills by dealing with topics at an intermediate linguistic level. In addition to mastering the content of the textbook, students are required to complete two language projects each quarter. Chinese computing skills are also taught. Class meets for five one-hour sessions each week.

KORE 20100 is the first course in the second-year Korean sequence, designed for learners who have completed the First-Year Korean sequence or have prior knowledge of Korean language and culture. The course aims to build students’ language skills, with an emphasis on enhancing speaking ability, writing skills, and the use of more complex constructions. Classroom activities and assignments will be designed and conducted primarily to facilitate students' learning processes. Furthermore, the medium of instruction will be Korean, and students are expected to use the target language as much as possible throughout the course. Active participation is key to success in this course. This course meets Monday through Friday for fifty minutes.

The emphasis on spoken language in the first half of the course gradually shifts toward reading and writing in the latter half. The course is conducted mostly in Japanese and meets for five fifty-minute periods a week.

Part 2 of this sequence aims to enhance students' reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills by dealing with topics at an intermediate linguistic level. In addition to mastering the content of the textbook, students are required to complete two language projects each quarter. Chinese computing skills are also taught. Class meets for five one-hour sessions each week.

KORE 20200 is the second course in the second-year Korean sequence, designed for learners who have completed the First-Year Korean sequence or have prior knowledge of Korean language and culture. The course aims to continue building students’ language skills with emphasis on enhancing the speaking ability, writing skills, and usage of more complex constructions. Hence, classroom activity and assignments will be designed and conducted with the main purpose of facilitating students' learning process. Furthermore, the medium of instruction will be in Korean, and students are expected to use the target language as much as they can throughout the course. Students’ active participation is the key to success in this course. Approximately 50 Chinese characters will be introduced for the achievement of basic literacy. This course meets Monday through Friday for fifty minutes.

The Chinese novel Xiyouji (Journey to the West) was first printed in the middle Ming Dynasty, but tales of its hero Sun Wukong the Monkey King accompanying the Tang monk Xuanzang on a journey to acquire Buddhist scriptures from India are attested in a variety of forms from earlier centuries. Arising from folklore, it has spawned adaptations in many media. In this course we will read Anthony Yu’s abridged translation, seeking to contextualize it in the traditions of travel literature, animal fable, Buddhist transformation tales, and philosophical parable. All readings in English.

KORE 20300 is the third course in the second-year Korean sequence, designed for learners who have completed the First-Year Korean sequence or have prior knowledge of Korean language and culture. This course aims to continue building students’ language skills with an emphasis on enhancing speaking abilities, writing skills, and the use of more complex constructions. Classroom activities and assignments will be designed to facilitate the learning process. The medium of instruction will be Korean, and students are expected to use the target language as much as possible throughout the course. Active participation is key to success in this course. Approximately 50 Chinese characters will be introduced to achieve basic literacy. This course meets Monday through Friday for fifty minutes.

Part 3 of this sequence aims to enhance students' reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills by dealing with topics at an intermediate linguistic level. In addition to mastering the content of the textbook, students are required to complete two language projects each quarter. Chinese computing skills are also taught. Class meets for five one-hour sessions each week.

The emphasis on spoken language in the first half of the course gradually shifts toward reading and writing in the latter half. The course is conducted mostly in Japanese and meets for five fifty-minute periods a week.

The goal is to help students learn to understand authentic written and spoken materials with reasonable ease and to solidify the grammar, vocabulary and kanji foundation built during the students’ study at Elementary and Intermediate Modern Japanese levels. Students will expand their four language skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) as well as the socio-cultural knowledge they need for communication, thereby easing their transition into Advanced Japanese. The class meets for three eighty-minute sessions each week.

KORE 20401 is the first course in the third-year Korean sequence. Successful completion of the Second-Year Korean sequence or equivalent skills is required to enroll in this course. This course aims to enable learners to achieve a high intermediate level of speaking, listening, reading, writing, and grammar skills in Korean. Students will learn effective communication strategies by studying how to express worries, describe behavior and appearance, make guesses, and discuss experiences. They will also practice adjusting their speech based on their relationship with the listener. Additionally, this course aims help students understand various aspects of Korean culture and society. The instructor will primarily use Korean during class, and students are expected to use the target language as well. This course meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays for eighty minutes.

KORE 20402 is the second course in the third-year Korean sequence. This course is designed to enhance students' abilities to achieve a high intermediate level in speaking, listening, reading, writing, and grammar skills in Korean. Students will be introduced to various grammar patterns and expressions that will help them engage in dialogues in a range of real-life situations. Additionally, authentic news reports, movies, and dramas will be used to improve students’ proficiency in high intermediate-level Korean. The instructor will primarily use Korean during class, and students are expected to use the target language as well. This course meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays for eighty minutes.

The third year marks the end of the basic modern language study. Our goal is to help students learn to understand authentic written and spoken materials with reasonable ease. The texts are all authentic materials with some study aids. Classes conducted in Japanese. The class meets for three eighty-minute sessions a week.

The third year marks the end of the basic modern language study. The purpose of the course is to help students learn to understand authentic written and spoken materials with reasonable ease. The texts are all authentic materials with some study aids. All work in Japanese. The class meets for three eighty-minute periods a week.

KORE 20403 is the third course in the third-year Korean sequence. This course aims to develop professional proficiency in Korean at a low advanced level in listening, speaking, reading, and writing by employing a variety of materials such as scholarly essays, newspapers, short stories, and video and audio resources. Students will develop competence through project-based instruction that explores a range of topics, including the structure of the Korean language, Korean society, culture, and history. The instructor will primarily use Korean during class, and students are expected to use the target language as well. This course meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays for eighty minutes.

This course is intended to improve Japanese reading, speaking, writing, and listening ability to the advanced low level as measured by the ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) Proficiency Guidelines. Weekly assignments require students to tackle modern Japanese texts of varying length and difficulty. Organized around a range of thought-provoking themes, reading assignments include academic theses, literary texts, and popular journalism. After each reading, students are encouraged to discuss the topic in class and are required to write their own thoughts on each reading along with a summary. The class meets for two eighty-minute sessions each week.

Open to both undergraduates and graduates. This course is designed to improve Japanese reading, speaking, writing and listening ability to the advanced high level as measured by the ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) Proficiency Guidelines. Weekly assignments will require students to tackle modern Japanese texts of varying length and difficulty. Organized around a range of thought-provoking themes (from brain death and organ transplants to Japanese values on work and religion), reading assignments will include academic theses in psychology and anthropology, literary texts, and popular journalism. After completing the readings, students will be encouraged to discuss each topic in class. Videos/DVDs will be used to improve listening comprehension skills. There will also be writing assignments.

Introduction to the Chinese literary language from the first millennium B.C.E. to the end of the imperial period. While surveying a variety of literary genres (such as, philosophical and historical texts, poetry, and essays), focus is on grammatical structures and translation methods.

Introduction to the Chinese literary language from the first millennium B.C.E. to the end of the imperial period. While surveying a variety of literary genres (such as, philosophical and historical texts, poetry, and essays), focus is on grammatical structures and translation methods.

Introduction to the Chinese literary language from the first millennium B.C.E. to the end of the imperial period. While surveying a variety of literary genres (such as, philosophical and historical texts, poetry, and essays), focus is on grammatical structures and translation methods.

Are minor lives worth documenting? How do we have access to the lives of the multitude, the dispossessed, the outcasts and the enslaved—the lives that archival documents have little to tell us about? Is it ethical to recreate and recover the unheard lives of peoples historically perceived as illiterate, undesirable, “diseased” and unassimilable? What is the power of imagining and writing about existing otherwise? We will consider these questions throughout the course by turning to the under-explored history of Asian diasporas in Latin America and the Caribbean. We will contextualize examples of life writing (broadly-defined) spanning from late seventeenth-century to the twenty-first century, both by members of the Asian diasporas themselves and as they have been re-imagined by contemporary authors. Some examples of primary texts include the spiritual biography of a seventeenth-century Mughal princess-slave who became a mystic in colonial Mexico, queer imagination of a Chinese “coolie” in late nineteenth-century Jamaica, the memoirs of Japanese-Peruvians in the internment camp during WW2, semi-autobiographical poems and short stories by contemporary Asian-Latinx writers. With the help of supplementary critical readings on radical life writing, we will consider throughout the course how imaginative, anti-racist, feminist and queer narratives may expand our current knowledge of the lives of the marginalized and the racialized.

The first in a series of three consecutive courses focuses on improving speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills to high-advanced level. Through intensive readings and discussions, students will build extensive vocabulary and complex grammatical structures as well as developing sophisticated speaking skills and academic writing skills. The materials introduced in this class include newspaper articles dealing with current social, cultural, or economic issues in Korea, literary works such as poems and novels, and authentic media such as TV documentaries or movies.

KORE 21100 is the first course in the fourth-year Korean sequence, designed for students who aim to improve their speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills to an advanced level. Successful completion of the third-year Korean sequence or equivalent skills is required to enroll in this course. This course will focus on enhancing speed, accuracy, and comprehension in advanced listening and reading of authentic texts, such as newspaper articles, essays, poems, and reports. Additionally, it will refine writing skills in various styles. Students will also discuss social and cultural issues in Korea, utilizing their analytical skills and knowledge acquired in class. This course meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays for eighty minutes.

The second of three consecutive courses focuses on improving speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills to high-advanced level. Through intensive readings and discussions, students will build extensive vocabulary and complex grammatical structures as well as developing sophisticated speaking skills and academic writing skills. The materials introduced in this class include newspaper articles dealing with current social, cultural, or economic issues in Korea, literary works such as poems and novels, and authentic media such as TV documentaries or movies.

KORE 21200 is the second course in the fourth-year Korean sequence, designed to continue improving students' speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills to an advanced level. This course will focus on enhancing speed, accuracy, and comprehension in advanced listening and reading of authentic texts, such as interviews, movies, novels, essays, and reports. Additionally, it will refine writing skills in various styles. Students will also discuss social, cultural, and political issues in Korea, utilizing their analytical skills and knowledge acquired in class. This course meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays for eighty minutes.

The third of three consecutive courses focuses on improving speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills to high-advanced level. Through intensive readings and discussions, students will build extensive vocabulary and complex grammatical structures as well as developing sophisticated speaking skills and academic writing skills. The materials introduced in this class include newspaper articles dealing with current social, cultural, or economic issues in Korea, literary works such as poems and novels, and authentic media such as TV documentaries or movies.

KORE 21300 is the third course in the fourth-year Korean sequence. Students will learn basic principles, methods, and techniques in translation and apply appropriate strategies to the practice and description of translation. They will watch pre-recorded lecture videos, complete weekly translation assignments (Korean to English and English to Korean), and participate in group or individual sessions to discuss their translation work. Students will also choose a literary work or text of their choice for their final translation project. The materials covered in this class include medical guidelines, campaign flyers, newspaper articles, reports, brochures, resumes, business and academic emails, and editorials. This course meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays for eighty minutes.  

This three-quarter sequence is intended for bilingual/heritage speakers of Mandarin Chinese. Paralleled with the Intermediate sequence for non-heritage speakers, the goal of this sequence is to further develop students’ reading, speaking, and writing skills by dealing with topics in personal settings and some academic or professional settings. Upon completing this sequence, students are expected to pass the Practical Proficiency Test to earn a certificate on their transcript. The class meets for three one-hour sessions a week.

This three-quarter sequence is intended for bilingual/heritage speakers of Mandarin Chinese. Paralleled with the Intermediate sequence for non-heritage speakers, the goal of this sequence is to further develop students’ reading, speaking, and writing skills by dealing with topics in personal settings and some academic or professional settings. Upon completing this sequence, students are expected to pass the Practical Proficiency Test to earn a certificate on their transcript. The class meets for three one-hour sessions a week.

This three-quarter sequence is intended for bilingual/heritage speakers of Mandarin Chinese. Paralleled with the Intermediate sequence for non-heritage speakers, the goal of this sequence is to further develop students’ reading, speaking, and writing skills by dealing with topics in personal settings and some academic or professional settings. Upon completing this sequence, students are expected to pass the Practical Proficiency Test to earn a certificate on their transcript. The class meets for three one-hour sessions a week.

This course is part of a two-sequence series, to be followed by a course on Japanese Zen Buddhism taught by Professor Stephan Licha in Winter 2025.  "Chan" is a partial Chinese transliteration of the Sanskrit word "Dhyana," meaning meditation practice; the same Chinese character is pronounced "Zen" in Japanese.  This course will consist of the close reading (in English translation) and discussion of both the Indian Buddhist scriptures and indigenous Chinese sources that form the core of the tradition spanning Chan and Zen, with a few secondary descriptions of Chan institutions and cultural influences.  Our focus will be on the development of ideas concerning the nature of sentience and the implications this has for understanding the existential predicament of sentient beings, touching on central themes of dependent co-arising, non-self, Emptiness, consciousness-only, Buddha-nature and original enlightenment, and the methods of realization (doctrinal, non-doctrinal, and indeed anti-doctrinal) proposed to redress this existential predicament at each stage of Chan history. This will be done both with an eye to the historical continuity of these sometimes seemingly contradictory forms thought and practice, and also to extract from them whatever transhistorical philosophical and spiritual valences we care to derive from the texts.

What is Zen? Impossibly, seemingly, everything to everybody. In this course, we will explore Zen’s protean transformations through a close reading of primary sources in translation. Rather than asking what Zen is, we will focus on how in these materials the Zen traditions are continually de/re-constructed as contingent religious identities from medieval Japan to the contemporary United States and Europe. The focus of the course will be the premodern Japanese Zen tradition, its background in Chinese Chan, and its reception in the West. The course will include field trips to Zen communities in the Chicago area. Students wishing to take this course are strongly encouraged to also take Prof. Ziporyn’s course on Chan during the fall quarter. 

The seminar analyzes the issues of generations, gender, and genres that arise from a selection of popular literary and television dramas from modern and contemporary Korea. The selection for the course is marked by the creative contributions of Korean women as novelists, scriptwriters, directors, among others. It includes prose fiction by renowned authors such as Park Wan-sŏ (1931-2011), Han Kang (1970- ), and Cho Nam-joo (1978- ), as well as television series like Mr. Sunshine (2018; scripted by Kim Eun-sook), The Red Sleeve (2021; dir. by Chŏng Chi-in; adapted the 2017 novel by from Kang Mi-kang), and My Liberation Notes (2022; written by Park Hae-yeong). Through a blend of close textual analysis and historical contextualization, the course aims to uncover the ways in which the gendered and generational identities of these creators might have helped certain configurations of concerns, needs, and aspirations saliently emerge in response to social, cultural, historical, and political currents of their time. [Consent Required; No prior knowledge of the Korean language is necessary]

This three-quarter series are intended for bilingual speakers of Chinese who already have intermediate level ability to understand and speak mandarin Chinese in daily communication, although they may have some accent or some difficulty using the language in formal settings. While all the communicative skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing will be trained in CHIN23110, the emphasis will be on standard Mandarin pronunciation, discourse level discussion on topics about modern China , and advanced reading and writing. The class meets for three one-hour sessions a week.

This three-quarter series are intended for heritage speakers of Chinese who already have intermediate level ability to understand and speak mandarin Chinese in daily communication, although they may have some accent or some difficulty using the language in formal settings. While all the communicative skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing will be trained in CHIN 23100, the emphasis will be on standard Mandarin pronunciation, discourse level discussion on topics about modern China, and advanced reading and writing. The class meets for three one-hour sessions a week.

This three-quarter series are intended for heritage speakers of Chinese who already have intermediate level ability to understand and speak mandarin Chinese in daily communication, although they may have some accent or some difficulty using the language in formal settings. While all the communicative skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing will be trained in CHIN 23100, the emphasis will be on standard Mandarin pronunciation, discourse level discussion on topics about modern China, and advanced reading and writing. The class meets for three one-hour sessions a week.

Forbes Magazine has styled the Tibetan Buddhist monk Mingyur Rinpoche, “the happiest man alive.” Like no other religion, Buddhism in the public imagination is associated with providing us with an accessible way towards leading a good and happy life. But what is the “good life” according to the Buddhist tradition, and what is “happiness” supposed to lead us towards? In this course, we will explore these questions through a close reading of Buddhist sources in translation. Through these readings the course will introduce the doctrinal and practical foundations of the Buddhist traditions and serve as a gateway to more specialized studies. Course Note: This course counts as a Gateway course for RLST majors/minors.

This course aims to go through recent English-written monographs in the Korean Studies field each week and to learn how scholarship addresses South Korean politics and socioeconomic changes in terms of class, gender, modernization, and development politics. By reading and discussing significant scholarly works, this course will help students extend their understanding of modern South Korean society and its relationship to the family, the state, civil society, popular culture, class, and the economy in both local and global contexts.

The Japanese word kawaii (commonly translated as “cute” or “adorable”) has long been a part of Japanese culture, but, originating from schoolgirl subculture of the 1970s, today’s conception of kawaiihas become ubiquitous as a cultural keyword of contemporary Japanese life. We now find kawaii in clothing, food, toys, engineering, films, music, personal appearance, behavior and mannerisms, and even in government. With the popularity of Japanese entertainment, fashion and other consumer products abroad, kawaii has also become a global cultural idiom in a process Christine Yano has called “Pink Globalization”. With the key figures of Hello Kitty and Rilakkuma as our guides, this course explores the many dimensions of kawaii culture, in Japan and globally, from beauty and aesthetics, affect and psychological dimensions, consumerism and marketing, gender, sexuality and queerness, to racism, orientalism and robot design.

This course discusses the history of major energy sources in East Asia with a focus on coal, hydropower, and nuclear power plant. We pay close attention to both the technological side of the history of energy and how different energy sources interact with the social and political environment in Japan, China, and Koreas.

This course is an introduction to Buddhism in East Asia, examined through lenses of texts, art, and thought. We will examine important sources of the major currents of East Asian Buddhist thought and practice stretching from the earliest days of the religion in China to the East Asian Buddhist world of today, giving special consideration to major textual and artistic monuments, such as translated scriptures, Chan/Zen literature, paintings and sculptures, and pilgrimage sites.  

Lu Xun (1881-1936) is widely considered the greatest writer of twentieth-century China. Poet, satirist, and a compassionate advocate for social reform, he set the tone for modern Chinese writing and continues to be referenced ubiquitously in Chinese culture today, to the extent that one cannot be said to understand modern China if one does not know Lu Xun. This course is a reading of his short stories, essays, and poetry. In particular, we emphasize his use of literature for social reform and study his writing in conjunction with issues that shaped modern Chinese society: women and gender; nationalism; children and education; biology and evolution; and the relationship between literature and revolution. No knowledge of Chinese is required.

The term pilgrimage is usually associated with journeys to ancient religious sites such as the Vatican or Mecca. But why do superfans who travel to Disney World often describe this in terms of a pilgrimage? Why is it that when anime fans visit real-life sites from their favorite shows, this is frequently called a “journey to sacred sites” (seiichi junrei)? In this course we will discuss these and other questions about pilgrimage in its religious and secular forms. We will consider examples such as the Islamic Hajj, the Crusades, and a 750-mile Buddhist pilgrimage in Japan, alongside journeys to Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross, Elvis’s Graceland, and the sets of Hobbiton. After first exploring theories of travel, tourism, and pilgrimage through a global array of examples, the second half of the course consists of a deep dive into connections between anime tourism, religious travel in Japan, and the worldwide boom of Japanese pop culture. At the end of the course students will present a small research project on a pilgrimage/tourist destination of their own choosing. No prior coursework on religion required. 

This seminar will introduce students to the materials and methodologies of East Asian studies. What are the ways one might make sense of an Anyang wine vessel, a Bashō haiku, a line from the Analects, a pansori performance, a short story by Akutagawa, or a K-pop ballad? Through a range of approaches to diverse objects of inquiry, we will explore the interdisciplinary breadth of EALC as well as the history and future of area studies. Assignments based around students’ interests will also work towards developing field-specific research and writing skills. 

The tantric or esoteric traditions exerted a profound if often covert influence on the development of East Asian Buddhism as a whole and on Japanese Buddhism in specific. In this course, we will trace their development through a close reading of selected sources in translation, focusing on the Ben kenmitsu nikyô ron attributed to Kūkai (774–835), the first systematizer of esoteric Buddhist thought in Japan. We will pay especially close attention to how the label of the “esoteric” or “tantric” is used to define specific religious identities. Students wishing to take this class should have a grounding in (East Asian) Buddhist thought. 

This course will explore Henri Bergson's philosophy as set forth in Time and Free Will, Matter and Memory, and Creative Evolution, and its reception in late Imperial and early Republican China (late 19th and early 20th centuries). Of special interest will be the role played by Bergsonian ideas in the Yogacara revival and the formation of New Confucianism during this period, with particular focus on figures like Zhang Taiyan, Xiong Shili and Liang Shumin. This will require us to deeply engage Bergson's idea of "duration" (durée) and its interpretation, particularly in relation to a reconsideration of the Yogacara Buddhist notion of ālaya-consciousness (storehouse consciousness) and the Confucian idea of ceaseless generation and regeneration (shengsheng bu xi) as derived from interpretive traditions centered on the Book of Changes (Yijing). 

Designed for non-heritage advanced learners of Korean with fourth-year proficiency or equivalent (as approved by the instructors), this course uses Korean songs as a focal point to enhance language skills while engaging with relevant cultural and historical knowledge of modern and contemporary Korea. By implication, we closely read and listen to selected songs so that we probe to reach a better and deeper understanding of the Korean language as played out in a verse and musical form, on the one hand, and we study the contexts in which the lyric and music are produced, performed, and distributed. Consent only.

Designed for non-heritage advanced learners of Korean with fourth-year proficiency or equivalent (as approved by the instructors), this course uses Korean songs as a focal point to enhance language skills while engaging with relevant cultural and historical knowledge of modern and contemporary Korea. By implication, we closely read and listen to selected songs so that we probe to reach a better and deeper understanding of the Korean language as played out in a verse and musical form, on the one hand, and we study the contexts in which the lyric and music are produced, performed, and distributed.

Over the last several decades, reality television has become a central ingredient in media diets all across the world. One can practically trace a line from early hits like Survivor and Big Brother, which were quickly formatted for global circulation, to the recent viral success of Squid Game, a fictionalized account of a death-game tournament that spawned its own reality show. Why do audiences everywhere find reality TV so entertaining? What moral lessons do viewers take away from these shows? And what might scholars learn by taking this popular aesthetic form, in all its cultural variation, seriously? This course brings together media studies, aesthetic criticism, area studies, and the sociology of religion to try to answer some of these questions. The course will help students to think about the moral and spiritual beliefs embedded in popular cultural forms, but also to understand how these forms are now circulated and consumed in our contemporary media environment and what they tell us about late-stage global capitalism. Course readings will introduce students to scholarship in television studies, aesthetic criticism, religious studies, and cultural studies, providing them with the necessary foundations to analyze reality TV from multiple disciplinary perspectives. We will also screen examples of reality TV and its offshoots, with a specific focus on East Asian shows and the competition or elimination format. Students will develop skills in visual analysis, interpretation of secular religion and belief structures, social theory, and basic research and writing methods.

Although food is an essential part of human existence, it has only recently become the object of historical analysis, and historical research has drawn attention to its significance in relation to issues of health, gender, class, technology, and culture.  This course explores the history of food in Japan in the period from c. 1600 to the postwar era.  Topics to be examined include changing practices of consumption and production, medical discourse and conceptions of a proper diet, the impact of introduction of new foods and new methods of preparation, the rise of nutritional science, the development of a “national cuisine,” and the impact of war and defeat upon food culture.

This course is on the post-imperial and postcolonial history in East Asia. After Japan declared defeat on August 15th, 1945, the empire has officially ended. Yet, the aftermath and afterlife of Japan’s empire still deeply influenced the social and political environment in this region. How did the post-imperial connections shape Japan and its Asian neighbors? How did different actors react to this sudden change of political environment? This course pays close attention to the imperial and post-imperial continuity and changes.

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? 

Worldwide, women do about 75 percent of the world’s unpaid care and domestic work. They spend up to three hours more per day cooking and cleaning than men do, and anywhere from two to ten hours more per day looking after children and the elderly. Women’s underpaid work at home and in industry subsidized the early stages of industrialization in nineteenth-century Britain, early twentieth-century Japan, and contemporary China, and women’s unpaid contributions to their households enable employers worldwide to keep wages low. We know, at least in outline, how women came to carry double burdens in Europe and North America, but little research has been done so far about this process in East Asia. In this course, we will discuss when and how China, Japan, and Korea developed a division of labor in which most wage work was gendered male and reproductive work was marked female. Are current divisions of labor between men and women rooted in local cultures, or are they the result of industrial capitalist development? How do divisions of labor differ between the three East Asian countries, and how did developments in one East Asian country affect others?

This course is an experiment in rethinking what has conventionally been studied and taught as "postwar Japanese culture" as instances of global Cold War culture. We will look at celebrated works of Japanese fiction, film and popular music from 1945 through 1990, but instead of considering them primarily in relation to the past events of World War Two, we will try to understand them in relation to the unfolding contemporary global situation of the Cold War. We will also look at English-language writing on Japan from during and after the Cold War period. Previous coursework on modern Japanese history or culture is helpful, but not required. All course readings will be in English.

This is the second part of the East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine series. In this series, we will read major works on the history of STM in East Asia and constantly are in conversation with studies of this history in the globe.

This course is the first half of the East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine series. The second part of the course will be offered in the spring quarter by Professor Jacob Eyferth. In this series, we will read major works on the history of STM in East Asia and constantly are in conversation with studies of this history in the globe.

In this course, we will delve into “big problems” created by the movement, relocation, or displacement of objects that are assigned special cultural, artistic, and historical values in new contexts. We will follow the movement of artifacts across both geographical and disciplinary boundaries, challenging established notions of cultural heritage and art. We often study and read ancient texts as primary sources, but we don’t always pause to consider that those texts were written on physical objects like pieces of wood, leaves, or animal skin. Similarly, we’re familiar with the display of ancient artwork inside museums or galleries, but have we wondered about the journey of individual objects to those new locations? How do objects move from their original place to modern collections? How do they become art? And how do they become historical sources? Guided by an art historian and a social historian, this course presents different ways to look at “objects that move”, both as sources about past societies and as mirrors for contemporary ones. Through studying examples from the history of China and the Middle East, we will reconsider concepts such as cultural heritage, national patrimony, or even art that have been taken for granted. We will learn about the different histories of the dispersal of cultural heritages in those two regions, from nation-building and colonial projects in the twentieth century to the illicit trade in antiquities and the creation of digital replicas today.

What constitutes the materiality of film? How do we understand the "material world" in relation to cinema, and how does the film camera mediate it? What does the process of mediation look like when the goal of cinema is not solely to represent but also change the world? This course will pair theoretical readings on new materialist approaches to cinema with select case studies drawn from Chinese and Soviet revolutionary cinema. Our primary aim is twofold: to introduce students to the “material turn” in cinema and media studies, and to reflect on what the specific fields of Soviet and Chinese Film Studies bring to the discussion. We will look closely at works by socialist filmmakers in the twentieth century who argued that cinema had a special role to play in mediating and transforming the material world. How does socialist cinema seek to orient its viewer to a particular relationship to objects? How does it treat the human relationship to the environment? How does it regard the material of film and the process of filmmaking itself? Ultimately, the course will familiarize students with diverse understandings of materiality and materialism and with key figures and works in global socialist cinema. Readings and screenings will range from the Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s to Chinese revolutionary cinema of the early 1970s, and conclude with recent documentary and video experiments that engage with their legacies.

How has the discipline of Modern Chinese Literary Studies emerged and evolved in the US and in China, and what are the major debates that have agitated the field? This research seminar surveys various issues and approaches in modern Chinese literary studies, seeking to delineate its main turning points. Students are invited to identify their area of interest early on in the course, and to work on a major research paper throughout the quarter. 

Selected readings in pre-modern Chinese literature from the first millennium B.C.E. to the end of the imperial period. The course covers important works in topics ranging from philosophy, history and religion to poetry, fiction and drama. Specific content varies by instructor.

This seminar explores the interplay of history, fantasy, and theatricality in one of the masterpieces of early Qing chuanqi drama, Changsheng dian 长生殿 (Palace of Lasting Life, 1688), Hong Sheng's 洪昇dramatization of the famous tragic romance between the Tang Emperor Xuanzong and his most favored concubine Lady Yang Yuhan.  The play alternates between a restaging of the An Lushan rebellion based on the playwright’s research into historical sources and the creation of a parallel fantastical universe in the forms of purgatory and paradise.  These seemingly contradictory trends—the increased concern with historical accuracy in drama and the fascination with spectacular, supernatural worlds—are fundamental to many seventeenth-century chuanqi plays.  To understand the play’s genealogy, we will read influential earlier treatments of the Xuanzong/ Lady Yang romance, but we will also examine the play in light of its relationship to contemporary events, particularly the fall of the Ming, and to contemporary debates on historical drama and the role of the playwright in the publication and production of theatrical works. The course will include consideration of the “afterlife” of the play by screening some dvds of important live performances.

This course examines the operation and consequences of censorship in the Japanese Empire, with focus on those of colonial Korea. The Japanese authorities’ repressive measures and the Korean responses to them exhibit both general characteristics of censorship and distinctively colonial ones. With a larger goal of exploring the relationship between censorship practices and legacies in modern East Asia, it studies the institutions, the human agents, and texts produced by censors as well as by writers, stressing the need of a comparative understanding of censorship. In addressing the institutional aspects of censorship and the reactions by journalists and writers, the course pursues two main objectives. The first aim is to examine the workings and impact of prepublication censorship in particular, one that shaped the journalistic culture of colonial Korea. Secondly, the class seeks a better understanding of censorship-inflected textual matters, not only in terms of the sites of censorship but also in regard to the strategies of counter-censorship, which may or may not be visually inscribed on the printed texts.

This colloquium is intended for graduate students preparing for a field exam in Japanese history and others interested in reading recent scholarship on the social, political, and cultural history of modern Japan.

This course is intended to be the first segment of a two-quarter long sequence introducing the study of early Chinese inscriptions. The first quarter will begin with a survey of Shang and Zhou oracle-bone inscriptions, with the intent to get a general overview of how to read and interpret these inscriptions. The second half of the quarter will then turn to a similar overview of Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, paying attention to both paleographic and artistic considerations. Much of the focus of this overview will center on questions of periodization. We will consider in particular how notions of periodization have influenced the historiography of Western Zhou bronze studies.

This course is intended to be the second segment of a two-quarter long sequence introducing the study of early Chinese inscriptions. Students should have taken the first quarter, EALC 45400, which will have given them a foundation in the study of ancient Chinese inscriptions, and especially of inscribed bronze vessels. The second quarter will be devoted to specific case studies, most of them driven by the students' own research interests. Students will be expected to produce a comprehensive study of one inscribed vessel or set of vessels.

This class will survey the constructions of a variety of Others in Cold War Japanese media and literature, including questions of ethnicity, race, sexuality, gender, and species. We will cover primary sources, including literary texts, films, and music, and we we will also read recent secondary scholarship in both English and Japanese relevant to the topic.  A substantial portion of the course readings will be in Japanese.   

After its modern discovery, Dunhuang—the home of Buddhist grottoes constructed between the 4th and 14th centuries—had been a site of intensive research that paved the way for the rise of Dunhuang Studies later in the twentieth century, including research in cave art and retrieved manuscripts. While these earlier endeavors made an indelible contribution to our knowledge of Dunhuang, this course posits a complexity in building the site into the discourse of modern China and a dialectic relationship between modern Dunhuang and the research of historical Dunhuang. To better understand this complexity, this course foregrounds how Dunhuang came to be known and studied in the politics of Western colonialism and the restructuring of modern China. The course will also trace the trajectory in which modern Dunhuang developed through a spectrum of different “representations” –architectural diagrams, photographs, paintings, exhibitions, etc. By focusing on these representations, students will analyze the agenda in the conception of Dunhuang as a site of national pride and heritage and consider its role in narratives of twentieth-century East Asian Art.

This graduate seminar uses the robust field of Chinese legal history as a starting point for an examination of how historians have used legal records and documents to craft historical narratives. Students of Chinese history will find that exploring the intersection of law and society in modern China through both primary and secondary texts, students will gain an overview of legal codes, the evolution of China’s legal system under successive regimes, as well as an introduction to the diverse materials that might be considered sources for “legal” history. While historiographic questions from the China field will arise, the class will also consider legal history strategies employed by historians beyond the China field. We will engage with debates about the role of civil law: How might more contemporary legal practices be a legacy of law or custom? How do societies' definitions of crime change over time. What role does the law play in shaping social attitudes toward different behavior?

The course will review anthropological literature and case studies of craft production and craft specialization in ancient civilizations. It also takes a multi-disciplinary approach by adopting perspectives developed in history and art history. Topics discussed in the course include organization of production, craft production and the elite, chaîne opératoire, status and identity of artisans, and political economy and craft production. Students are expected to become familiar with prevalent theoretical discussions and are encouraged to apply, adopt, or revise them in order to analyze examples of craft production of their own choice.