EALC

This undergraduate course examines the cinematic representation of modern Korean history, politics, and gender in South Korean films, aiming to establish a comprehensive understanding of Korean film history from its early stage to its contemporary global recognition. While proceeding chronologically, we will interrogate key problematic subjects in South Korean cinema such as gender politics, the discourse of modernity, the representation of historical and political events, and practices of film culture and industry. The film texts examined in this course include not only break-though masterpieces of prominent film auteurs but also popular genre films that enjoyed box-office success. Through these examples, we will examine how the most influential art form in South Korea has recognized, interpreted, and resolved current societal issues through creative endeavor. The course also seeks to establish a balance between understanding Korean cinema as both a reservoir of historical memory and as an example of evolving world cinema. Being presented with methodological issues from film studies in each week’s film reading, including the question of archives, national cinema discourse, feminist film theory, auteurism, and genre studies, students in this course will learn to analyze Korean filmic texts not only as a way to understand the particularity of Korean cinema and history but also as a frontier of cinematic language in the broader film history. All the materials are available in English and no knowledge of Korean language is required.

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.

During the winter quarter, students write a paper on defined topic, based on the secondary literature and primary sources studied during the autumn. The seminar meets every week to discuss the progress of each student’s paper.

This course aims to review theories and case studies of regional and inter-regional interaction in the anthropological archaeology literature. The course will examine chronologically important theories and topics in the field, such as interaction sphere, peer polity, circumscription theory, world systems theory, center and peripheries, prestige goods exchange, warfare, colonial encounter, network society, etc. Areas of cases studies discussed in the course include Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, American Southwest, Central Asia, China, and Southeast Asia. The goal of the course is to establish understanding of the existing theoretical discourse and to provide perspectives from wide geographic scope.    

This seminar is designed to introduce the student to the use of bronze inscriptions in interpreting the history of the Western Zhou dynasty (1045-771 B.C.). While much of the seminar will be spent in attaining the methodological skills necessary to read the inscriptions, historical issues will also be discussed.

This course explores the development and narrative of contemporary Chinese art. Through examining original documentation and analyzing existing narratives and interpretations, students explore the major trends and issues in this art since the late 1970s and reflect on how we tell the story of this art in its domestic and global contexts.

This graduate seminar explores relationships between bodies and boundaries in the context of premodern Japanese cultural production. We will theorize the politics of  embodiment across literary, theatrical, and art historical texts, paying close attention to the ways in which these texts inscribe bodies' movement through space. Emphasis on reading original materials in conjunction with contemporary scholarship on embodiment, performance, and territory in Japanese and English. 

During the winter quarter, students write a paper on defined topic, based on the secondary literature and primary sources studied during the autumn. The seminar meets every week to discuss the progress of each student’s paper.

This course will survey works of Japanese fiction and poetry revolving around issues empire, ranging from the late nineteenth century to the contemporary period. We will also read theoretical works on the problem of imperialism and culture, as well as recent scholarship on the problem of empire in Japanese literature. Advanced reading ability in Japanese is required; a large number of the assigned texts will be in Japanese.

It is well known that skill in the arts (particularly music, poetry, painting, and games) was a prerequisite for successful courtesans in China and that interactions between courtesans and their clients played an important role in generating the literary and musical forms that lay at the heart of Chinese entertainment culture. Courtesans in turn were a perennially favorite topic for literary and visual representation while books related to the pleasure quarter constitute a significant branch in the history of publishing. This course will concentrate on the history of the very rich late imperial period, studying a wide range of primary sources, including stories, poetry, plays, popular song, encyclopedias of daily life, and memoirs.  Students may work on any period or any of the arts for their final papers.