Global Arc

The course will cover major writers and works of the 20th century. We will examine how Japanese writers responded to modern fictional and linguistic forms imported from the West, how they negotiated what they had inherited from their long and illustrious literary past, and how postwar writers view their newly "democratized" world.

This is a survey of modern Korean fiction from the last decades of the 19th century to the present. Given the myriad transformations and conflicts of this period, the scope of readings will be wide, encompassing primary and critical texts, as well as writing from South and North Korea, Japan, and the United States. Closest attention will be paid to the literary works themselves. Thematic concerns will encompass modernity, colonialism, ideological division, democratization, gender, and diaspora. All texts in English.

This course is an introduction to the societies, cultures, and politics of contemporary East Asia. The rise of East Asia has inspired Western observers to reflect on the ways in which capitalism, democracy, and modern social relationships can unfold in different ways, shaping the landscape of daily social life. East Asian societies have attempted to emphasize equality, shared values, and a strong state presence; at the same time such values have come at significant cost in each case. The course focuses on China, Japan, and Korea (chiefly South Korea) and examines themes of economy, romance & family, authority, identity, and social ideals.

This course provides an overview of Chinese martial arts fiction and film from earliest times to the present day. The focus will be on the close-reading of literary, art-historical, and cinematic texts, but will also include discussion of the significance of these works against their broader historical and social background. Topics to be discussed: the literary/cinematic pleasure of watching violence, the relationship between violence and the law, gender ambiguity and the woman warrior, the imperial and (trans)national order of martial arts cinema, and the moral and physical economy of vengeance.

Chinese culture and history contain an abundance of sounds with distinctive timbres. They have been experienced, imagined and theorized locally and in cross-cultural dialogues. People from different times and cultures often experience them in mediated forms such as literary and graphic descriptions. This course offers an introduction to these sonic phenomena. Comparative and transmedia approaches are used to tackle their multicultural repercussions while giving equal attention to their socio-historic contexts. Students will gain an overview of the Chinese soundscape, aided by methods of sound studies and literary/cultural criticism.

The course purports to introduce students to various topics in the history of ideas in Japan between 1600 and 1945 as well as to the social and political influence that these ideas had in the three centuries and a half of revolutionary changes from premodernity to the end of the Second World War. It introduces first the language and worldviews of various schools of thought that flourished between 1600 and 1868; it then surveys the main ideas that accompanied Japanese modernization and scientific developments in the late nineteenth century and the birth of modern Japanese philosophy in the twentieth century.

The history of Japan from the origins of the Japanese people to the establishment of Tokugawa rule in 1600, using the epic war tale The Tale of the Heike as a lens. Particular emphasis will be placed on institutional and cultural history. One three-hour seminar.

The history of Japan during the period of Samurai rule. Distinctive features of Tokugawa society and culture from the foundation of the regime in 1600 to its decline in the 19th century, the opening of Japan to Western contact, the course of economic development, and the consolidation of the Meiji State. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

This course centers on a set on cinematic genres-melodrama, horror, and action-that have proven to be particularly suitable to global adaptation and appropriation. Their mobility may stem from the physical responses (tears, fright, violence) they represent or elicit. We will examine films from Hollywood, European, and East Asian cinemas to interrogate the question of cultural translatability, while at the same time reconsidering the social and cultural effects of genre itself. One of the central questions of our investigations will be: How do cinematic forms and their translation inform the discourses of nation and cultural difference?

The seminar explores the interplay of religious and aesthetic -- especially poetic -- practice in ancient China, and how the performance of texts in religious contexts contributed to the formation of Chinese cultural memory and identity from 1200 BCE through 200 CE. Combining anthropological, art historical, and literary analysis, the discussion centers on the performative nature and functions of texts and artifacts (including texts as material artifacts) in their social and religious spaces. Emphasis on close analysis of original texts (in English translation) and visuals.