Undergraduate

Often incorporating elements of the ludic, the lewd, the grotesque and the ecstatic in its expression, the Japanese religious landscape offers a rich and variegated terrain of ideas and practices that cannot easily be reduced to separate and distinct religious traditions (Shinto, Buddhism, Daoism).  This course, in providing a survey of Japanese religions from premodern times to the present, will focus specifically on aspects of Japanese religiosity that not only play with these traditional boundaries, but also represent forms of “play” in and of themselves – from dance, story-telling, visual media, to ritual.  How has “play” helped shape the socioreligious landscape of the archipelago? How can we understand religious modes of expression that call into question the very nature of quotidian reality?  What social significance do these forms carry back into our daily lives?  Finally, what are the implications for our conception of “religion” by understanding it as a form of “play”?  The class will be conducted in a lecture/discussion format and will consist of close reading and discussion of texts assigned. Prior knowledge of Japanese history or religious thought is helpful but not a prerequisite for this course.

This course explores the society and culture of Japan during the period of “total war” from 1937 to 1945. Readings will be divided between recent scholarly literature and a rich and diverse body of primary sources (in translation) including diaries, literature, and memoirs, state propaganda, school textbooks, etc. Each student will be required to write a focused research paper of approximately 15 pages on a topic of their choice.

This course examines a selection of literary and cinematic texts that engage with the Korean War and the various political, ideological, and cultural divisions that occurred against the backdrop of the Cold War. The thematic focus of the course is placed on the family as an institution and experience, as well as the generational differences with which the war, division and family matters were experienced.   We will discuss texts with a view to exploring the formative and derivative effects of the war and its divisions upon the individual self-fashioning amidst disasters, crises and unavoidable dilemmas. Discussion will pay special attention to the ways in which the dynamics between the trope of family, a rhetorically unifying force, and the effects of generational difference, an often divisive factor, reinforced and/or challenged the conventional ideological discourses on the Korean War and Korea’s various divisions. All the film and literary texts chosen for the course have English translation/English subtitles.

Increasingly, historians of modern China have begun to turn to the complex decades between the fall of China's last dynasty and the establishment of the PRC, not merely to better understand the emergence of Communism or the fate of imperial traditions, but as a significant period in its own right. In addition to examining the major social and political changes of this period, this seminar course will explore the emergence of new cultural, artistic, and literary genres in a time notorious for its turbulence. Readings explore  both new and classic interpretations of the period, as well as recent scholarship which benefits from expanding access to Chinese archives. Students should expect regular short writing assignments. The class will culminate with each student choosing either a historigraphical final paper or a close reading of a primary source in light of the issues explored in the course.

This course begins in the late nineteenth century and concludes at the present day. From international political negotiations to show trials, from struggle sessions to investigative journalism, the class will trace China’s turbulent twentieth century through a series of trials, occurring at pivotal historical junctures. Students will witness public and private "justice" in action both in and beyond the courtroom and across the century's radically different governmental regimes. Readings and lectures will address the broader historical context as well as details of the various trials featured in the course.

This course begins in the late nineteenth century and concludes at the present day. From international political negotiations to show trials, from struggle sessions to investigative journalism, the class will trace China’s turbulent twentieth century through a series of trials, occurring at pivotal historical junctures. Students will witness public and private "justice" in action both in and beyond the courtroom and across the century's radically different governmental regimes. Readings and lectures will address the broader historical context as well as details of the various trials featured in the course.

We will explore pictures of the efficacies of ritual language featured across a range of East Asian religious practices. Sources examined will include religious scriptures, commentaries, ritual manuals, and art; philosophical, alchemical, and magical treatises; works of traditional poetics; Chan and Zen discourse records and essays; and a range of modern theorists of language, nonsense, and religion. All works will be in English. We will consider questions such as: why do some ritual utterances center passages in obscure foreign languages, or even simple nonsense? Why do some religious practices feature claims for the absolute accuracy, profundity, and magical potencies of scriptural language, while others are at least in part based on the idea that all language, in every way, always fails? Why are some religious texts written such that they seem not to mean what they say? Can a mere painting of a cake offer nourishment? 

This course is focused on the changing representations of nature and the historical significance of cultural landscapes in early modern Japan. We will explore texts written by poets, travelers, and scholars and examine how poems, illustrations, and other cultural and visual artifacts generated new meanings and aesthetic sensibilities, and inscribed histories into places. Prior knowledge of early modern Japanese history is recommended.

This course explores the emergence of mass mediated society in twentieth century industrial modernity through the sociocultural lens of Japan. Specifically, we will be looking at the evolution of new social forms, identities, subjectivities, and experience engendered through mass mediating technologies. At the same time, we will consider the various forms of discourse that arise in relation to these phenomena. Although our attention will be on the experience and effects of mass mediated society in Japan, readings will not be Japan exclusive. They will draw from a wide range of disciplines, combining critical theory with ethnographic, and historical texts. We will also consider examples from popular culture. No previous knowledge of Japan or Japanese language is required.

If the invention of writing is regarded a mark of early civilization, the practice of calligraphy is a unique and sustaining aspect of Chinese culture. This course introduces concepts central to the study of Chinese calligraphy from pre-history to the present. We discuss materials and techniques; aesthetics and communication; copying/reproduction/schema and creativity/expression/personal style; public values and the scholar's production; orthodoxy and eccentricity; and official scripts and the transmission of elite culture through wild and magic writing by “mad” monks.