2025-2026

The course is a systematic introduction to pre-modern and early-modern texts written in classical Japanese (bungo or kogo), the standard written language in Japan up to the beginning of the twentieth century. We will learn and absorb the fundamentals of classical Japanese grammar and engage with some of the core grammatical problematics of the language. Throughout the course students will gain a firm foundation in how the language is constructed, increase their comprehension of the language’s vocabulary, and will familiarize themselves with original texts in prose and poetry alike, including narrative fiction (monogatari), anecdotes (setsuwa), essays (zuihitsu), and traditional Japanese poems (waka). The goal is to acquire a firm foundation in the classical language and to be able to read pre-modern texts with the help of a dictionary, for the purpose of academic research.

KORE 21100 is designed for the students who aim to improve their speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills to an advanced level. This course will focus on enhancing speed, accuracy, and comprehension in advanced listening and reading of authentic texts (such as newspaper articles, essays, poems, reports etc.) as well as the refinement of writing skills in various styles. Students will also discuss social and cultural issues in Korea using their analytic skills and knowledge acquired in class.

What happened to Peking Man? Where did rice cultivation begin and who made the first pottery? Why were hoards of bronzes buried and what were they used for? This course will explore themes such as the origins of humans, the beginning of agriculture, early villages and cities, metal technology, ancient writing systems, and the rise of states and civilizations in East Asia. It will also discuss the current state of archaeological research in Asia, and the role of archaeology in nation building and modern geopolitics. The rich resources available in the museums of Chicago will also be explored.

Following FDR’s Executive Order 9066 and the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans, Chicago’s Japanese American population exploded beginning in 1943 when the wartime internment camps began to release internees deemed sufficiently ‘loyal’ on the condition that they not reside on the West Coast. More than 20,000 former internees settled in Chicago, creating new communities that persisted for decades with their own institutions and cultural practices—often in the face of racial discrimination, economic hardship, and continuing Cold War suspicions of ‘disloyalty.’ This course traces the history of this local community in terms of questions of collective and individual memory and cultural imagination. With a focus on visual culture (photography, painting, and motion pictures), musical practice, fiction and poetry, and oral history, we will explore the complex legacies of both the prewar and postwar Chicago Japanese American communities, including their alliances and conflicts with other marginalized groups and with more recent immigrants from Japan and elsewhere.

With the long tradition of Chinese archaeology, archaeological monographs and site reports have become the primary source for studying ancient China, from the Paleolithic, the Neolithic, to the Bronze Age and the Late Imperial period. Thanks to the scale and the intensity of archaeological operations across China, tens if not hundreds of new titles are published each year. As a genre, archaeological site reports are supposed to describe excavated data in an objective, descriptive, and scientific way. But are archaeological site reports truly "objective"? How do we “read between the lines” and identify and discover the important information hidden in the seemingly dry and tedious details?  This course is designed for students to read and analyze Chinese archaeological site reports for the information and the hidden and underlying theoretical approaches. Site reports included in the course are selected both for the importance of the finds and for the approaches taken to reflect the history and the practice of Chinese archaeology.

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.

This course investigates literary strategies in China through which material things are depicted and animated. Our emphasis will be on reading primary sources about objects up through the 18th century, but we’ll also incorporate approaches from anthropology, the history of material culture and technology, and art history in a comparative context.  Genres to be covered include the ode on things, the it-biography, tales of the strange, the vernacular novel, handbooks for connoisseurs and collectors, paintings, illustrated books, and decorative objects.Some previous background in Chinese literature, history, or art history would be helpful but is not required. All materials will be available in English but students with classical Chinese will be encouraged to read materials in the original when feasible.  

This course introduces readings from a wide selection of written styles including journalistic pieces, college-level textbooks and literary prose. The class focuses on exercises in reading comprehension and discussions on various topics/issues related to contemporary Korea. Some audio and videotapes (e.g., televised news programs, movies, and dramas) will be used in order to improve the students' capacity in advanced Korean. Classes are conducted in Koran and meet for eighty-minute periods two times a week.

KORE 10300 is the third quarter of the Introductory Korean sequences. It is designed to continue to build students’ solid foundation in modern Korean language and culture. Students will learn how to communicate on a variety of familiar topics and how to handle straightforward social situations or transactions. In order to provide sufficient practice and opportunity to use what has been learned in class in real life situations, there will be small group sessions. In addition, the course will introduce students to Korean culture through media, music, and other cultural activities.

For graduates and advanced undergraduates. This course introduces readings from a wide selection of written styles including journalistic pieces, college-level textbooks and literary prose. The class focuses on exercises in reading comprehension and discussions on various topics/issues related to contemporary Korea. Some audio and videotapes (e.g., televised news programs, movies, and dramas) will be used in order to improve the students' capacity in advanced Korean. Classes are conducted in Korean and meet for eighty-minute periods two times a week.