Undergraduate

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.

Whether it is the tonalities and idiosyncracies of individual speech and dialogue in the polyphonic novel, the depiction of urban sounds and noises in Eileen Chang’s prose about 1930’s Shanghai, the borrowing of folk songs in political lyrics during the Mao era, or Western pop and rock music in experimental fictions from the 1980s, sound culture in its various forms and transformations has long left its imprint on modern literary imaginations. Sound is inseparable from technologies and ideologies of listening; in this course, we will use literary texts as aural technologies to approach historical sonic cultures, and read them as archives of sonic experiences. Through reading modern Chinese literary works together with the history of Chinese sound cultures, we ask: how does literature from different historical periods capture transient sounds? What can literature tell us about how sound is experienced in different historical periods? What are the strengths and limits of language as a medium of articulating aural experiences? How is the difference between sound and noise, listening and other senses, drawn in different historical periods, and what role does literature play in it?

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?

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.

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 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. 

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.

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 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.  

Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916) is often celebrated as modern Japan's greatest novelist. This course will cover several of his major novels, as well his short stories and works of literary theory, looking at questions of selfhood, gender, property ownership, and empire. We will also look at critical studies of Sōseki from Japan and elsewhere. All readings will be available in English.