Autumn

Remediate: 1) provide a remedy for, redress or make right 2) Restore by reversing or stopping environmental damage. See also remediation: “the formal logic by which new media refashion prior media forms.” (Bolter and Grusin 1999, 273) Synonyms: amend, rectify, remedy, repair. This class examines the various ways in which Chinese literature, cinema and media remediated the theorizations and representational practices of socialism during one of the most transformative periods of China’s twentieth century. Topics will include: the debates on socialist alienation; rethinking the division of labor and the rural-urban divide; cultural nationalism and culture fever; the role of art and aesthetics; linguistic rebellions; and cultures of protest. Materials in Chinese and English.

This course explores the styles and functions of Chinese independent documentary since 1989, with particular attention to the social and political contexts that underpin its flourishing in Mainland China and Taiwan. We will discuss the ways in which recent Chinese documentaries challenge current theories of the genre, how they redefine the relationship between fiction and non-fiction, and the problems of media aesthetics, political intervention, and ethics of representation that they pose. We will look at their channels of circulation in Asia and elsewhere, and will discuss the implications and limits of the notion of independence. Readings will include theorizations of the documentary genre in relation to other visual media and narrative forms, analyses of specific works, and discussions on the impact of digital media.

This course explores Korea’s many diasporas in the twentieth century. What factors shaped twentieth-century Korean migration? How were individuals and families impacted by their diasporic contexts? We will examine migration trajectories from Korea to other parts of the Asia-Pacific, to Europe, and to the Americas, tracing the historical processes of colonization, war, marriage migration, international adoption, and labor migration. We will also engage with questions of citizenship, identity, and memory. Readings will include a range of primary sources such as personal letters, diaries, interviews, and artwork, as well as selected excerpts from literature and film. By the end of the course, students will have a deeper understanding of the diversity of experiences within Korea’s twentieth-century diasporas.

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.

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.

China's first discovery of ancient texts in a tomb took place in 279 CE, in Ji Commandery, near Weihui County in present-day northeastern Henan province. Although the tomb was opened by tomb-robbers, most of the bamboo-slip texts that had been placed in the tomb were preserved and transported to the Western Jin capital at Luoyang, where they were edited by a committee of high-ranking scholars. The texts, including especially the Mu tianzi zhuan (Biography of the Son of Heaven Mu) and the Zhushu jinian (Bamboo Annals), were an immediate sensation, and were cited and quoted for centuries thereafter, much in the way that discoveries of ancient manuscripts today have stimulated great interest. With the experience gained from editing these new discoveries of ancient manuscripts, it is an opportune moment to turn our attention anew to this first discovery of manuscripts and to try to reconstruct both the editorial process to which they were subjected and also the original structure of the texts themselves.

This will be a two-quarter course. We will begin with a consideration of the tomb, its robbing, and the work done to edit the texts. We will then move on to consider the texts themselves. In the first term, we will focus on the Mu tianzi zhuan. Then in the second term, we will move on to the Zhushu jinian.

In this course, we will survey Western Sinologists' major works concerning early Chinese civilization, from the nineteenth century through the end of the twentieth century. Each week we will consider one or two major scholars who have contributed to our contemporary understanding of ancient China, reading one or more of their representative works. Scholars to be considered will include James Legge, Marcel Granet, Henri Maspero, Bernhard Karlgren, Herrlee Creel, Peter Boodberg, A.C. Graham, K.C. Chang, Noel Barnard, David Keightley, and Michael Loewe. All readings will be in English. Students will also be expected to select one scholar not treated in the course, to make a class presentation and to write a term-paper introducing the scholar and his contributions to the field.

This course explores the multifarious entanglements between shamanism—as a religious phenomenon, as an anthropological imaginary, and as a mode of existence—and global modernity. How did shamanism as a concept emerge in the age of colonial expansion and ethnological racialization, how did it affect modernity's understanding of human history, and how do shamanic (dis)articulations of historicity, personhood, sexuality, trauma, translation, and the "nature/culture divide" intervene in modernity's politics? In contemplating these questions, we will consider a variety of "shamanic" artworks ranging from shamanic liturgies to travelogues, music recordings, film, performance art, contemporary literature, and beyond. We will attend both to the spiritual worlds of the "original" shamans of Northeast Asia (through texts from the Evenki, Khakas, Manchu, Tuvan, and other Siberian languages) and to a much broader corpora of (Anglophone, Chinese, German, Greco-Roman, Indigeneous American, Japanese, Tibetan, etc.) works that can be generatively thought of as shamanic in some way. In doing so, we will reflect on the limitations and powers possessed by the figure of the shaman in various broader contexts, both in the history of ideas and in the contemporary world.

This course will explore the philosophical doctrines of classical Tiantai Buddhism and their extensions and reconfigurations as developed in the ideas of later thinkers, both Tiantai and non-Tiantai, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist. Readings will be drawn from the classical Tiantai thinkers Zhiyi, Zhanran and Zhili, followed by writings of early Chinese Chan Buddhism, Japanese Tendai “Original Enlightenment” thought, Kamakura Buddhist reformers including Dōgen, Nichiren and Shinran, the 20th century Confucian Mou Zongsan, and contemporary Anglophone “Neo-Tiantai” thinking.