EALC

What does "censorship" mean? Specifically, how does the censorship of literature work in contemporary China, and what are its goals? How does censorship relate to the selective remembering of history, to processes of linguistic unification, to questions of morality and politics, and to the respect for minorities and subaltern groups? Guided by these broad questions and combining theoretical readings and case studies, this class aims to develop a nuanced approach to literary censorship that takes into account the constraints and limitations that always attend to the creation and circulation of literary works--in China as elsewhere.

This is intended to be a reading course in the Shang shu 尚書 or Venerated Documents, also known as the Shu jing 書經or Classic of Documents, traditionally considered to be the second of the Chinese classics (no matter how many classics are included). The contents run the gamut from royal proclamations to ministerial advice, and purport to date from the time of Yao 堯 through the early Eastern Zhou period. For more than two millennia, the text has been the focus of China’s most celebrated textual scholarship, both because of the interest of its content and also because of its inclusion of two different types of documents: what are termed “New Text” chapters and “Old Text” chapters. We will consider both the received text and also recently discovered manuscript versions of several chapters.

Due to the ubiquity and pervasiveness of animation in contemporary media ecologies, recent years have seen a surge of interest in animation theory. But animation theory presents a vast and turbulent domain of inquiry, because animation may be narrowly defined as a set of objects or techniques or broadly conceptualized to embrace questions about life and death, about more-than-human animals, artificial life, and animism, for instance. This topics course has two aims. The first aim is to provide an overview of the key problematics of and approaches to animation theory in a global and historical perspective. The second aim is to develop tools for doing animation theory in a more localized manner. To this end, course will highlight theories of character and characterization with an emphasis on how the inherent tension between individual and type in animation affects our understanding race and racism.

In this course, pictorial representations are approached and interpreted, first and foremost, as concrete, image-bearing objects and architectural structures-as portable scrolls, screens, albums, and fans, as well as murals in Buddhist cave-temples and tombs, and relief carvings on offering shrines and sarcophagi. The lectures and discussion investigate the inherent features of these forms, as well as their histories, viewing conventions, audiences, ritual/social functions, and the roles these forms played in the construction and development of pictorial images.

This course takes the long view of modern Japanese art and architecture with a focus on the changing relationships between object and viewer in the 19th and 20th centuries. Beginning in the late eighteenth century with the flowering of revivalist and individualist trends and the explosion of creativity in the woodblock prints of Hokusai and others, we will then turn to examine Western-style architecture and painting in the late nineteenth century; socialism, art criticism, and the emergence of the avant garde in the early twentieth century. Also covered are interwar architectural modernism, art during World War II, and postwar movements such as Gutai and Mono-ha. No familiarity with art history or Japan is required.

This course asks a basic question: Of what does China's built environment in history consist? Unlike other genres of art in China, a history of China's built environment still waits to be written, concerning both the physical structure and spatial sensibility shaped by it. To this end, students will be introduced to a variety of materials related to our topic, ranging from urban planning, buildings, tombs, gardens, and furniture. The course aims to explore each of the built environments-its principles, tradition, and history-based on existing examples and textual sources, and to propose ways and concepts in which the materials discussed throughout the quarter can be analyzed and understood as a broader historical narrative of China's built environment. This course is part of the College Course Cluster, Urban Design.

An examination of interpretations of Japan, Japanese thought, religion, culture, art, society from the sixteenth through the twenty-first centuries with a particular focus on critical readings of Orientalism, Buddhist historiography, modernization theories, and indigeneity.

Introductory studies of Chinese history and culture often ignore religion, treating Confucius's alleged agnosticism as representative of mainstream culture. But ideas about supernatural entities—souls separated from bodies, ancestral spirits, demons, immortals, the vital energies of mountains and rivers, etc.—and practices aimed at managing those spirits were important elements in pre-1949 life. Spirits testified in court cases, cured or caused illnesses, mediated disputes, changed the weather, and made the realm governable or ungovernable. After declining (1950–’70s), at least in public, various kinds of worship are again immensely popular, though usually in altered forms. This course traces changes in the intersection of ideas about spirits and daily social practices, focusing on attempts to "standardize the gods," resistance to such efforts, and the consequences for cohesion, or lack of cohesion, across classes, genders, territory, ethnicity, and other differences. The ways in which religion has been intertwined with attempts to define communities and claim rights within (or over) them will be a central concern. Another central theme is what "religion" means as a category for understanding late imperial and modern Chinese history—an issue that will take on very different valences when we look at the 20th century, in which Western models of what religions should look like became increasingly influential among would-be secularizers and many religious activists as well.

This course examines the history of Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910) from its establishment in the wake of the disintegration of the Mongol empire until its annexation by Japan in the early twentieth century. We will explore topics such as status and gender, ideology and law, diplomacy and invasion, and court politics and rebellion, with an eye to understanding issues including Chosŏn’s social hierarchy and its discontents, slavery, Confucianization, factionalism, obstacles to reform, and the longevity of the dynasty. Readings include recent secondary scholarship and primary sources such as official histories, diaries, law codes, letters, official documents, and inquest records, as well as visual materials. Lecture is combined with discussion. Assignments are a short paper, a Wikipedia project, and a longer final paper. All readings in English. No prior knowledge of Korean history or language is required.

This seminar offers an overview of the development and history of the “book” and its physical forms, broadly conceived, in East Asia from ancient times to the present. Drawing on recent scholarship, selected primary sources, and rare books housed within the library system, this course familiarizes students with the evolution of the book and methods of book production in China, Korea, and Japan, the principles and practices of material bibliography and the application of such to physical and digital objects, and selected topics salient to the social and cultural meanings of books: authorship, the book trade, reading, censorship, and more. Assignments include a short paper, a short presentation, and a longer final paper. All readings in English, but knowledge of East Asian history or languages helpful.