EALC

This course takes a comparative approach to the terms “modernism” and
“modernity.” Instead of reading these terms as originating in the West and subsequently
travelling to the East, we will explore “modernism” as a plural and globally constituted
literary practice. In doing so, we will also challenge the literary and real categories of “East”
and “West.” Reading the roles and imaginations of China, North India, and the
(differentiated) West in a variety of texts, we will question the aesthetics and politics of
representation, of dynamic cultural exchange, and of the global individual in the modern
literary world.

An examination of the discipline of history as practiced in Japan from ancient times to the modern. Readings in translation of works such as the Kojiki, Okagami, Taiheiki, and others will be used to explore both the Japanese past and the manner of interpretation of that past.

This course will explore the cultural and cultural history of Edo/Tokyo from its origins in the early seventeenth century through c. 1945. Issues to be explored include the configuration of urban space and its transformation over time in relation to issues of status, class, and political authority, the formation of the "city person" as a form of identity, and the tensions between the real city of lived experience and the imagined city of art and literature. We will pay particular attention to two periods of transformation, the 1870s when the modernizing state made Tokyo its capital, and the period of reconstruction after the devastating earthquake of 1923. Assignments include a final research paper of approximately 15-18 pages.

This class provides an overview of major developments in Chinese social history from the high Qing period (roughly the eighteenth century) until very recent times. It focuses on the lives of “ordinary people,” especially in the countryside, where over 80 percent of China’s population lived until roughly 1980, and over 40 percent still live today. Topics include family organization, relations between the generations, and gender roles; property rights, class relations, and their implications for economic activity; the nature of village communities and their relationship to political/legal authority; migration, frontier settlement, and changes in ethnic and national identity; twentieth-century urbanization, consumerism, and changing notions of the individual; and collective protest, violence, and revolution. A secondary theme is more theoretical: what is it possible to know about the lives of people who left few records of their own, and how do we evaluate what are often, inevitably, thinly documented claims? The class format will include a lot of lecture, but mixed with both in-class and online discussion. No background knowledge is required.

This course will survey the uses to which writing was put in China during the period 1200-200 B.C., and then, more briefly, in Japan during the period A.D. 600-900.  We will be concerned both with the mechanics of writing itself and with its role in society. The survey will be broken into four discrete topics: the invention of writing in China, the nature of the Chinese script, the uses to which writing was put during its first thousand years in China, and early writing in Korea and Japan. All reading will be in English, though some knowledge of an East Asian language will be useful.

This course will help students to understand the present-day situations of a wide array of religions that exist in the mainland Chinese society, including popular religion, Buddhism, Daoism, Protestantism, Catholicism, New Religious Movements, and Islam. We will discuss their institutional practices, positions in the society, relations with the state and the economy. The course will also examine how the present-day conditions came into being, by tracing to the traditional model of late imperial China (1368－1911), and investigating how changes occurred in Republican China (1911－1949), why the Maoist period (1949－1976) was the turning point, and how a new religious situation with characteristics distinct from the traditional model has been emerging in post-Mao China. We will make reference to the religious situations in Taiwan to illustrate the distinctiveness of the case of mainland China.

This course covers the history of Chinese theater from its emergence as a full-fledged art  form in the 10th-11th centuries (the Northern Song) up through its incorporation into modern urban life and nationalist discourse in the first decades of the 20th century (the Republican period). In addition to reading selections from masterpieces of Chinese dramatic literature such as Orphan of Zhao, Romance of the Western Chamber, The Peony Pavilion, we will pay particular attention to the different types of venues, occasions, and performance practices associated with different genres of opera at different moments in time. A central theme will be the changing status of the entertainer and the cultural meanings assigned to acting.  All texts to be read in English translation.

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.

This readings and research sequence provides graduate and advanced undergraduate students an opportunity to study the evolving interaction between the social and state institutions of the family and the law. How did this interaction change throughout China's readings of primary and secondary texts drawn from the Qing through the PRC periods will show the effect of structural legal change at the local level of the family. We will read both in translation and in Chinese; but students should expect that the bulk of their primary source research for their final papers due in winter quarter should extend beyond the sources sampled on the autumn syllabus. We will also engage with ongoing debates about the extent of civil law in imperial China. To what extent are legal practices in the Republican era and PRC a legacy of Qing law or Qing custom? How does Chinese society's definition of a crime change over time, and what role does the law play in shaping social attitudes toward different behavior? The class will also include opportunities to reflect upon the overall evolution of China's legal system throughout this dynamic period.

Reading and research in Japanese history, which culminates in a major seminar paper at the end of winter term.