Undergraduate

In this course we will read a number of works by renowned Confucian, Shinto, and the Nativist scholars in Japan's early modern period, while concurrently reading the major historiographical debates about them.  We will also study the social context of these thinkers in which they attempted to define the core of Japan's cultural identity. 

Autobiographical writings have thrived in modern China. Why this is the case and what the writing of one's life has meant at different moments in twentieth-century China are among the questions that this course addresses. We will examine various forms of writings, including real and fictional diaries and memoirs by Chinese intellectuals from the 1910s to the 1980s, and will consider in which ways these texts qualify as autobiography, thematically, structurally, and linguistically. Theoretical and scholarly studies on autobiography and diary will help orient our discussions toward issues of gender, space, time, and performativity.

This course introduces the basic narrative and critical discourses of the history of early modern Japan, roughly from 1500 to 1868.  The course examines the emergence of the central power that unified feudal domains and explores processes of social, cultural, and political changes that transformed Japan into a "realm under Heaven."  Some scholars consider early modern Japan as the source of an indigenous birth of capitalism, industrialism, and also of Japan’s current economic vitality, while others see a bleak age of feudal oppression and isolation.  We will explore both sides of the debate and examine the age of many contradictions.

This undergraduate course examines the cinematic representation of modern Korean history, politics, and gender in South Korean films, aiming to establish a comprehensive understanding of Korean film history from its early stage to its contemporary global recognition. While proceeding chronologically, we will interrogate key problematic subjects in South Korean cinema such as gender politics, the discourse of modernity, the representation of historical and political events, and practices of film culture and industry. The film texts examined in this course include not only break-though masterpieces of prominent film auteurs but also popular genre films that enjoyed box-office success. Through these examples, we will examine how the most influential art form in South Korea has recognized, interpreted, and resolved current societal issues through creative endeavor. The course also seeks to establish a balance between understanding Korean cinema as both a reservoir of historical memory and as an example of evolving world cinema. Being presented with methodological issues from film studies in each week’s film reading, including the question of archives, national cinema discourse, feminist film theory, auteurism, and genre studies, students in this course will learn to analyze Korean filmic texts not only as a way to understand the particularity of Korean cinema and history but also as a frontier of cinematic language in the broader film history. All the materials are available in English and no knowledge of Korean language is required.

May be taken as a sequence or individually. This sequence on the civilizations of China, Japan, and Korea emphasizes major transformation in these cultures and societies from their inception to the present.

This seminar (required for all East Asian majors) is intended to expose students to the different disciplines and areas represented in the study of East Asia at the University of Chicago. Students should take this chance to meet fellow majors in the various areas of East Asian Studies and to familiarize themselves with the work of faculty members. Third year students should be already thinking about finding a topic and a faculty advisor for a senior thesis. Conventionally, the Concentrators Seminar is organized around a theme. The goal of this interdisciplinary seminar is to expose students to a range of important problems and methods across time and space in the study of China, Japan and Korea. Guest lecturers and reading assigned by different University of Chicago faculty members are an integral part of the course. Students work on an individual research project tailored to their own interests, which they may subsequently develop into a B.A paper. This course is offered every year; however the quarter may change.Religion and Politics of East Asia.

This course takes a comparative approach to the terms “modernism” and
“modernity.” Instead of reading these terms as originating in the West and subsequently
travelling to the East, we will explore “modernism” as a plural and globally constituted
literary practice. In doing so, we will also challenge the literary and real categories of “East”
and “West.” Reading the roles and imaginations of China, North India, and the
(differentiated) West in a variety of texts, we will question the aesthetics and politics of
representation, of dynamic cultural exchange, and of the global individual in the modern
literary world.

An examination of the discipline of history as practiced in Japan from ancient times to the modern. Readings in translation of works such as the Kojiki, Okagami, Taiheiki, and others will be used to explore both the Japanese past and the manner of interpretation of that past.

This course will explore the cultural and cultural history of Edo/Tokyo from its origins in the early seventeenth century through c. 1945. Issues to be explored include the configuration of urban space and its transformation over time in relation to issues of status, class, and political authority, the formation of the "city person" as a form of identity, and the tensions between the real city of lived experience and the imagined city of art and literature. We will pay particular attention to two periods of transformation, the 1870s when the modernizing state made Tokyo its capital, and the period of reconstruction after the devastating earthquake of 1923. Assignments include a final research paper of approximately 15-18 pages.

This class provides an overview of major developments in Chinese social history from the high Qing period (roughly the eighteenth century) until very recent times. It focuses on the lives of “ordinary people,” especially in the countryside, where over 80 percent of China’s population lived until roughly 1980, and over 40 percent still live today. Topics include family organization, relations between the generations, and gender roles; property rights, class relations, and their implications for economic activity; the nature of village communities and their relationship to political/legal authority; migration, frontier settlement, and changes in ethnic and national identity; twentieth-century urbanization, consumerism, and changing notions of the individual; and collective protest, violence, and revolution. A secondary theme is more theoretical: what is it possible to know about the lives of people who left few records of their own, and how do we evaluate what are often, inevitably, thinly documented claims? The class format will include a lot of lecture, but mixed with both in-class and online discussion. No background knowledge is required.