2026-2027

This lecture course surveys the history of the island of Taiwan from the 16th through 21st Centuries. Beginning during the period of European mercantile expansion, we explore the successive regimes that have sought to control the island, as well as the historical arguments and narratives that constitute the cultural identity of this diverse and contested place. The course also seeks to understand Taiwan’s place as a seafaring part of the Pacific world and to consider legacies of different layers of colonial encounter. Concluding in the 21st century the course engages with questions of contemporary sovereignty, social movements, political party formation, as well as economic and technological innovation. Students can anticipate reading across disciplinary genres and learning how to develop evidence based historical arguments through brief writing assignments.

The Chinese Bronze Age, ca. 2000 BCE to 500 BCE, marked the rise and the rapid development of ancient Chinese civilizations. While metallurgy, writing, and state-level society began relatively late in comparison to ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, in terms of the amount of metal used and bronzes objects made, we can truly call this period in China the Bronze Age. Through time, the forms of bronze artifacts, especially bronze vessels, became more varied, the quantity dramatically increased, and the function and role of bronze vessels diversified and gradually secularized. Bronzes vessels, therefore, offer a window to understand the art, the technology, the material culture, the cultural practice, the political interaction, and the religious and spiritual realms of ancient China.

This traveling seminar therefore aims to take a group of preselected undergrad and graduate students on museum tours, to study bronzes in exhibitions and to view and examine objects up-close in the context of viewing sessions in study rooms. The course will consist of an on-campus component, during which students will study related research literature, and a museum tour component, during which students will travel to the selected museums and view bronzes on site. The seminar will make one out-of-town trip, while also take advantage of the locally accessible collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Students need pre-approval to take the course.

What did it mean to be Korean in an era defined by colonialism, revolution, and various upheavals? What might it have been like to live the modern era as a Korean in East Asia, with acute vigilance and enduring hope? This course explores these questions through a close reading of Song of Arirang, the collaborative (auto-)biography of Kim San (1905–1938), "a Korean revolutionary," as co-written by Nym Wales (Helen Foster Snow, 1907–1997), an American journalist and aspiring novelist. Based on oral interviews conducted in Yan'an, China, around the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), the work takes the form of Kim San's autobiography, tracing a life that spanned the turbulent landscapes of early twentieth-century East Asia—shaped by capitalism, nationalism, imperialism, communism, modernization, and diaspora.  We treat Song of Arirang both as a historical narrative and as a literary work, examining it as an unusually rich treasury layered with the voices and perspectives of modern East Asians whose lives and stories traversed China, Korea, Japan, Manchuria, and the United States. Working through a recent, densely annotated edition over the course of the quarter, students will explore a wide spectrum of life trajectories, aspirations, despairs, and struggles—both individual and collective—experienced by Koreans and other East Asians during these transformative decades. No prior knowledge of Korea or East Asia is required.  Open to MAPH students.

How does Liking mukbang videos on YouTube or submitting danmu comments on Bilibili impact who we are and where we belong? In this course, we dive into the world of East Asian digital media to explore how algorithms, interface designs, and virtual characters shape our identities, our dynamics with others, and how we perceive the world around us. Instead of looking at users or viewers in isolation, we’ll use digital ethnographic methods to study how people, platforms, and content evolve together through social interactions.

Focusing on East Asian media content and platforms as sites of investigation, we will also challenge geo-national labels like “Japanese anime,” “K-pop,” and “Chinese platforms” to rethink how digital media redefine and complicate cultural borders of nations. Starting in Week 2, our sessions split into two parts: a theory seminar to discuss big ideas like agency and sociality, and a hands-on media lab where you’ll work in groups to analyze real-world digital activities. By the end of the course, you will be equipped with digital ethnographic and micro-sociological methods to analyze how digital content and architecture shape political discourses and social identities in today's world. All materials are in English. No prior background is required.

This course will introduce theories and practices of performance that center East Asian forms and experiences. Through readings and primary materials as well as workshops and artist visits, we will engage with East Asian performance not as essentialized and static cultural displays but as sites for disciplinary intervention and innovation. The aim is not simply to integrate additional forms into the concept of performance but to use the challenge offered by East Asia to motivate more capacious performance theories capable of accounting for particularity across time and space. Areas of discussion will include: Peking opera, kabuki, pansori, puppetry, K-pop, Chinese classical dance, butoh, and drag.

The third quarter of the East Asian civilization sequence covers the emerging nation-states of China, Korea, and Japan in the context of Western and Japanese imperialism and the rise of an interconnected global economy. Our themes include industrialization and urbanization, state strengthening and nation-building, the rise of social movements and mass politics, the impact of Japanese colonialism on the homeland and the colonies, East Asia in the context of US-Soviet rivalry, and the return of the region to the center of the global economy in the postwar years. Similar to the first and second quarters, we will look at East Asia as an integrated region, connected by trade and cultural exchange even when divided into opposing blocs during the Cold War. As much as possible, we will look beyond nation-states and their policies to explore the underlying trends shared by the three East Asian nations, such as mass culture,  imperialism, and the impact of the cold war . 

This class offers an overview of the history of feminism in China, with a focus on the genres of writing (manifestos, pamphlets, essays, poetry and fiction) and media (journals, posters, zines, digital platforms, hashtags) through which feminist ideas emerged and circulated from the late 19th century to this day. Topics to be discussed include: feminism and the public sphere, feminism and nationalism, the question of women's literature, feminism in the socialist revolution, family laws, feminism and trans and queer rights. No prior knowledge of Chinese is required.  Open to MAPH students.

This course examines the cultural, political, and technological dimensions of digital technologies in East Asia, with a specific focus on digital media. Through readings in media theory, cultural studies, and science and technology studies, as well as screenings and hands-on digital labs, students will explore the intersection between regional histories and the forms and practices of digital culture. Analytical topics include the Internet, platform economies, video games, digital culture, and emerging debates around AI. Alongside theoretical inquiry, the course also introduces digital humanities methods such as text mining, network analysis, and visualization, asking students to critically engage both the media they study and the tools that may be constitutive to new kinds of research projects. By the end of the quarter, students should gain an understanding not only theories and methodologies of digital technologies in general, but also their sociocultural development in the region of East Asia.

China has been in the "post-Mao" era for 50 years (or 48 years, if we take 1978, not 1976, as the turning point) - longer than the Mao or Republican eras (27 and 38 years), respectively). The post-Mao years have seen unprecedented economic growth, the transformation of a predominantly rural into an advanced industrial society, the lifting of millions out of poverty, the formation of a new working class composed of rural migrants and laid-off urban workers, and the rapid rise of inequality. China went through several severe crises: it is easy to forget that in the 1990s, the central government seemed to be losing control over the coastal provinces and observers predicted the imminent breakup of the country. Topics covered include the socialist legacy (state owenership of enterprises, the danwei and hukou system), the events around Mao's death, rural economic reforms (household responsibility system, township and village enterprises), urban reforms (SPecial Economic Zones, new labor laws, privatization), rural-urban migrations and its consequences, the Tiananmen protests, China's accession to the WTO, the 1997 and 2008 financial crises, and the recentralization of economy and society under Xi Jinping. While the focus is on large structural changes in society and economy, we will also discuss changes in gender norms and family life, and cultural change more broadly. All readings will be in English.