Undergraduate

This course will explore the philosophical doctrines of classical Tiantai Buddhism and their extensions and reconfigurations as developed in the ideas of later thinkers, both Tiantai and non-Tiantai, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist. Readings will be drawn from the classical Tiantai thinkers Zhiyi, Zhanran and Zhili, followed by writings of early Chinese Chan Buddhism, Japanese Tendai “Original Enlightenment” thought, Kamakura Buddhist reformers including Dōgen, Nichiren and Shinran, the 20th century Confucian Mou Zongsan, and contemporary Anglophone “Neo-Tiantai” thinking.

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.

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.

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.

This non-core beginner’s course is specially tailored for students who want to learn a new language in a fun and stress-free way. Compared to core courses, this course is more focused on communication activities with hands-on exercises to automatize and internalize simple basic expressions related to their daily lives. This course will provide students with a strong foundation to start learning the language with confidence and comfort.

This non-core beginner’s course is specially tailored for students who want to learn a new language in a fun and stress-free way. Compared to core courses, this course is more focused on communication activities with hands-on exercises to automatize and internalize simple basic expressions related to their daily lives. This course will provide students with a strong foundation to start learning the language with confidence and comfort.

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.

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.

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.

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.