Spring

Are there spatial dispositions particular to China? How do historical and culturally specific projects reify or challenge spatial categories? This course is an object-orientated exploration of space as an analytical category for the interpretation of Chinese cases: we may consider burials, temples, imperial cities, landscape, etc. Readings will include seminal and recent texts on space and place, and writings in area studies which make use of these concepts. Particular attention will be paid to hierarchical arrangements that conceptualize as infrastructures of power, in particular those that are institutional and/or geopolitical in nature.

The content of this course is reading and discussion of classics of historical literature in modern Chinese history from 1965 through to 2012. Emphasis is placed on how historiographical changes during this period are manifest in each work. Each week we will read and discuss the assigned monograph, and students will write of an informed review essay of it. The final requirement is a term paper in which the student will construct an analytical history of the historical literature of the period.

This course will explore multiple definitions of fascism in relation to modern Japanese culture. We will read works of literature and literary criticism typically identified as fascist, as well as Japanese critiques of fascism, from the 1930s and beyond. We will also read a number of theoretical texts from Japan and elsewhere that analyze fascism as a political and cultural form. Advanced reading knowledge of Japanese is required; a large portion of the course readings will be in Japanese, although some selections will be provided in English.

This course will introduce students to the digital humanities by focusing on the acquisition of a single quantitative method (social network analysis) and its application to a single historical context (literary modernism). The course familiarizes students with ongoing debates surrounding the digital humanities and the use of computational methods for literary critique, but will also move past meta-discussion by providing an opportunity to explore these methods through collaborative projects. Readings will be focused on theories of literary modernism and sociological approaches to the study of culture. Students will learn how to build network datasets, manipulate visualization software, run simple analytics, and think critically about the potential uses of social-scientific methods. No prerequisites required.

What is a ghost? How and why are ghosts represented in particular forms in a particular culture at particular historical moments? This course will explore the complex meanings, both literal and figurative, of ghosts and spirits in Chinese culture across a range of genres: the ghost story, opera, visual imagery, and film. Issues to be explored include: 1) the confrontation of individual mortality and collective anxieties over the loss of the historical past; 2) the relationship between the supernatural, gender, and sexuality; 3) the visualization of ghosts and spirits in art, theater, and cinema; 4) the politics of ghosts in modern times. Course readings will be in English translation, and no prior background is required, but students who read Chinese will be encouraged to work with sources in the original. This year's class will be designed to take full advantage of special Chicago events in spring 2014, notably the exhibition "Performing Images: Opera in Chinese Visual Culture" at the Smart Museum, and Mary Zimmerman's new production of The White Snake at the Goodman Theater.

This course examines the ways in which authors, editors, and public intellectuals redefined the social function of literature and sought to build communities of readers in early 20th century China. We will combine close readings of texts with a survey of important institutions and concepts, familiarizing ourselves with the literary circles and associations, the journals and publishers, and the notions of self and community that shaped literary practices in a tumultuous period. How are we to rethink the relationship between literary writing—per se a highly individualized and often solitary activity—with the forms of sociality, collaborative practices, and global networks of translation in which it was historically embedded? What are the visions of community that the texts themselves sought to promote? What are, in the final analysis, the relevant contexts for the study of modern Chinese literature? Our explorations will be both historical and historiographical, and will touch on the main debates that shape modern Chinese literary studies today.

"Feminine space" denotes an architectural or pictorial space that is perceived, imagined, and represented as a woman. Unlike an isolated female portrait or an individual female symbol, a feminine space is a spatial entity: an artificial world composed of landscape, vegetation, architecture, atmosphere, climate, color, fragrance, light, and sound, as well as selected human occupants and their activities. This course traces the construction of this space in traditional Chinese art (from the second to the eighteenth centuries) and the social/political implications of this constructive process.

This course will offer a survey of contemporary media culture in Japan and an introduction to leading media theory and criticism. Centered primarily on televisual and internet media, we will also consider related media forms that feature screens or interface displays, such as mobile phones, game media, etc. However, rather than imagining these things as part of an abstract notion of a national popular culture, we will investigate the type of media environment and industrial practices from which they emerge and contribute to. Each week will cover a different theme – and often introduce a new media object – but the course will be organized around drawing connections between these instances and how audiences interpret and interact with these media as part of a more general environment.

Often incorporating elements of the ludic, the lewd, the grotesque and the ecstatic in its expression, the Japanese religious landscape offers a rich and variegated terrain of ideas and practices that cannot easily be reduced to separate and distinct religious traditions (Shinto, Buddhism, Daoism).  This course, in providing a survey of Japanese religions from premodern times to the present, will focus specifically on aspects of Japanese religiosity that not only play with these traditional boundaries, but also represent forms of “play” in and of themselves – from dance, story-telling, visual media, to ritual.  How has “play” helped shape the socioreligious landscape of the archipelago? How can we understand religious modes of expression that call into question the very nature of quotidian reality?  What social significance do these forms carry back into our daily lives?  Finally, what are the implications for our conception of “religion” by understanding it as a form of “play”?  The class will be conducted in a lecture/discussion format and will consist of close reading and discussion of texts assigned. Prior knowledge of Japanese history or religious thought is helpful but not a prerequisite for this course.

This course explores the society and culture of Japan during the period of “total war” from 1937 to 1945. Readings will be divided between recent scholarly literature and a rich and diverse body of primary sources (in translation) including diaries, literature, and memoirs, state propaganda, school textbooks, etc. Each student will be required to write a focused research paper of approximately 15 pages on a topic of their choice.