Undergraduate

The seminar will focus on classical, medieval, and modern historiography from China, India, and Tibet seeking answers to three general questions: (1) How are senses of historical time created in Asian historiographies by means of rhetorical figures of repetition, parallelism, dramatic emplotment, frame stories, and interweaving storylines? (2) How are historical persons and events given meaning through use of poetic devices, such as comparison, simile, and metaphor? And (3) How do Asian histories impose themselves as realistic accounts of the past by means of authoritative devices using citation of temporal-spatial facts, quotation of authority, and/or reliance on established historical genres? The methods employed to answer these questions are here adapted from pre-modern Asian knowledge systems of literary theory, poetics, dramaturgy, and epistemology, and thus permit looking at other knowledge formations from within the discourse of the traditions themselves.

This course examines how intellectuals in Preindustrial China maintained their independence, as well as their moral compass, in times of inordinate social and political pressure. Systematic thinking on this topic appears early in China, beginning with Confucius and Mencius, but was by no means limited to the Confucian tradition. Zhuangzi (late 4th c. BCE) devoted an entire chapter to the problem. This course will survey some important meditations on the topic from the Classical period, but will focus on the Song dynasty (960-1278) with its rich body of essays, poems, and paintings touching upon the problem of moral autonomy. To supplement our study of primary sources we’ll read secondary sources on Song law, society, and government, as well as relevant secondary studies of European art. Later in the course we will read reflections on Song period Chinese essays by English radicals of the 18th century, and will wrap up with American classics by Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Wendell Berry. Along the way we will learn how to conduct “close readings” of both written and visual materials for clues to the deep, humanistic themes underlying artistic choice.

This course surveys the literary works by women writers of Japan through the modern period from late Meiji (early 1900s) through mid-Shōwa (1970s).  Throughout this period, Japanese writers and critics have been preoccupied with questions related to self-expression: How does one know and represent one’s self in writing? Can a true self be expressed through the artifice of literature? What is the relationship between writing and self-consciousness? Yet literature written by women has largely been left out of this conversation, and often chronically consigned to the margins as mere ‘women’s writing’, a pale imitation of pure (male-authored) literature. Aiming to address this unevenness, this course engages with groundbreaking works of literature authored by women. Furthermore, in order to transcend insubstantial and limiting categories such as “women’s writing”, students’ analysis will be focused using the dynamic lense of women writing women: that is, women’s self-representation in literature. Readings for the course are grouped by larger themes which are key not only to students’ analysis of literary works, but in relation to the larger social, political and cultural contexts in which the works were produced.  All works will be read in English translation.

This course guides students through critical readings of primary historical documents from approximately 1800 through 1950. these documents are translated sentence by sentence, and then historiographically analyzed. Most of these documents are from the nineteenth century. Genres include public imperial edicts, secret imperial edicts, secret memorials to the throne from officials, official reports to superiors and from superiors, funerial essays, depositions ("confessions"), local gazetteers (fangzhi), newspapers, and periodicals. To provide an introduction to these genres, the first six weeks of the course will use the Fairbank and Kuhn textbook The Rebellion of Chung Jen-chieh (Harvard-Yanjing Institute). The textbook provides ten different genres of document with vocabulary glosses and grammatical explanations; all documents relate to an 1841–42 rebellion in Hubei province. Each week prior to class students electronically submit a written translation of the document or documents to be read; a day after the class they electronically submit a corrected translation of the document or documents read. A fifteen-page term paper based on original sources in documentary Chinese is also required. 

This course examines the operation and consequences of censorship in the Japanese Empire, with focus on those of colonial Korea. The Japanese authorities’ repressive measures and the Korean responses to them exhibit both general characteristics of censorship and distinctively colonial ones. With a larger goal of exploring the relationship between censorship practices and legacies in modern East Asia, it studies the institutions, the human agents, and texts produced by censors as well as by writers, stressing the need of a comparative understanding of censorship. In addressing the institutional aspects of censorship and the reactions by journalists and writers, the course pursues two main objectives. The first aim is to examine the workings and impact of prepublication censorship in particular, one that shaped the journalistic culture of colonial Korea. Secondly, the class seeks a better understanding of censorship-inflected textual matters, not only in terms of the sites of censorship but also in regard to the strategies of counter-censorship, which may or may not be visually inscribed on the printed texts.

This course is an introduction to the arts of China focusing on the bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the Chinese appropriation of the Buddha image, and the evolution of landscape and figure painting traditions. This course considers objects in contexts (from the archaeological sites from which they were unearthed to the material culture that surrounded them) to reconstruct the functions and the meanings of objects, and to better understand Chinese culture through the objects it produced.

The course offers panoramic views as well as close-ups of cinematic landscapes of East Asia and Southeast Asia. We will cover a variety of films—including animation and documentary—from Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Malaysia, with a focus on site-specific works and trans-regional co-productions, circulations, and exchanges. Combining critical readings with truly close analyses of films, this course seeks to develop: (1) solid understandings of cinema’s peculiar and intricate relations to space and time; (2) conversations between cinema and other art forms, such as photography, painting, and calligraphy; (3) methods and skills of conducting film analysis. Proficiency in East Asian languages is NOT required.

This course examines changes in the working lives of East Asian women from the late nineteenth to the 21st century. Most of the readings will be on China but we will also discuss Korea and Japan. All readings are in English. 

“Bronze Age” in China conventionally refers to the time period from ca. 2000 to about 500 BC, during which bronze, an alloy of copper and other metals such as tin and lead, was the predominant medium used by the society, or to be more precise, the elite classes of the society. Bronze objects, in the forms of vessels, weapons, and musical instruments, were reserved for the upper ruling class of the society and were used mostly as paraphernalia during rituals and feasting. “Bronze Age” in China also indicates the emergence and eventual maturation of states with their bureaucratic systems, the presence of urban centers, a sophisticated writing system, and advanced craft producing industries, especially metal production.

This course surveys the important archaeological finds of Bronze Age China, and the theoretical issues such as state formation, craft production, writing, bureaucratic systems, urbanization, warfare, and inter-regional interaction, etc.  It emphasizes a multi-disciplinary approach with readings and examples from anthropology, archaeology, art history, and epigraphy. This course will also visit the Smart Museum, the Field Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago to take advantage of the local collections of ancient Chinese arts and archaeology.