2021-2022

Annalistic records kept at the courts of the various states of ancient China were among the earliest writing in China, and certainly serve as the beginning of China's long historiographical tradition. In this course, we will first examine the Chunqiu or Spring and Autumn Annals, long since enshrined as oine of the Five Classics, by way of understanding the nature of annals. Then we will move on to examine in detail the Zhushu jinian or Bamboo Annals, discovered in 279 A.D. an ancient tomb located in what is present-day Jixian, Henan. The Bamboo Annals introduced major changes in the understanding of ancient Chinese history during the Six Dynasties through Tang period, but then came to be suspected of being a forgery. We will consider both to what extent these suspicions are valid, and also what the Bamboo Annals can reveal to us regarding ancient history

This course examines the history of Sino-Western relations through the perspective of law. Today when we talk about Chinese law in Western contexts, it is often associated with impressions such as human rights abuse and rule of person instead of law. Ever since the early eighteen century, law has assumed a prominent role in the development of Sino-Western relation. Using law as a primary analytical framework, this course surveys a variety of issues arising from Sino-Western interactions during the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries. Questions to be discussed include what role does the West, both as political actors and a source of ideology, play in shaping understanding of Chinese law and politics? How did judicial knowledge of business, sovereignty, and family structure change as China entered the global world of nation-states? How did understanding of law help construct and reconstruct notions of ethnicity, marriage, and gender over time in cross-cultural settings? You will be able to understand broad political processes such as modernization, colonization, and globalization, as well as their impact on everyday life. In addition to discussing how Western observers produced knowledge about Chinese law, we also examine the role of law in the Qing Empire’s expansion. The parallel of the two trajectories – one Chinese and one Western – will lead us to reconsider some of the assumptions in cross-cultural studies.

In this class we will read and discuss recent monographs in the field of Ming Qing literature and culture. Each week we will focus on a different book, covering topics that range from early modern translation to Qing court theater to the literary fascination with objects. In addition to the substance of these books, we will discuss the place of this new work within the broader scholarly field as well as the art of book-writing and the state of academic publishing more generally. Over the course of the class, students will produce book reviews and a state of the field article. All readings in English.

The class examines closely types of materials used--ceramics, stone, lacquer, silk, paper, ink--and their significance in the production of artworks through Chinese history. Students will be expected go to the Field Museum of Natural History, the Smart Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago where classes will in the galleries, storage, and conservation areas. Students will be able to examine groups of objects of similar materials and individual pieces in detail. They will have opportunities to speak with curators and conservators about their work with museum objects--acquisition, research, exhibition planning, restoration. From their early use beginning in the prehistoric period to their place in the material culture of urban society, certain materials had special significance over time. Craftsmanship of materials, artistic refinement, and local production were related to their social function. Many pieces known in museums today were once buried with the dead, including precious items and emblems of power and wealth, objects for daily use, and inexpensive models of buildings, animals, and figurines made for funerary purposes. Others were used for antiquarian research by scholarly collectors. The Field Museum has an extensive collection of ink rubbings, taken from historical objects that had carved inscriptions and ornament. Ceramicware particularly durable and continuous in use. The Field Museum also has a large cache of Chinese ceramics retrieved from a shipwreck in the Java Sea. Through their close study of works of art and their readings, students will be expected to speak about objects descriptively and discuss them in historical contexts. They will write essays about selected objects as might be featured in an exhibition catalogue.

In China, landscape, literally “mountains and waters” (shanshui), has been a primary theme of artistic expression since the tenth century, as revealed most elaborately in two-dimensional works of art. This course surveys major areas of study in the history of Chinese landscape painting from its full bloom in the tenth century to the end of dynastic China in the twentieth century. It aims to equip students with basic knowledge and skills required to analyze the key elements of its pictorial representation, such as format, style, technique, material, etc. On a broader level, the course will investigate topics including religious significance of early landscape images, stylistic analysis and art historical accounts in relation to court and literati arenas, landscape aesthetic and theoretical foundations, and landscape representation as socio-political commentary. Considerable attention will be paid to the inherent features of various portable formats, such as scroll, fan and album leaf, as well as their historical context, viewing convention, audience and social function.

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.

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 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. Previous experience in Japanese literature or history is not required. Open to both undergraduate and graduate students.