Winter

This course is an introduction to the arts of China focusing on the bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the Chinese appropriation of the Buddha image, and the evolution of landscape and figure painting traditions. This course considers objects in contexts (from the archaeological sites from which they were unearthed to the material culture that surrounded them) to reconstruct the functions and the meanings of objects, and to better understand Chinese culture through the objects it produced.

How does architecture engage people visually, physically, or spatially? In what ways can we talk about architecture acting upon viewers, cultivating their bodily knowledge and shaping their spatial experiences? In a figurative sense, this course explores ways in which architecture is not confined as the backdrop of a performance but a critical constituent of it. Yet, rather than using the power of “performance” only as an explanatory metaphor, the course takes it as an essential quality of architecture, investigating what constitutes Chinese traditional architecture’s performativity—its agentic power that engages and thus transforms viewers both affectively and intellectually. The goal is to situate China’s architectural tradition in an unconventional framework of analysis to explore issues, materials, topics, etc. that have thus far not been fully or appropriately studied. Language proficiency in classical Chinese is required.

Selected readings 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. Specific content varies by instructor.

This quarter we will read classics of the "ancient prose" movement in the late Tang and early Song periods.

Anyang is one of the most important archaeological sites in China. The discoveries of inscribed oracle bones, the royal cemetery, clusters of palatial structures, and industrial-scale craft production precincts have all established that the site was indeed the last capital of the Shang dynasty recorded in traditional historiography. With almost continuous excavations since the late 1920s, work at Anyang has in many ways shaped and defined Chinese archaeology and the study of Early Bronze Age China.  This course intends to examine the history of research, important archaeological finds, and the role of Anyang studies in the field of Chinese archaeology. While the emphasis is on archaeological finds and the related research, this course will also attempt to define Anyang in the modern social and cultural contexts in terms of world heritage, national and local identity, and the looting and illegal trade of antiquities.

The course will survey the first three of the Chinese Classics, the Yi jing or Classic of Changes, Shu jing or Classic of Documents, and Shi jing or Classic of Poetry, in three different moments of their histories: when they were first created, when they were canonized as classics, and when they were treated as the timeless wisdom at the heart of China's traditions. All readings will be done in English, and will include both primary documents and some secondary readings.

This course will survey the history of China from the late Shang dynasty (c. 1200 B.C.) through the end of the Qin dynasty (207 B.C.). We will explore both traditional and recently unearthed sources, and will take a multi-disciplinary approach.

An introduction to ideas and ways of thinking in traditional China, and to some extent East Asia more broadly. This year, we will focus on ideas of qi ("breath," "vital energy," "pyscho-physical stuff"), and related ideas about the human place in the cosmos, from their earliest appearance through their use in Neo-Confucian thought.” 

This experimental seminar examines how medical knowledge is constituted and disseminated in texts, images, and performances in early modern Japan and China (roughly 1600-1850). This period saw an explosion in the number of doctors, print and visual materials, and a new centrality of medical, pharmacological, and bodily knowledge and practices. Looking beyond established national, cultural, and political boundaries, we will study how shared medical traditions converge and diverge over time and space. How did literary genre shape and constrain the forms medical knowledge took and vice-versa? Who has access to and who has control over technologies of health and sickness, including learned medicine, vernacular healing, and self-care?  How was efficacy understood, contested, and proven in a medical and legal context?

Primary sources to be read include medical and crime cases, forensic reports, plays, novels, biographies, imperial encyclopedias, almanacs for daily life, illustrated pharmacopeia, religious tracts, printed advertisements, and shops signs. Film and tv episodes will be screened to explore contemporary narratives of early modern medical knowledge in the very different political and media economies of post-war China and Japan.

During the winter quarter, students write a paper on defined topic, based on the secondary literature and primary sources studied during the autumn. The seminar meets every week to discuss the progress of each student’s paper.