Winter

This seminar (required for all East Asian majors) is intended to expose students to the different disciplines and areas represented in the study of East Asia at the University of Chicago. Students should take this chance to meet fellow majors in the various areas of East Asian Studies and to familiarize themselves with the work of faculty members. Third year students should be already thinking about finding a topic and a faculty advisor for a senior thesis. Conventionally, the Concentrators Seminar is organized around a theme. The goal of this interdisciplinary seminar is to expose students to a range of important problems and methods across time and space in the study of China, Japan and Korea. Guest lecturers and reading assigned by different University of Chicago faculty members are an integral part of the course. Students work on an individual research project tailored to their own interests, which they may subsequently develop into a B.A paper. This course is offered every year; however the quarter may change.

In this course we will explore three distinct but interrelated modes of self-cultivation and the contemplative life from premodern China: those exemplified by the _Laozi_, and in particular by those artists and philosophers who drew upon the text; by the Chan tradition in Tang and Song Buddhism; and by the Song Neo-Confucian philosopher and exegete Zhu Xi (1130-1200). We will read classic texts in these modes (and a few modern ones too) closely, attuning ourselves as best we can to their original contexts, and we will brood together on how we might use them in our own contemplative lives. Central to the course will be careful consideration of the different understandings of the Way (Dao) found in our texts, and how these different Ways structured conceptions of the ideal human life.

This course looks at a crucial 600 years of Chinese history, the period 100-700 AD. I hope we can touch on the high points of dynastic failures and successes, military and border problems, and state economic and military policies, going mostly chronologically. Simultaneously, we shall look at a series of individuals who wrote, thought, and/or advised during these centuries, about these political matters and about private matters. Thus the course analyzes the state and its politics as entwined with written ideas, policy changes, speculations, and even inventions and discoveries. The writer/thinkers whom we look at were China's scholarly elite: they were concerned about personal and factional power: the dynasty's political legitimation and its rewards of wealth and office; also they were concerned about reading, editing, commenting on the classics, writing letters and memoranda, collecting and organizing libraries and artifacts. They invented new genres to express intimate views about self and family and friends, interior thoughts, and even spiritual change and religious beliefs. We will assess and discuss prose, technical achievements, poetry, and letters.

This course is part of a three-quarter sequence on the civilizations of China, Japan, and Korea or Viet Nam, with emphasis on major transformation in these cultures and societies from the Middle Ages to the present. Taking these courses in sequence is not required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.

This course introduces the basic grammar of the written Chinese language from the time of the Confucian Analects to the literary movements at the beginning of the twentieth century. Students read original texts of genres that include philosophy, memorials, and historical narratives. Spring Quarter is devoted exclusively to reading poetry. The class meets for two eighty-minute sessions a week.

This course is intended to be the first segment of a two-quarter long sequence introducing the study of early Chinese inscriptions. The first quarter will begin with a survey of Shang and Zhou oracle-bone inscriptions, with the intent to get a general overview of how to read and interpret these inscriptions. The second half of the quarter will then turn to a similar overview of Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, paying attention to both paleographic and artistic considerations. Much of the focus of this overview will center on questions of periodization. We will consider in particular how notions of periodization have influenced the historiography of Western Zhou bronze studies.

This course uses the robust field of Chinese legal history as a starting point for an examination of how historians have used legal records and documents to write different kinds of historical narratives. We will explore the intersection of law and society in modern China through both primary and secondary texts. While historiographic questions from the China field will arise, the class will also consider legal history ideas more generally. We will engage with debates about the role of civil law: How might more contemporary legal practices be a legacy of law or custom? How do societies' definitions of crime change over time. What role does the law play in shaping social attitudes toward different behavior?

This class examines the history of the Aynu peoples, the indigenous peoples of Japan. Particular focus will be given to their oral histories. Ability to read Japanese a plus but not required.

Throughout this sequence, students read selections in pre-modern Chinese literature from the first millennium B.C.E. to the end of the imperial period. The course covers important works in topics ranging from philosophy, history and religion to poetry, fiction and drama. Each quarter's specific content varies by instructor. Specific content varies by instructor.

This graduate seminar confronts the challenges of writing history from the bottom up. Although the syllabus engages heavily with the debates launched by the Subaltern Studies collective, our investigation will not be bounded by any specific regional or temporal focus. Students should feel free to experiment beyond their usual comfort zone in both terms of writing style and or topic. We will consider the theoretical legacies and challenges of postcolonial history writing, the linguistic turn, subaltern studies, and microhistory. The course pays special attention to different ways to grapple with sources and the construction of diverse archives.