Spring

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 course invites students to engage critically with the materials and mediums used to create East Asian artworks, spanning from antiquity to the contemporary era. In addition to exploring subject matter and iconography specific to various historical periods, we will approach these works as physical, image-bearing objects and architectural structures—considering how their material forms shape both their creation and reception.

As a COSI Mellon Museum Seminar, the course meets once weekly in a three-hour session held at local collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Museum, the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, Heritage Museum of Asian Art, and the Smart Museum of Art. Each session focuses on a major art medium—such as metalwork, scroll painting, albums and bound books, folding screens, stone carvings and rubbings, and woodblock prints. Students will read selected primary sources in translation alongside modern scholarship, and participate in close, in-person examination of objects. Over the quarter, students will build a historically grounded understanding of prominent East Asian art forms, gain hands-on experience in object observation and handling, and develop a critical sensitivity to various visual media in the contemporary world.

This course provides a survey of the history of popular music in East Asia since 1900, with a focus on questions of media technologies and their impact, practices of circulation and translation, political uses of music, and ideologies of authenticity and liveness. The course introduces a wide variety of musical genres from China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, ranging from forms considered 'traditional' to contemporary J-Pop, K-Pop and C-Pop. All readings are in English, and no background in music is required or expected. This course is open only to Masters students at the grad level.

This course will investigate the various understandings of the nature of consciousness—its extent and function, its grounding or groundlessness, its relation to body and will, its distinction from or identity with experienced physical entities and envisioned ethical ideals--in pre-modern Chinese philosophies. Readings will include early Confucian, Daoist and syncretic speculations (Mengzi, Xunzi, Zhuangzi, Huainanzi), medieval Buddhist idealisms and omnicentrisms (Tiantai, Huayan, Chan), and the representative thinkers of the various branches of Neo-Confucian thought (Zhang Zai, Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming). All readings will be done in English, with optional supplemental reading sessions of the original texts for students proficient in classical Chinese.

Are there too many people in the world? Is human reproduction a right, a duty, or an interest? In 1798, a pamphlet titled An Essay on the Principle of Population was published anonymously in London. The author claimed that a growing population increases the supply of labor, inevitably lowering wages and living standards. The author warned that future improvements for humanity would be hindered if governments failed to address the issue of overpopulation. What is now known as the Malthusian Law of Population sparked continuous debate among politicians, economists, statisticians, and philosophers for over two centuries.
Today, however, the global population debate has shifted. While concerns over overpopulation remain in some contexts, many parts of the world are now grappling with a fertility crisis. Declining birth rates have become a pressing issue, raising urgent questions about aging populations, shrinking workforces, and the sustainability of economic and social systems. Historically accounting for approximately one-fifth of the world's population, China holds a unique position in demography and politics. In the current landscape of falling birth rates across East Asia—affecting China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—and rising skepticism toward globalization, this course offers essential insights into the historical and ongoing dynamics of population control, economic inequality, and shifting global demographics.