EALC

How has the digital revolution changed the way that creative works, especially literature, are produced and consumed in contemporary East Asia? How has the growth of regional and global online platforms altered the field of cultural production? What do all of these changes mean for the study of culture itself? This seminar takes up these questions in the course of surveying recent theoretical and empirical work on social media platforms, the digital revolution in publishing, and user-generated content. We will survey some of the recent forms that the platformization of culture has taken in East Asia, including internet literature in China, Japanese cellphone novels, and Korean webtoons, putting all of these into comparative perspective with developments elsewhere. We will also look to specific historical forms of platformization in literary culture (e.g., newspaper serialization, mass-market anthologies) to reflect on what is distinct about the platforming of creativity in the digital age.

The third quarter of the East Asian civilization sequence covers the emerging nation-states of China, Korea, and Japan in the context of Western and Japanese imperialism and the rise of an interconnected global economy. Our themes include industrialization and urbanization, state strengthening and nation-building, the rise of social movements and mass politics, the impact of Japanese colonialism on the homeland and the colonies, East Asia in the context of US-Soviet rivalry, and the return of the region to the center of the global economy in the postwar years. Similar to the first and second quarters, we will look at East Asia as an integrated region, connected by trade and cultural exchange even when divided into opposing blocs during the Cold War. As much as possible, we will look beyond nation-states and their policies at underlying trends shared by the three East Asian nations, such as demographic change, changes in gender roles, and the rise of consumer culture.

The second quarter of the East Asian civilization sequence covering what are now China, Japan, and Korea from roughly 1600 to 1895. Major themes include demographic and economic change; the social and cultural effects of widespread but uneven commercialization; state formation, rebellion, and political change; migration, urbanization, and territorial expansion; changes in family and gender roles; changes in the "natural" environment, particularly as related to agricultural expansion; changes in religion, ideology, and relationships between "elite" and "popular" culture; and increasingly consequential encounters with Western Europeans, Russians, and Americans, especially in the nineteenth century. The course aims to treat East Asia as a single interacting region, rather than as three (or more) sharply separated proto-nations; however, it will also call attention to the enormous diversity both among and within China, Japan, and Korea, treating those differences as constantly evolving and as something to be explained rather than assumed.

The first quarter of the East Asian civilization sequence examines the politics, society, and culture of East Asia from ancient times until c. 1600. Our focus will be on examining key historical moments and intellectual, social, and cultural trends with an emphasis on the region as a whole. Students will read and discuss culturally significant texts and be introduced to various approaches to analyzing them.

This colloquium is intended for graduate students preparing for a field exam in Japanese history and others interested in reading recent scholarship on the social, political, and cultural history of modern Japan.

PQ: Open to MA and PhD students only.

This course examines the distinctive history of the island of Taiwan, from seventeenth-century Spanish colony to outpost of the Dutch empire, from multiethnic pirate cove to Qing coastal fortress, from an essential point of origin for Austronesian languages and cultures to Japan's first model colony, and from decades living under martial law to today's vibrant democratically elected government. There may never have been a time when Taiwan's future was so heatedly debated, or viewed as so central to global politics, as it is at this moment. Readings spanning three centuries and an array of governing regimes. We will explore the historical arguments and narratives that constitute the cultural identity of this diverse and contested place. In addition to reading primary sources and historiography over the quarter, students will develop and share their own research. This will culminate with either a paper or public history project.

This discussion-based course aims to familiarize EALC PhD students with different aspects of the profession of East Asian Studies. This quarter we will focus on the history of Area Studies through a critical examination of major Anglophone journals in the field. Together we will select the flagship journals in everyone's subfield of study and examine inaugural issues and key debates within their immediate historical contexts. In addition, we will consider how Area Studies has been developing in East Asia.

The recent popularization of “true crime” in film, television shows, and podcasts has prompted critical discussions about the ethics of mixing documentary with entertainment and fact with fiction, as well as concerns about whose narratives are given public attention as others are ignored. Using these considerations as a starting point, this course examines some of the mainstays of the genre of “true crime”—scandal, violence, disaster, law, and the supernatural—in fiction and theater in early modern Japan in order to trace the fluctuating relationship between news, fiction, and performance over the course of the Edo period. This course examines the many ways that works of literature and stage were already deeply invested in these tropes of rumor, scandal, sensation, spectacle, and documentary long before the advent of regularly circulating printed newspapers in Meiji Japan, as well as how these existing configurations of sense and sensationalism informed later developments in media and fiction. The goal of this course is for students to gain not only a breadth of knowledge about various literary and theatrical forms in early modern Japan but also a critical awareness of how early modern spectacles of infamy or violence intersected with categories of class, gender, sexuality, and disability to transform some figures into targets of sympathy and others into paragons of villainy or horror. 

All course readings will be available in English. The course is designed for undergraduate students but graduate participation is welcome with advanced consultation.

This course surveys traditional theater and performance in East Asia, including their histories and intersections, but also their modern transformations and contemporary status as living practices and cultural objects. Mixing theatrical texts and readings from performance studies with videos or documentaries about these traditions, the course encourages students to reconsider what constitutes a “tradition,” how knowledge is codified or transmitted (and how certain means of transmission might be privileged over others), and the implications of these performance traditions being recast as cultural products for tourism or soft power. In addition to introducing the major performance traditions of China, Japan, and Korea, the course aims to incorporate perspectives from rural performance, circuses or spectacle shows, and traditional East Asian theater performed by Asian-American artists and communities.  All course readings will be available in English.

Each week will focus on a particular sense or sensation (sound, touch, horror, wonder, etc.) in works of premodern Japanese theater and fiction, paying particular attention to performance (broadly defined to include noh, kabuki, and puppet theater as well as comic storytelling and spectacle shows) as a public site for the exploration of intimacy and alienation, the circulation of feelings, and the staging of somatic difference. Considering, for example, anti-theatrical bias and discourses of contagion, scenes of possession and physical transformation, and the psychologizing of emotion and the senses, the course will engage with theories of embodiment, emotions, disability, and wonder. All readings will be available in English.