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.
In recent years, the project of the artist's monograph has been subjected to criticism and analysis, yet the single-artist study remains important to our discipline. These methodological reflections should be taken seriously in the case of East Asia, where notions of the (primarily male) artist or painter and his place in society prior to the twentieth century must be evaluated on their own terms. Drawing on both premodern and modern cases, this course proposes to do just that, reading primary texts where possible and evaluating a range of recent monographs. When and how do European and American tropes of the artist enter the picture? How do ethnic and regional background, gender, medium, and socioeconomic status complicate the narration of the Asian and Asian American artist? How well does art historical writing accommodate the type of visual knowledge that can only be gained by in-depth contemplation of the artist's works? For the final paper, students are encouraged to present a case study or comparison of their choice drawn from East Asia and beyond.
This seminar serves as an introduction to theories of media and mediation in the context of scholarship on East Asia. “Media” has come to be a ubiquitous term in how we think not just about technologies of communication and dissemination, but also about literature, music, film, and other forms of cultural production. In this course we will look at how the concept has been taken up in recent work on China, Japan, and Korea, and raise questions about how this work has drawn on media theories from elsewhere; how it has sought to develop or recover locally inflected theories of media; and how it is we might distinguish between the two. Our task, then, will be to consider how media theory and media history have been done, but also to speculate on how they can and should be done within an area studies framework.
Note(s): Grad students only
The early Chinese book attributed to Master Zhuang seems to be a patchwork of fables, polemical discussions, arguments, examples, riddles, and lyrical utterances. Although it has been central to the development of both religious Daoism and Buddhism, the book is alien to both traditions. This course offers a careful reading of the work with some of its early commentaries.
Requirement: Classical Chinese.
Twelve years apart from one another, two Chinese writers were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature: Gao Xingjian, in 2000, and Mo Yan, in 2012. In both cases, the awarding of the prize was followed by controversies concerning the writers' merits, their political stance, their relation to the Chinese state, and more generally the political purposes of the prize itself. In this course, we will first read these authors' works, to find out who they are, how they write, and whether there are any thematic or formal affinities between them. Secondly, we will read scholarship focusing on what some commentators have described as “China’s ‘Nobel complex’,” namely her quest for global cultural recognition, investigating its historical roots and connecting it to larger questions concerning practices of translation and concepts of world literature.
This seminar (required for all East Asian majors) is intended to expose students to the different disciplines and areas represented in the study of East Asia at the University of Chicago. Students should take this chance to meet fellow majors in the various areas of East Asian Studies and to familiarize themselves with the work of faculty members. Third year students should be already thinking about finding a topic and a faculty advisor for a senior thesis. Conventionally, the Concentrators Seminar is organized around a theme. The goal of this interdisciplinary seminar is to expose students to a range of important problems and methods across time and space in the study of China, Japan and Korea. Guest lecturers and reading assigned by different University of Chicago faculty members are an integral part of the course. Students work on an individual research project tailored to their own interests, which they may subsequently develop into a B.A paper. This course is offered every year; however the quarter may change.Religion and Politics of East Asia.
Are there Chinese musicals? It very much depends on what we would consider a Chinese musical. To answer Adrian Martin’s call for “Musical Mutations: Before, Beyond and Against Hollywood,” this course will look for Chinese musicals in both obvious and unlikely places. The “musical mutations” under discussion include traditional opera adaptation, back-stage opera film, martial-arts opera film, Maoist opera film, musical comedy, song-and-dance film, melo-drama, Hong Kong musical, and most certainly the “apocalyptic” musical named by Martin, The Hole (Tsai Ming-liang, 1998). The tripartite developments of Chinese-language cinemas provide a privileged site to chart the ways the musical genre expands, transforms, and rejuvenates cross time and borders.
