Spring

Edmund Buckley was one of the first recipients of the Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago. His dissertation was published in 1895 with the title Phallicism in Japan. As a practitioner of the new “science of religions,” Buckley carried out his field work in Japan and collected hundreds of objects to supplement his historical and comparative research with copious examples of contemporary material culture. These talismans, ritual objects, amulets, maps and guides to Buddhist and Shinto pilgrimage sites, portable statues, shrines for traveling and the home, as well as numerous folk curios (such as phalli and kteis related to his research), were kept by the University of Chicago and, over the decades, were moved many times. They now, or much of them at any rate, reside within the Smart Museum of Art. They are uncatalogued, merely stored there, and are largely unknown.

This course will be an examination of the discipline of religionswissenschaft as it was applied to Japan and the religious worlds therein. Buckley’s work, as well as the remnants of his collection, will serve as a major resource. Moreover, close readings of the works of Anesaki Masaharu, Hori Ichiro, Joseph Kitagawa, Helen Hardacre, and others, will enhance our understanding of the history of this discipline as applied to the religious world of Japan.

In terms of their teachings and practices the Ch’an / Son / Zen  (禅) Buddhist traditions in China, Korea, and Japan differed significantly in their respective cultural parameters even as they shared a Sino-centric body of textual materials. The translation of these shared materials into English occurred sporadically from as early as the late 19th century but was first systematically addressed in Kyoto from the 1960s. Ruth Fuller Sasaki created a Zen practice center and a translation atelier at the Ryosen-an (龍泉庵), a cloister within the Daitokuji (大徳寺) Zen Buddhist temple complex, and staffed it with both leading scholars of Buddhism in Japan and a new generation of Zen practitioners and writers from the West. Many of the original materials from these efforts are now held in the Special Collections of the Regenstein Library here at the University of Chicago.

This course will be an examination of how Zen was initially interpreted, translated, and transmitted from the Sino-centric to the Anglophone world in the mid-20th century. The focus will be the actual notes and draft translations of key Zen texts as worked on at the Ryosen-an and its team of Japan-based scholars and practitioners. Supplemental readings will contextualize these efforts more generally with the history of Zen in the West.

From premodern to modern societies, human beings have been producing material objects that support or enrich their lives in particular social and cultural expressions. In this course, we will investigate the history of craft production and discuss the materials, methods, contexts, and meanings of skilled craft in East Asia. The making of material objects can take numerous forms, and usually involve multiple social groups who rely on different methods of knowing (e.g., tacit or explicit, individually embodied or widely shared). From the imperial and official workshop of early China to the silk weaving household in post-Meiji Japan, and from the handicraft communities in rural China of the twentieth century to the contemporary Korean Hanji paper artist – we will study a diverse range of crafts and consider various ways of making and knowing in relation to creativity and innovation, labor organizations, social structures, as well as statecraft and political power. By engaging with scholarships in history, anthropology, archaeology, art history, material culture, and history of science and technology, we will ask: How are the processes of object-, self-, and world-making intertwined? What is the relationship between making and knowing? How have these different approaches in making and/or knowing evolved alongside broader changes in the history of East Asia? What can they tell us about people’s lives and experiences in a given culture and society?

For the final project, students will have the creative option to remake a historical artifact of East Asia and reflect upon their hands-on experience in this process. All readings will be provided in English.

Annalistic records kept at the courts of the various states of ancient China were among the earliest writing in China, and certainly serve as the beginning of China's long historiographical tradition. In this course, we will first examine the Chunqiu or Spring and Autumn Annals, long since enshrined as oine of the Five Classics, by way of understanding the nature of annals. Then we will move on to examine in detail the Zhushu jinian or Bamboo Annals, discovered in 279 A.D. an ancient tomb located in what is present-day Jixian, Henan. The Bamboo Annals introduced major changes in the understanding of ancient Chinese history during the Six Dynasties through Tang period, but then came to be suspected of being a forgery. We will consider both to what extent these suspicions are valid, and also what the Bamboo Annals can reveal to us regarding ancient history

What happened to Peking Man? Where did rice cultivation begin and who made the first pottery? Why were hoards of bronzes buried and what were they used for? This course will explore themes such as the origins of humans, the beginning of agriculture, early villages and cities, metal technology, ancient writing systems, and the rise of states and civilizations in East Asia. It will also discuss the current state of archaeological research in Asia, and the role of archaeology in nation building and modern geopolitics. The rich resources available in the museums of Chicago will also be explored.

This course examines the history of Sino-Western relations through the perspective of law. Today when we talk about Chinese law in Western contexts, it is often associated with impressions such as human rights abuse and rule of person instead of law. Ever since the early eighteen century, law has assumed a prominent role in the development of Sino-Western relation. Using law as a primary analytical framework, this course surveys a variety of issues arising from Sino-Western interactions during the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries. Questions to be discussed include what role does the West, both as political actors and a source of ideology, play in shaping understanding of Chinese law and politics? How did judicial knowledge of business, sovereignty, and family structure change as China entered the global world of nation-states? How did understanding of law help construct and reconstruct notions of ethnicity, marriage, and gender over time in cross-cultural settings? You will be able to understand broad political processes such as modernization, colonization, and globalization, as well as their impact on everyday life. In addition to discussing how Western observers produced knowledge about Chinese law, we also examine the role of law in the Qing Empire’s expansion. The parallel of the two trajectories – one Chinese and one Western – will lead us to reconsider some of the assumptions in cross-cultural studies.

This course aims at an in-depth examination of the “dark side” of modernism through closing readings of various kinds of outsiders, misfits, and sociopaths in literature and film, with a focus on but not limited to East Asia and the 20th Century. If being “social” amounts above all to an acknowledgement of the plurality of human lives and an acquiescence to live together with others, what then does it mean to reject such a fundamental premise? In this course, we will investigate a variety of fictional characters who cannot or will not conform with the implicit conventions of communal life—criminals, lunatics, or simply people who find themselves struggling to sympathize with the feelings of others, etc. In tackling the aforementioned questions, our inquiry will be guided by a range of distinct methodological approaches such as moral philosophy, psychoanalysis, and queer theory. Readings may include works by Lu Xun, Ma-Xu Weibang, Yi Sang, Kinugasa Teinosuke, Edogawa Rampo, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Dazai Osamu, Mishima Yukio, Abe Kōbō, Murakami Haruki, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Herman Melville, Samuel Beckett, Gaston Leroux, Aimé Césaire, and Derek Jarman. All readings will be in English.

In this course we will read premodern Japanese literature and performance alongside modern works of page, stage, and film by Higuchi Ichiyo, Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, Enchi Fumiko, Mishima Yukio, Oba Minako, and others, which engage with these classical texts either thematically or formally. We will pay special attention to internal and external dynamics of recollection, evocation, alienation and inheritance, to shifting perceptions of orality in literature, and to explorations of alternative realities and possibilities in the remembrance (and misremembrance) of classical literature and performance.  Readings will be available in English, but those with knowledge of modern Japanese will be strongly encouraged to read in Japanese where possible. Prior knowledge of Classical Japanese is not required. Advanced undergraduates interested in joining must receive prior approval by emailing instructor.

The ideal of the amateur author has repeatedly been invoked in different moments and for different purposes throughout the history of modern China. Non-professional writers have often been considered more “authentic”— their perceptions less hindered by conventions and more sensitive to the details of everyday life. In the socialist world, amateur writing and art was one of the strategies to contrast the division between mental and manual labor. And today, we assist to a veritable explosion made possible by digital media which fully reveals the inherent contradictions of amateur creativity. Seen by many as a means to escape oppressive labor regimes, it ends up being the most commodified form of labor of our times.  This class will proceed through a series of case studies to understand the valorization of amateurism in modern Chinese culture in historical and comparative perspective. Special attention will be paid to the media environments that make it possible, and to the ways amateur writing and art depict labor. Our overall goal, in sum, will be to familiarize ourselves with some of the ways in which the relation between creativity, amateurism, and labor has been represented and theorized.

This course engages with the various techniques and practices associated with sound in Japanese culture, ranging from the 18th century through the contemporary era. The media covered will include literature, language reform movements, theater, cinema (both silent and sound), recorded music, radio broadcasting, manga, video games and anime. We will also read recent sound-oriented approaches to literary and cultural studies from scholars from both Japan and elsewhere. All readings will be in English.