EALC

This course will consider the intersections between health, healing, and primarily non-Abrahamic religions across East Asia. By reading about, considering, and analyzing conceptions of health and associated healing methods, you will develop the ability to better understand the medical and religious traditions of peoples in East Asia. You will learn to makes sense of religious features such as ritual, spells, pilgrimage, and meditation, including various ways that healers instill calm and confidence in those they treat. These religious features appear strongly in some medical instances, and subtly in “non-religious” medical and psychological contexts. We will compare and contrast these features in the East Asian context and reflect upon their implications for healthcare in the U.S.A. today.

What is a ghost? How and why are ghosts represented in particular forms in a particular culture at particular historical moments and how do these change as stories travel between cultures? This course will explore the complex meanings, both literal and figurative, of ghosts and the fantastic in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean tales and films. Issues to be explored include: 1) the relationship between the supernatural, gender, and sexuality; 2) the confrontation with death and mortality;  4) the visualization of "invisible" ghosts and the uncanny in film; 5) responses to ecological and political trauma.

This course explores the ways in which personhood was constituted in early modern China. Focusing on the years 1500–1800—a period marked by commercial expansion, political rupture, ethnic conflict, social fluidity, and literary experimentation—we will ask how the subhuman, the superhuman, and the nonhuman were used to police or subvert traditional hierarchies, to expand or delimit the possibilities of the human and the humane. Areas of discussion will include gods, ghosts, barbarians, women, eunuchs, animals, and things; readings will come from a wide range of sources, including classical tales, vernacular fiction, drama, medical texts, and natural histories.

This course examines key texts from antiquity through the 18th century related to music and sound. “Literature” is construed broadly to include the many genres in which music or sound play a principle part: philosophical and scientific essays; anecdotes, biographies, and tales; poems and informal essays; songbooks, formularies, and scores; encyclopedias and manuals. The course will be organized historically and thematically. Some of the issues we hope to investigate: the role of music in ritual and governance; theories of the voice and sound production; the translation of sound into words, and what is lost and gained; the pictorial representation of sound and listening; the relation between music and emotion; the social roles of musicians and entertainers; and the cultural significance of musical instruments.

Anyang is one of the most important archaeological sites in China. The discoveries of inscribed oracle bones, the royal cemetery, clusters of palatial structures, and industrial-scale craft production precincts have all established that the site was indeed the last capital of the Shang dynasty recorded in traditional historiography. With almost continuous excavations since the late 1920s, work at Anyang has in many ways shaped and defined Chinese archaeology and the study of Early Bronze Age China.  This course intends to examine the history of research, important archaeological finds, and the role of Anyang studies in the field of Chinese archaeology. While the emphasis is on archaeological finds and the related research, this course will also attempt to define Anyang in the modern social and cultural contexts in terms of world heritage, national and local identity, and the looting and illegal trade of antiquities.

The course will survey the first three of the Chinese Classics, the Yi jing or Classic of Changes, Shu jing or Classic of Documents, and Shi jing or Classic of Poetry, in three different moments of their histories: when they were first created, when they were canonized as classics, and when they were treated as the timeless wisdom at the heart of China's traditions. All readings will be done in English, and will include both primary documents and some secondary readings.

This course will survey the history of China from the late Shang dynasty (c. 1200 B.C.) through the end of the Qin dynasty (207 B.C.). We will explore both traditional and recently unearthed sources, and will take a multi-disciplinary approach.

An introduction to ideas and ways of thinking in traditional China, and to some extent East Asia more broadly. This year, we will focus on ideas of qi ("breath," "vital energy," "pyscho-physical stuff"), and related ideas about the human place in the cosmos, from their earliest appearance through their use in Neo-Confucian thought.” 

This course surveys a variety of scholarly approaches to the study of popular music in East Asia since 1900, including questions of authenticity, gender, media technologies, circulation, and translation. The course will introduce a variety of musical genres from China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, ranging from forms considered 'traditional' to contemporary idol and hiphop music.

A survey of recent work in the study of premodern Chinese religion, with an emphasis on questions of method.

This course meets the HS or SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.