Courses

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.

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 introductory course is designed to provide a basic foundation in modern Korean language and culture by focusing on the balanced development of the four basic language skills of speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing. Students in KORE 10100 begin by learning the complete Korean writing system (Hangul), which is followed by lessons focusing on basic conversational skills and grammatical structures. To provide sufficient opportunities to apply what has been learned in class, there are small group drill sessions, weekly Korean television drama screenings, and a number of other cultural activities (e.g., Korean New Year's game competitions). The class meets for five fifty-minute sessions a week.

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.

This introductory course is designed to provide a basic foundation in modern Korean language and culture by focusing on the balanced development of the four basic language skills of speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing. Students in KORE 10100 begin by learning the complete Korean writing system (Hangul), which is followed by lessons focusing on basic conversational skills and grammatical structures. To provide sufficient opportunities to apply what has been learned in class, there are small group drill sessions, weekly Korean television drama screenings, and a number of other cultural activities (e.g., Korean New Year's game competitions). The class meets for five fifty-minute sessions a week.

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 introductory course is designed to provide a basic foundation in modern Korean language and culture by focusing on the balanced development of the four basic language skills of speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing. Students in KORE 10100 begin by learning the complete Korean writing system (Hangul), which is followed by lessons focusing on basic conversational skills and grammatical structures. To provide sufficient opportunities to apply what has been learned in class, there are small group drill sessions, weekly Korean television drama screenings, and a number of other cultural activities (e.g., Korean New Year's game competitions). The class meets for five fifty-minute sessions a week.

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 course will introduce the major forms and works of Chinese drama from the 16th–18th centuries. Drama occupied a central place in the culture of the Ming and Qing dynasties, its tremendous popularity felt throughout the spaces of everyday life: from the lavish playbooks perused in the scholar’s study to the performances of household actors in wealthy residences and of itinerant troupes in the marketplace. We will read a variety of northern and southern dramas that tell of lovesick girls returning from the dead, anti-government protests in the streets, queer romances, and treks to foreign lands, paying attention to their narrative richness and complexity as well as their diverse histories of reading and performance. All readings in English and no background required.

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of queer literature from East Asia in English translation. This course will focus on such contemporary fiction, exploring how “queer” interfaces with issues of identity and subjecthood; desire, embodiment and reproduction; creativity and labor, and more. To this end, beyond issues of fictional representation, we will work to parse the relation between queer as an identity or subject position (queer people/characters) and queer as a set of interpretive strategies and ethical orientations to cultural texts (queer critique).  In the first half of the quarter, we will examine some of this recent fiction alongside queer literary criticism and theory, and hold in-class workshops to conceptualize together the “queer” in queer literature and learn about the current situation of queer activism and cultural production in East Asia. In the second half of the quarter, we will read further East Asian literature through several thematic clusters – family, fandom, desire, etc. – while applying the interpretive approaches we learned in the first. The course may include readings by authors such as Wang Xiaobo, Park Sang Young, Murata Sayaka, Li Kotomi and Chi Ta-Wei among others. No prior knowledge is required; all readings will be in English. 

Part 1 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. Must be taken for a letter grade. No auditors permitted.

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 examines the politics, society, and culture of East Asia from ancient times until c. 1600. Our focus will be on examining key historical moments and intellectual, social, and cultural trends with an emphasis on the region as a whole. Students will read and discuss culturally significant texts and be introduced to various approaches to analyzing them.

The second quarter of the East Asian civilization sequence covering what are now China, Japan, and Korea from roughly 1600 to 1895. Major themes include demographic and economic change; the social and cultural effects of widespread but uneven commercialization; state formation, rebellion, and political change; migration, urbanization, and territorial expansion; changes in family and gender roles; changes in the "natural" environment, particularly as related to agricultural expansion; changes in religion, ideology, and relationships between "elite" and "popular" culture; and increasingly consequential encounters with Western Europeans, Russians, and Americans, especially in the nineteenth century. The course aims to treat East Asia as a single interacting region, rather than as three (or more) sharply separated proto-nations; however, it will also call attention to the enormous diversity both among and within China, Japan, and Korea, treating those differences as constantly evolving and as something to be explained rather than assumed.

The third quarter of the East Asian civilization sequence covers the emerging nation-states of China, Korea, and Japan in the context of Western and Japanese imperialism and the rise of an interconnected global economy. Our themes include industrialization and urbanization, state strengthening and nation-building, the rise of social movements and mass politics, the impact of Japanese colonialism on the homeland and the colonies, East Asia in the context of US-Soviet rivalry, and the return of the region to the center of the global economy in the postwar years. Similar to the first and second quarters, we will look at East Asia as an integrated region, connected by trade and cultural exchange even when divided into opposing blocs during the Cold War. As much as possible, we will look beyond nation-states and their policies at underlying trends shared by the three East Asian nations, such as demographic change, changes in gender roles, and the rise of consumer culture.

The third quarter of the East Asian civilization sequence covers the emerging nation-states of China, Korea, and Japan in the context of Western and Japanese imperialism and the rise of an interconnected global economy. Our themes include industrialization and urbanization, state strengthening and nation-building, the rise of social movements and mass politics, the impact of Japanese colonialism on the homeland and the colonies, East Asia in the context of US-Soviet rivalry, and the return of the region to the center of the global economy in the postwar years. Similar to the first and second quarters, we will look at East Asia as an integrated region, connected by trade and cultural exchange even when divided into opposing blocs during the Cold War. As much as possible, we will look beyond nation-states and their policies at underlying trends shared by the three East Asian nations, such as demographic change, changes in gender roles, and the rise of consumer culture.

This course is an introduction to the arts of China focusing on the bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the Chinese appropriation of the Buddha image, and the evolution of landscape and figure painting traditions. This course considers objects in contexts (from the archaeological sites from which they were unearthed to the material culture that surrounded them) to reconstruct the functions and the meanings of objects, and to better understand Chinese culture through the objects it produced.

This course asks a basic question: Of what does China's built environment in history consist? Unlike other genres of art in China, a history of China's built environment still waits to be written, concerning both the physical structure and spatial sensibility shaped by it. To this end, students will be introduced to a variety of materials related to our topic, ranging from urban planning, buildings, tombs, gardens, and furniture. The course aims to explore each of the built environments-its principles, tradition, and history-based on existing examples and textual sources, and to propose ways and concepts in which the materials discussed throughout the quarter can be analyzed and understood as a broader historical narrative of China's built environment. This course is part of the College Course Cluster, Urban Design.

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.

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.

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.

As a continuation of KORE 10100-10200-10300, this course is intended to continue to build on students' language skills with an emphasis on enhancing the speaking ability, presentational skills, composition writing skills, and usage of more complex constructions. Approximately 150 Chinese characters are introduced for the achievement of basic literacy and vocabulary expansion. The curriculum also includes media, authentic reading materials, and weekly Korean language table meetings to maximize cultural exposure and opportunities to apply Korean language skills in real life situations. The class meets for five fifty-minute sessions a week.

According to Bruno Latour, “technology is society made durable.” In Francesca Bray’s words, “technologies are specific to a society, embodiments of its visions of the world and of its struggles over social order. [T]he most important work that technologies do is to produce people: the makers are shaped by the making, and the users shaped by the using.” This course looks at technologies in China since late imperial times and asks how technology both expressed and shaped visions of what Chinese society should be. We start with technologies of the body (how to sit on a kang, how to have healthy babies, how to become a deity, how to do a forensic investigation of a dead body), then move on to agricultural technologies and nutrition, to manufacturing (in sites ranging from the imperial palace to small paper workshops), and to communication technologies such as printing. Next, we look at Chinese worldviews and systems of classification and how they changed, partly due to growing exposure to views from Europe, Japan, and the Islamic world. In the last few weeks, we will look at the vernacular technologies of the Republican era, at Mao-era mass science and mass technology, and some of the contemporary uses of modern communication technology in China. All readings in English.

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.

As a continuation of KORE 10100-10200-10300, this course is intended to continue to build on students' language skills with an emphasis on enhancing the speaking ability, presentational skills, composition writing skills, and usage of more complex constructions. Approximately 150 Chinese characters are introduced for the achievement of basic literacy and vocabulary expansion. The curriculum also includes media, authentic reading materials, and weekly Korean language table meetings to maximize cultural exposure and opportunities to apply Korean language skills in real life situations. The class meets for five fifty-minute sessions 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.

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.

As a continuation of KORE 10100-10200-10300, this course is intended to continue to build on students' language skills with an emphasis on enhancing the speaking ability, presentational skills, composition writing skills, and usage of more complex constructions. Approximately 150 Chinese characters are introduced for the achievement of basic literacy and vocabulary expansion. The curriculum also includes media, authentic reading materials, and weekly Korean language table meetings to maximize cultural exposure and opportunities to apply Korean language skills in real life situations. The class meets for five fifty-minute sessions 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.

This course introduces a wide selection of authentic reading materials from Korean newspaper articles, college-level textbooks, and literary prose as an entry point to discuss topics and issues in Korean society, culture, and history. The primary objective is further enhancement of advanced reading comprehension, composition writing, and presentational skills. In addition, Chinese character (Hanja) lessons are incorporated into each lesson with the purpose of expanding vocabulary to the advanced level. The class meets for two eighty-minute sessions a week.

For both graduates and undergraduates. The goal of this sequence is to help students develop advanced proficiency in reading, listening, speaking, and writing. This sequence emphasizes more advanced grammatical structures, and requires discussion in Chinese on topics relevant to modern China. Over the course of this sequence, the emphasis will shift to authentic Chinese texts in an effort to better prepare students to deal with original Chinese source materials. Class meets for five one-hour sessions each week.

The goal of this sequence is to help students develop advanced proficiency in reading, listening, speaking, and writing. This sequence emphasizes more advanced grammatical structures, and requires discussion in Chinese on topics relevant to modern China. Over the course of this sequence, the emphasis will shift to authentic Chinese texts in an effort to better prepare students to deal with orginal Chinese source materials. Class meets for five one-hour sessions each week.

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.

Must be taken for a quality grade. This course introduces a wide selection of authentic reading materials from Korean newspaper articles, college-level textbooks, and literary prose as an entry point to discuss topics and issues in Korean society, culture, and history. The primary objective is further enhancement of advanced reading comprehension, composition writing, and presentational skills. In addition, Chinese character (Hanja) lessons are incorporated into each lesson with the purpose of expanding vocabulary to the advanced level. The class meets for two eighty-minute sessions a week.

The goal of this sequence is to help students develop advanced proficiency in reading, listening, speaking, and writing. This sequence emphasizes more advanced grammatical structures, and requires discussion in Chinese on topics relevant to modern China. Over the course of this sequence, the emphasis will shift to authentic Chinese texts in an effort to better prepare students to deal with orginal Chinese source materials. Class meets for five one-hour sessions each 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.

This course introduces a wide selection of authentic reading materials from Korean newspaper articles, college-level textbooks, and literary prose as an entry point to discuss topics and issues in Korean society, culture, and history. The primary objective is further enhancement of advanced reading comprehension, composition writing, and presentational skills. In addition, Chinese character (Hanja) lessons are incorporated into each lesson with the purpose of expanding vocabulary to the advanced level. The class meets for two eighty-minute sessions a week.

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 graduate and undergraduate students. This sequence introduces a range of essays by journalists and scholars on Chinese cultural and social issues after 2001. Students will not only expand their vocabulary and knowledge of grammatical structures, but also learn sophisticated speaking and writing skills through intensive readings and discussions. Class meets for three one-hour sessions each week. Additional two one-to-one tutorial sessions during the quarter will be arranged for each student to prepare for their language projects.

This sequence introduces a range of influential literary works and scholarly essays on Chinese cultural and social issues from the 1920s to the 1990s. Students will not only expand their vocabulary and knowledge of grammatical structures, but also learn sophisticated speaking and writing skills through intensive readings and discussions. Class meets for three one-hour sessions each week.

This sequence introduces a range of influential literary works and scholarly essays on Chinese cultural and social issues from the 1920s to the 1990s. Students will not only expand their vocabulary and knowledge of grammatical structures, but also learn sophisticated speaking and writing skills through intensive readings and discussions. Class meets for three one-hour sessions each week..

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 grads and undergrads. This course is designed to prepare students for academic research and activities in Chinese language environment. Besides selected influential Chinese articles, TV and Radio broadcast will be also included among the teaching materials. Students will learn not only general skills of listening and reading but also speaking and writing skill in academic style through the teaching materials and instructor-guided language projects. Class meets for three one-hour sessions each week. Additional two one-to-one tutorial sessions during the quarter will be arranged for each student to prepare for their language projects.

Open to both grads and undergrads. This sequence is designed to prepare students for academic research and activities in a Chinese language environment. Modern classic essays, documentary film and TV broadcasts will be included among the teaching materials. Students will learn not only general listening, speaking, and reading skills but also academic writing. Class meets for three one-hour sessions each week. Students can arrange two additional one-on-one sessions to prepare for assigned language projects.

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.

KORE 21100 is designed for the students who aim to improve their 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 newspaper articles, essays, poems, reports etc.) as well as the refinement of writing skills in various styles. Students will also discuss social and cultural issues in Korea using their analytic skills and knowledge acquired in class.

This course focuses on learning spoken Japanese through full-length Japanese animated films. To ensure balance in learning, writing and reading materials are also provided. Students at this level are able to handle successfully a variety of uncomplicated communicative tasks in straightforward social situations. The class meets for five fifty-minute sessions each week.

KORE 21200 is the second quarter of the Fourth-Year Modern Korean sequences. It is designed to continue to improve students’ speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills to an advanced level. This course will be focusing on enhancing speed, accuracy, and comprehension in advanced listening and reading of authentic texts (such as interviews, movies, novels, essays, reports, etc.) as well as the refinement of writing skills in various styles. Students will also discuss social, cultural, and political issues in Korea using their analytic skills and knowledge acquired in class.

This course explores the possibility of listening closely to Korean popular music through literary fiction. Each week students learn about the histories and cultures of a different Korean musical genre (minyo, trot, military songs, rock, folk, K-pop, etc.) from the Japanese colonial era (1910-1945) to the present. The class engages with music through celebrated and lesser-known works of modern and contemporary Korean fiction, films, and critical essays on media, popular culture, and listening. Guiding these inquiries, we consider how popular songs intersect with, inform, or diverge from modern Korea's history of political upheaval, rapid modernization, and mass social movement; and the ways in which popular musical languages, cultures, and histories inform understandings of literary style, form, and narrative. It is expected that upon completion, students will be able to articulate critical and informed responses to such scholarly discussions as those surrounding cultural hybridity, collective memory, and the power of song; and apply the interdisciplinary and intermedial approaches they've learned in class to their understandings of popular song cultures more broadly. All readings are in English. No prior knowledge of Korean is necessary.

This course focuses on learning spoken Japanese that is aimed at native speakers. The goals are getting accustomed to that sort of authentic Japanese and being able to speak with a high degree of fluency. To keep a balance, writing and reading materials are provided. Watching videos and practicing speaking are the keys to success in this course.

In KORE 21300, students will learn basic principles, methods, and techniques in translation and apply appropriate strategies and methods to the practice and description of translation. Students will watch pre- recorded lecture videos, complete their weekly translation assignments (Korean to English and English to Korean), and participate in group or individual sessions to discuss their translation works. Students will also choose a literary work or a text of their own choice for their final translation project. The materials covered in this class include medical guidelines, campaign flyers, newspaper articles, reports, brochures, resume, business/academic emails, and editorials.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Open to both grads and undergrads. This course is designed to prepare students for academic research and activities in Chinese language environment. Besides selected influential Chinese articles, TV and Radio broadcast will be also included among the teaching materials. Students will learn not only general skills of listening and reading but also speaking and writing skill in academic style through the teaching materials and instructor-guided language projects. Class meets for three one-hour sessions each week. Additional two one-to-one tutorial sessions during the quarter will be arranged for each student to prepare for their language projects.

This course defines “Chinese state” as a state that uses Chinese Script to define its legal institutions. A rich variety of this kind of state can be observed in the history of East Asia, showing a wide range of different ethnic, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. The objective of this course is to highlight the fundamental breaks in the history of these Chinese states, which often hide under a thick curtain of linguistic continuity. Though contemporary Chinese states are undoubtedly rooted in history, this course avoids diminishing the history of the former Chinese states to a pre-history of any contemporary Chinese state. This course is divided into part I (Autumn term) and part II (Winter term). Part I concentrates on the first Chinese states, covering a period when written history in East Asia was still limited to Chinese history. Interstate relations were thus limited to international relations between Chinese states or to Chinese state relations with states without indigenous script systems. This period commences in the early Bronze Age and reaches the seventh century CE. The course will show that the legacy of script, language and concepts did not limit the plurality of legal institutions, which may be considered a natural result of differing socio-economic needs. Part II starts from the eighth century. At that time, the state of Tang became the first Chinese state for which we have evidence that it concluded equal international treaties with non-Chinese states.

This course defines “Chinese state” as a state that uses Chinese Script to define its legal institutions. A rich variety of this kind of state can be observed in the history of East Asia, showing a wide range of different ethnic, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. The objective of this course is to highlight the fundamental breaks in the history of these Chinese states, which often hide under a thick curtain of linguistic continuity. Though contemporary Chinese states are undoubtedly rooted in history, this course avoids diminishing the history of the former Chinese states to a pre-history of any contemporary Chinese state. This course is divided into part I (Autumn term) and part II (Winter term). Part I concentrates on the first Chinese states, covering a period when written history in East Asia was still limited to Chinese history. Interstate relations were thus limited to international relations between Chinese states or to Chinese state relations with states without indigenous script systems. This period commences in the early Bronze Age and reaches the seventh century CE. The course will show that the legacy of script, language and concepts did not limit the plurality of legal institutions, which may be considered a natural result of differing socio-economic needs. Part II starts from the eighth century. At that time, the state of Tang became the first Chinese state for which we have evidence that it concluded equal international treaties with non-Chinese states.

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.

Welcome to The Sims 6: Buddhist Life in Pre-Modern East Asia, in this life simulation game, you will learn about lives of those who practiced Buddhism from different social backgrounds in pre-modern East Asia. Some overworlds we will cover are Dunhuang and Chang’an in Tang China, Kyoto and Nara in Kamakura Japan, the Khitan Empire and Goryeo Korea. For the final project, you will choose your virtual Buddhist, research your own expansion pack, and tell the story of their life (and death). This course is an introduction to Buddhism as a practiced religion in pre-modern East Asia, with a special focus on the experience of the practitioners. They could be royal patrons, cultural elites, traveling monks, or common people who did not necessarily self-identify as Buddhist. We will learn about how the practices of Buddhism played an important role in their life and death through reading text and manuscripts, viewing Buddhist art and architecture and reconstructing rituals and religious exchanges among these places. All readings are in English and no previous knowledge of Buddhism is needed to participate. 

This course will consist of the close reading and discussion of primary texts (in translation) of the Chan and Zen Buddhism of China and Japan, with a few secondary descriptions of Zen institutions and cultural influences. This will be done both with an eye to the historical development of these schools of thought and practice within the context of East Asian Buddhism in general, and for whatever transhistorical valences we care to derive from the texts.

The course introduces students to a selection of key trends in the understanding of  Korean experiences of modernity. Its readings consist of journalistic and academic writings published in English in and outside of Korea, covering a wide temporal canvas from the era of The Independent (1896-1899), the first newspaper published by civilian Koreans, to our contemporary times in Korea and North America. While encouraging students to comparatively consider each chosen text in relation to one another, the course features the following questions, among others: How should one characterize the relationship between the subject and the object of knowledge and the given publication as material medium?; to what extent is a chosen text, be it primary or secondary, a product of and response to its historical, political, and intellectual circumstances?; and what relevance do students find in the material under discussion in relation to their own age and its internet-driven global knowledge in particular, outside of the immediate  contexts of Korea?  These questions will be discussed under the thematic and methodological rubrics informed by studies of colonial modernity, translation, bordercrossing, gender, censorship, national division and north Korea, and digital media and platforms.  Class will proceed in a series of mini-lectures and seminar-style discussion, and students’ participation will be a high priority. 

The socialist period (for our purposes here, c. 1949-1980) fundamentally transformed the institutions of Chinese social and economic life. Marriage and family were redefined; rural communities were reorganized on a collective basis; private property in land and other means of production was abolished. Industrialization created a new urban working class, whose access to welfare, consumer goods, and political rights depended to a large extent on their membership in work units (danwei). Migration between city and countryside almost came to a halt, and rural and urban society developed in different directions. This course will focus on the concrete details of how this society functioned. How did state planning work? What was it like to work in a socialist factory? What role did money and consumption play in a planned economy? Our readings are in English, but speakers of Chinese are encouraged to use Chinese materials (first-hand sources, if they can be found) for their final papers. All readings will be posted on Canvas.  

Combining close reading and viewing with historical surveys, this seminar examines an assortment of popular literary and television dramatic texts whose production involved female writers and directors of modern or contemporary Korea. Its aim is to explore the ways in which the gendered and generational identity of the textual producers contribute to generating notable  imprints within the chosen genre in question, responding to the social, cultural, and political calls that arise from their own present time. The texts include, among others, prose fictions by Na Hye-sŏk (1897-1948), Park Wan-sŏ (1931-2011), Han Kang (1970- ), and Cho Nam-joo (1978- ) and television drama series such as The Hourglass (1995; written by Song Jina), Mr. Sunshine (2018; written by Kim Eun-sook), The Red Sleeve (2021 dir. by Chŏng Chi-in; original novel by Kang Mi-kang, 2017), and My Liberation Notes (2022; written by Park Hae-yeong). No Korean proficiency is required.

The 16th century Chinese iconoclast Li Zhi (Li Zhuowu) has been rightly celebrated as a pioneer of individualism, one of history’s great voices of social protest, an original mind powerfully arguing for genuine self-expression, and more. He was a Confucian official and erudite in the classics, yet in his sixties he takes the Buddhist tonsure, and late in life befriends the Jesuit Matteo Ricci. He sought refuge in a quiet monastery devoting his life to scholarship, yet invited constant scandal. His A Book to Burn “sold like hotcakes,” and attracted enough trouble that reportedly readers would surreptitiously hide their copies tucked up their sleeves, and was later banned by the state soon after his death. In this seminar, we will place Li both within the context of the history of “Confucian” thought, and within the literary, religious, and philosophical conversations of the late Ming. Using his writings as a productive case study, we will think about topics including “religion,” tradition and innovation, “spontaneity” and “authenticity,” and the relationship between “classics” and commentaries. Throughout, we will bring our discussions into comparative analysis, considering views of thinkers and traditions from other times and places. Chinese not required; for those interested, we will read select essays of Li’s in Chinese and students may choose translation as a final project.

Japan's imperial expansion in East Asia in the late nineteenth and twentieth century have drafted influenced social, political, technological, and environmental relations between different areas in this region. In recent years, we have seen a growing number of scholarship that discusses the influences and process of Japan's imperial expansion in Asia. Besides focusing on the political and social influence of Japan's imperial domination, these scholarships also show new ways to research empire and imperialism through the lens of technology, material culture, immigration, and transnational history. With a focus on recent scholarship on Japanese imperialism and Japan's empire-building, this course will familiarize students with the current debates and discussions on this topic and facilitate students to generate their own research topic. In this course, alongside analyzing and dissecting the current scholarship and their analyses and perspectives on Japan's empire, students will have the chance to build up skills to write a research paper from analyzing primary documents to drafting annotated bibliographies, outlines, proposals, and the final paper.

Following FDR’s Executive Order 9066 and the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans, Chicago’s Japanese American population exploded beginning in 1943 when the wartime internment camps began to release internees deemed sufficiently ‘loyal’ on the condition that they not reside on the West Coast. More than 20,000 former internees settled in Chicago, creating new communities that persisted for decades with their own institutions and cultural practices—often in the face of racial discrimination, economic hardship, and continuing Cold War suspicions of ‘disloyalty.’ This course traces the history of this local community in terms of questions of collective and individual memory and cultural imagination. With a focus on visual culture (photography, painting, and motion pictures), musical practice, fiction and poetry, and oral history, we will explore the complex legacies of both the prewar and postwar Chicago Japanese American communities, including their alliances and conflicts with other marginalized groups and with more recent immigrants from Japan and elsewhere.

Past scholarship has often reduced the history of Chinese labor to the history of the Chinese labor movement or the history of the Communist Party in its function as “the leading core” of the proletariat. The factory proletariat, of course, was never more than a small segment of the Chinese labor force – less than five percent under the Republic, less than ten in the People’s Republic. Recent work has been more inclusive, looking at work outside the formal sector, in agriculture, handcrafts, and service industries; at the work of women in formal employment and at home; at sex work and emotional work; at unemployment and precarious work; at the work of internal migrants; at Chinese workers abroad; at coerced work in private industry (the 2007 “kiln slaves’ incident”); and at carceral labor in Xinjiang and elsewhere. Most of the readings will deal with work in the Mao and post-Mao years, right up to the present. We will combine readings on Chinese labor history with more general texts on the relationship between productive and reproductive work, wage work and non-wage work, male and female work, autonomous and heteronomous work. The guiding question throughout the course is if a new Chinese labor movement is necessary, possible, or probable, and if it is not, under which conditions it might become so.

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?

The course explores a central aspect of Chinese socialist culture from the 1940s to present day, namely the process of transposing new and old stories from the page to the stage to the screen. Select case studies and readings on diverse facets of Chinese socialist culture will be combined with theoretical readings on the concept of adaptation.

This course explores the history of one of the world's largest cities from its origins as the castle town of the Tokugawa shoguns in the early seventeenth century, to its transformation into a national capital and imperial center, and concludes in the postwar era as Tokyo emerged from the ashes of World War II to become a center of global capital and culture. Our focus will be on the complex and evolving interactions between the natural and built environments of the city and politics, culture, and social relations.

This course centers around the Smart’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.

How does our understanding of the past change when our understanding of what history is changes? This seminar examines how people in premodern China, Japan, and Korea interpreted and recorded their past prior to the twentieth century. From official histories, canonical texts and authors to iconoclastic genres and hermit scholars, we will examine the different forms that history took in different times and places while exploring the connections and similarities of different traditions of history writing. Topics to be touched upon include objectivity, morality, the role of politics, genre, narrative, and time.

The course is a systematic introduction to pre-modern and early-modern texts written in classical Japanese (bungo or kogo), the standard written language in Japan up to the beginning of the twentieth century. We will learn and absorb the fundamentals of classical Japanese grammar and engage with some of the core grammatical problematics of the language. Throughout the course students will gain a firm foundation in how the language is constructed, increase their comprehension of the language’s vocabulary, and will familiarize themselves with original texts in prose and poetry alike, including narrative fiction (monogatari), anecdotes (setsuwa), essays (zuihitsu), and traditional Japanese poems (waka). The goal is to acquire a firm foundation in the classical language and to be able to read pre-modern texts with the help of a dictionary, for the purpose of academic research.

How have insects affected ways of knowing and relating to the world?

This course opens a dialogue between insects and Japanese audiovisual cultures, including fiction, poetry, visual art, manga, anime, and film. We aim to address the important and profound challenge that recent trends in animal studies, environmental humanities, and eco-criticism pose to received ways of studying human cultures and societies. The challenge lies in offering alternatives to the entrenched reliance on a nature-culture divide, which gives culture explanatory preference over nature. In the case of Japan and insects, for instance, there exists a fairly significant body of scholarship on how Japanese people respond to, interact with, and represent insects, and yet priority is generally given to culture, and Japan is treated monolithically. To offer alternatives to this monolithic culturalism, in this course we will (a) open dialogue between culture accounts of insects and scientific accounts and (b) explore different forms of media offering different milieus where human animals and more-than-human insects come into relation without assuming the ascendency of one over the other.

As Japanese leaders in the mid 19th century faced the threat of colonization at the hands of the Western powers, they launched a project to achieve “Civilization and Enlightenment,” quickly transforming Japan into a global power that possessed its own empire. In the process fiction became a site for both political engagement and retreat.  A civilized country, it was argued, was supposed to boast “literature” as one of its Fine Arts. This literature was charged with representing the inner life of its characters, doing so in a modern national language that was supposed to be a transparent medium of communication. Between the 1880s and the early 1900s, a new language, new literary techniques, and a new set of ideologies were constructed to produce the “self” in novels and short stories. As soon as these new practices were developed, however, they became the objects of parody and ironic deconstruction. Reading key literary texts from the 1880s through the 1930s, as well as recent scholarship, this course will re-trace this historical and literary unfolding, paying special attention to the relationship between language and subjectivity. All readings will be in English.

Many historians have termed the rising attention to materials and materiality as a "material turn." In this course, we will explore how materials and materiality can shape and influence our understanding of history.

This course offers an introduction to Japanese animation, from its origins in the 1910s to its emergence as global culture in the 1990s. The goal is not only to provide insight into Japanese animation within the context of Japan but also to consider those factors that have transformed it into a global cultural form with a diverse, worldwide fanbase. As such, the course approaches Japanese animation from three distinct perspectives on Japanese animation, which are designed to introduce students to three important methodological approaches to contemporary media — film studies, media studies, and fan studies or cultural studies. As we look at Japanese animation in light of these different conceptual frameworks, we will also consider how its transnational dissemination and ‘Asianization’ challenge some of our basic assumptions about global culture, which have been shaped primarily through the lens of Americanization.

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.

In this course, our main purpose will be to read a representative sample of the poems (about one-fifth, some sixty different poems) in the Shi jing 詩經 or Classic of Poetry, China’s earliest collection of poetry.  In addition to reading these poems, we will also discuss related secondary scholarship written in English (students are also most welcome to read secondary scholarship in Chinese).

This is intended to be a reading course in the Shang shu 尚書 or Venerated Documents, also known as the Shu jing 書經or Classic of Documents, traditionally considered to be the second of the Chinese classics (no matter how many classics are included). The contents run the gamut from royal proclamations to ministerial advice, and purport to date from the time of Yao 堯 through the early Eastern Zhou period. For more than two millennia, the text has been the focus of China’s most celebrated textual scholarship, both because of the interest of its content and also because of its inclusion of two different types of documents: what are termed “New Text” chapters and “Old Text” chapters. We will consider both the received text and also recently discovered manuscript versions of several chapters.

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.

The great Chinese-Manchu novel “Honglou meng” (ca. 1750) has been assigned one major author, Cao Xueqin, whose life has been the subject of much investigation. But before 1922 little was known about Cao, and interpreters of the novel were forced to make headway solely on the basis of textual clues. The so-called “Three Commentators” edition (“Sanjia ping Shitou ji”) shows these readers at their creative, polemical, and far-fetched best. We will be reading the first 80 chapters of the novel and discussing its reception in the first 130 years of its published existence (1792-1922), with special attention to hermeneutical strategies and claims of authorial purpose. Familiarity with classical Chinese required.

What does "censorship" mean? Specifically, how does the censorship of literature work in contemporary China, and what are its goals? How does censorship relate to the selective remembering of history, to processes of linguistic unification, to questions of morality and politics, and to the respect for minorities and subaltern groups? Guided by these broad questions and combining theoretical readings and case studies, this class aims to develop a nuanced approach to literary censorship that takes into account the constraints and limitations that always attend to the creation and circulation of literary works--in China as elsewhere.

This course is an exploration of concepts of the wonderous and marvelous in Japanese literature and performance up to 1900. Primary texts and materials will include setsuwa collections, such as the Nihon ryoiki and Konjaku monogatari, poetry and poetics, late Heian monogatari, early modern travel fiction, theater, and encyclopedias.We will also consider theater's engagement with the spacial and embodied aspects of wonder through noh performance and theory, spectacle shows and circuses, exhibitions and worlds fairs, the operating theater and the human body. Alongside these primary texts and performances, we will survey recent scholarship on the history of wonder and marvel, considering along the way theories of fictionality, theatricality, affect and the senses, "objective agency" and the stage prop, and intersections between science, medicine, and the ludic.

Readings will be available in English and no prior coursework in Japanese literature or history is required.

TBD

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.

This graduate seminar course aims to introduce what is arguably the most complex product of society and Japanese society in particular — the city, and to concentrate on the city of Tokyo. Our study will encompass a range of issues concerning the city and the consequences of urban development under modern and contemporary conditions. We will observe how the city has defined, and has been defined by, a particular reality at a particular time, beginning in Edo period and concluding in the present. Such approach emphasizes a need to examine the city within a certain context, particularly its social, cultural, and political circumstances. Thus, we will look at the creation and recreation of the city’s physical texture, at architecture, urban landscape, infrastructure, and technology, and at the same time observe the city as a social product determined by everyday life and habitual practices, organization of the immediate surrounding, personal rites and the micro-politics of life in the city. In the same manner, we will look at buildings and neighborhoods per-se, as a material construct guided by geometry and legal code, but at the same time recognize how the pragmatics of this built environment interrelate with cultural expressions such as literature and film, and thus examine the mechanisms that relate the city to culture. Also, we will see how the city is not merely a reflection or expression of politics, but rather an intricate political apparatus in and of itself, influencing relationships and encouraging change.

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.

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.

The course will cover a selection of works in biji and zaji form from the Song to Qing dynasties. Part of the interest of the form is its inclusiveness, which has made it hard to place on maps of genre. These works include scientific investigation, social commentary, travel accounts, classical interpretation, personal reminiscences, tales and gossip, art appreciation, responses to poetry, and many other things, combined in an apparently associative manner. We will read both for topical interest and for understanding of the form.

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 seminar will introduce students to the drama, fiction, poetry, and essays of the early Qing. Topics will include: reclusion and resistance, everyday theatricality, courtesans and gendered voice, trauma and memory, palace culture, ethnicity and the body, technologies of seeing and representation, and the economic imaginary.

A survey of recent work in the study of premodern Chinese religion, with an emphasis on questions of method. This quarter we’ll focus on methods for the use of archaeological reports in the study of ritual and other forms of religious practice, from Eastern Han tombs to excavations of sites in Gansu and the Tarim Basin dating to later periods. A significant percentage of the readings will be in (modern) Chinese, so reading competence in that language is required.

Anyang is one of the most important archaeological sites in China. The discoveries of inscribed oracle bones, the royal cemetery, clusters of palatial structures, and industrial-scale craft production precincts have all established that the site was indeed the last capital of the Shang dynasty recorded in traditional historiography. With almost continuous excavations since the late 1920s, work at Anyang has in many ways shaped and defined Chinese archaeology and the study of Early Bronze Age China.  This course intends to examine the history of research, important archaeological finds, and the role of Anyang studies in the field of Chinese archaeology. While the emphasis is on archaeological finds and the related research, this course will also attempt to define Anyang in the modern social and cultural contexts in terms of world heritage, national and local identity, and the looting and illegal trade of antiquities.

“Bronze Age” in China conventionally refers to the time period from ca. 2000 to about 500 BC, during which bronze, an alloy of copper and other metals such as tin and lead, was the predominant medium used by the society, or to be more precise, the elite classes of the society. Bronze objects, in the forms of vessels, weapons, and musical instruments, were reserved for the upper ruling class of the society and were used mostly as paraphernalia during rituals and feasting. “Bronze Age” in China also indicates the emergence and eventual maturation of states with their bureaucratic systems, the presence of urban centers, a sophisticated writing system, and advanced craft producing industries, especially metal production.

This course surveys the important archaeological finds of Bronze Age China, and the theoretical issues such as state formation, craft production, writing, bureaucratic systems, urbanization, warfare, and inter-regional interaction, etc.  It emphasizes a multi-disciplinary approach with readings and examples from anthropology, archaeology, art history, and epigraphy. This course will also visit the Smart Museum, the Field Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago to take advantage of the local collections of ancient Chinese arts and archaeology.

With the long tradition of Chinese archaeology, archaeological monographs and site reports have become the primary source for studying ancient China, from the Paleolithic, the Neolithic, to the Bronze Age and the Late Imperial period. Thanks to the scale and the intensity of archaeological operations across China, tens if not hundreds of new titles are published each year. As a genre, archaeological site reports are supposed to describe excavated data in an objective, descriptive, and scientific way. But are archaeological site reports truly "objective"? How do we “read between the lines” and identify and discover the important information hidden in the seemingly dry and tedious details?  This course is designed for students to read and analyze Chinese archaeological site reports for the information and the hidden and underlying theoretical approaches. Site reports included in the course are selected both for the importance of the finds and for the approaches taken to reflect the history and the practice of Chinese archaeology.

This discussion-based course aims to familiarize EALC PhD students with different aspects of the profession of East Asian Studies. This quarter we will focus on the history of Area Studies through a critical examination of major Anglophone journals in the field. Together we will select the flagship journals in everyone's subfield of study and examine inaugural issues and key debates within their immediate historical contexts. In addition, we will consider how Area Studies has been developing in East Asia.

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).

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.