2025-2026

What can the world’s earliest known pottery shards tell us about human survival and creativity? How was earliest Chinese writing invented and used? Why were thousands of life-sized soldiers (Terracotta Army) buried in silence beneath the earth near Xi’an? This course introduces students to the archaeology of China, from the Neolithic period (c. 8000 BCE) to the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). Over the course of the term, we will examine current stage of archaeological research while surveying major sites, artifacts, and architectural remains to explore key aspects of culture, society, and history in early China. A class visit to the Art Institute of Chicago will offer students the opportunity to engage directly with objects from the periods we study.  Beyond cataloging discoveries, the course challenges students to critically examine how archaeology constructs narratives of the past—and how those narratives are reinterpreted over time. With a touch on antiquarianism and the impact of modern archaeology in the Chinese context, we will explore how the ancient past has been used as a symbolic resource by people in the past and the present—elites, antiquarians, the state, archaeologists, and ourselves.  Prior knowledge of Chinese language or history is not required.

This course is designed to explore the notion of “global China” and examine its role and impact in
global society. China’s increasing presence concerns not only its economic power and massive
investments in the Global South, but also its growing cultural, social, and religious influence—its socalled
soft power in the world. This course will look at major scholarly discussions of Chinese global
engagements from both historical and contemporary perspectives to explore how we can advance an
understanding of global China that is no longer restricted to a nation-state framework, or to a linear
or singular approach. By combining theoretical discussion with ethnographic studies on diaspora,
migration, Chinese capital, soft power, race, and racism in global Chinese contexts, the course will
offer useful frameworks and perspectives for raising critical inquiries and tackling cutting-edge issues
related to global China. By the end of the course, the students will develop their own research
subject on a topic that is related to global China; write a thorough literature review on their chosen
topic; and present their research to the class.

This graduate seminar examines key English-language scholarship on Korean film and media from the recent decade. The goal is to cultivate critical insight into the theoretical frameworks, critical debates and historical inquiries of this evolving field. Core readings will include major monographs and edited collections, alongside select critical essays as well as relevant film and media objects.

This course aims to provide a comprehensive social science perspective on contemporary China. Here, contemporary Chinese society is loosely defined as the society that emerged after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The course takes an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating readings from various social science disciplines, including history, sociology, political science, anthropology, economics, and law.

This graduate seminar examines key English-language scholarship on Korean film and media from the recent decade. The goal is to cultivate critical insight into the theoretical frameworks, critical debates and historical inquiries of this evolving field. Core readings will include major monographs and edited collections, alongside select critical essays as well as relevant film and media objects.

In an era of globalization and rapid technological innovation, “adaptations” are becoming increasingly widespread and diverse. In addition to discussions of an adapted work’s fidelity to the prior material, this advanced seminar aims to develop multiple approaches to adaptation by conceptualizing it as a process of negotiating with changes across time, space and medium. By examining a variety of selected materials including poems, short stories, novels, films, theater performances, TV series, animations, webtoons, online games and short form videos from or about East Asia, students will practice analyzing a cultural product’s narrative and form in relation to the sociopolitical contexts of its production, circulation and reception. In the course of the semester, students will de-Westernize adaptation studies while generating nuanced understandings of Korea, China, and Japan as relational constructs emerging as a result of negotiating with other cultures and wielding various technologies. All required readings will be in English, either originally or in translation, and all viewing materials will be available with English subtitles. This seminar is open to graduate students in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Cinema and Media Studies, and the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities. Advanced undergraduate students can apply to join the course by submitting a paragraph-length description of their knowledge and experience with East Asian culture or film and media studies.

From K-pop and K-drama to K-beauty, “Korea” is spreading across the world as a brand through popular culture.However, Korean popular culture’s heterogeneous forms and styles, varying responses to different sociopolitical stakes, and constant negotiations with global agents demonstrate the need to think critically about the use of “Korea” as a category or a method. This introductory level course aims to recognize and address this issue by examining a selection of materials including film, television, literature, music and fashion from the 20th and 21st centuries that are associated with Korea. While gaining knowledge of Korea’s modernization and developing an understanding of popular culture’s involvement in and reflection of society, students will put Korea at the center to reassess the various traditions and contentions in global popular culture. All required readings will be in English and all viewing materials will be available with English subtitles. Undergraduate students of every level and major with an interest in Korea or film and media more broadly are welcome.

This seminar examines a selection of modern and contemporary Korean fiction in dialogue with East Asian and Western literary traditions and critical theory. Students analyze how Korean literature engages with and can be interpreted through literary movements and theoretical frameworks developed in other contexts, while exploring its distinctive characteristics.  Through these investigations, the course explores how linguistic, cultural, geopolitical, and ethnic factors—along with readers' individual perspectives—shape the reading experience and understanding of concepts like "national literature," "world literature," and "global literature," and ultimately, the nature of literature itself. While all required readings will be available in English, students who can read Korean are encouraged to engage with original texts at their level of proficiency.

Whether it is the tonalities and idiosyncracies of individual speech and dialogue in the polyphonic novel, the depiction of urban sounds and noises in Eileen Chang’s prose about 1930’s Shanghai, the borrowing of folk songs in political lyrics during the Mao era, or Western pop and rock music in experimental fictions from the 1980s, sound culture in its various forms and transformations has long left its imprint on modern literary imaginations. Sound is inseparable from technologies and ideologies of listening; in this course, we will use literary texts as aural technologies to approach historical sonic cultures, and read them as archives of sonic experiences. Through reading modern Chinese literary works together with the history of Chinese sound cultures, we ask: how does literature from different historical periods capture transient sounds? What can literature tell us about how sound is experienced in different historical periods? What are the strengths and limits of language as a medium of articulating aural experiences? How is the difference between sound and noise, listening and other senses, drawn in different historical periods, and what role does literature play in it?