Undergraduate

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.

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.

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.

Twelve years apart from one another, two Chinese writers were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature: Gao Xingjian, in 2000, and Mo Yan, in 2012. In both cases, the awarding of the prize was followed by controversies concerning the writers' merits, their political stance, their relation to the Chinese state, and more generally the political purposes of the prize itself. In this course, we will first read these authors' works, to find out who they are, how they write, and whether there are any thematic or formal affinities between them. Secondly, we will read scholarship focusing on what some commentators have described as “China’s ‘Nobel complex’,” namely her quest for global cultural recognition, investigating its historical roots and connecting it to larger questions concerning practices of translation and concepts of world literature. 

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.