Global Arc

Whether we look at its speed, connectivity and convergence, the geographic reach of its exports, or the contradictions that characterize its relationship to social reality, contemporary Korean media poses provocative questions about conditions of life in Korea and the mechanisms of communications and cultural technologies globally. Through examination of a range of practices across the mediascape (TV dramas, music, webtoons, films, advertisements, etc.) and phenomenon that have arisen from them (the Korean Wave, the rise of national sports heroes, etc.) the class will consider the force of contemporary media in shaping the very idea of Korea.

The seminar explores conversion in media discourses and practices of the Cold War, with a focus on Asia. Conversion is approached as a protean figure spanning religious doctrine, forces of economic mobility, cross-cultural encounters, and states of political subjectivity. Its media forms include portrayals of brainwashing, control of networks and content, and ideas about media's hypnotic power. The seminar inquires into how conversion attained heightened conceptual force during the Cold War and will examine quasi-scientific notions of brainwashing, the proliferation of religious cults, and the hardening of ideological binarism.

Participants will develop multi-sensorial approaches to the study of diverse media. The workshop fosters new conceptual and aesthetic vocabularies for tracing the trans-disciplinary circulations of media today. Assembling the works of Japanese female artists, writers, and musicians together with scholarly perspectives on Afro-Asian intimacies, decolonial epistemologies, feminist cartographies, posthuman subjectivities, urban ecologies, and more, students collaboratively forge novel understandings of media thinking/making at the edges of the "legible" territories of knowledge.

Considers the developing repertoire of ideas in China to the end of the Chin period, with key philosophical, political, ethical, and scientific concepts treated in terms of their social context and subsequent influence. One three-hour seminar. A prior course in East Asian studies is desirable but not required.

The main facets and changes in the outlook of the intellectual elite in society and politics from the establishment of the literati in the 11th century to their survival under the Manchu conquest and incursions from Western powers. The focus is on the preservation of cultural integrity in the face of internal and external political and ideological challenges. One three-hour seminar. A prior course in East Asian studies is desirable but not required.

The course considers ethnographies from postwar to present that attempt to make sense of Japanese society through specific theoretical prisms and historical moments. The course also considers Japan as a site to study pressing social issues of global relevance: including foodways and food culture; aging and longevity; public health, work/life balance, and community environments; and global capital.

Intermediate Vietnamese I will expand your structures and knowledge of the Vietnamese language and multifaceted culture through idioms, proverbs, dialogues, and stories. Classroom activities and practices will help you communicate effectively and absorb meaning through speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

This course explores the Middle Ages (300-1700) of the East Asian world (China, Japan, and Korea) as well as the varying links between these polities and Inner and South Asia. Particular focus will be devoted to the rise of Buddhist notions of kingship in South Asia and their transmission to the major states of Inner and East Asia, as well as the rise of notions of ethnicity, and the creation of distinct states and cultures of China, Korea and Japan. Topics will be chronological, emphasizing the movements of ideas and peoples, with a framework centered on influential figures who propagated the spread of goods and ideas across borders.

This course is designed to introduce the culture and history of Japan, and to examine how one understands and interprets the past. In addition to considering how a culture, a society, and a state develop, we will try to reconstruct the tenor of life in "ancient" and "medieval" Japan and chart how patterns of Japanese civilization shifted through time.

This course offers an overview of contemporary China, focusing on its transformation from Maoist socialism to the current Chinese society. It outlines Maoist socialism, and explores the changes since the late 1970s, giving special attention to tensions in this transformation: the tension between decentralized social life and the sovereignty of the post--Mao state; between the memories of Maoist socialism and current cultural politics; between the loss and reinvention of traditions; between the increasing mobility and social re-stratification; and between China's change and the existing theories about the way a society changes.