Global Arc

This course examines "dangerous bodies" - bodies that transgress existing gender and racial norms in Chinese and Sinophone cultures. Situated at the intersection of literary, film, performance, gender and ethnic studies, this course provides an introduction to the shifting social meanings of the body in relation to historical masculinity, femininity, and Chineseness. We examine different cross-dressed figures, ranging from Mulan, cross-dressed male opera singer, WWII Japanese/Chinese spy, to experimental queer cinema, in a study that unpacks whether these transgressive bodies represent social change or a tool for restoring traditional norms.

A critical survey of important literary, critical, and popular texts in postwar Japan. Readings and discussion of translated texts by writers and thinkers such as Kawabata, Oe, Maruyama, and Abe as well as by lesser-known women writers, avant-garde poets, and comic writers. Topics include the impact of war and urbanization, existentialism, ethnicity, postmodernism, and feminism. One three-hour seminar.

This is a broad historical examination of Korean cinema from both sides of the DMZ. We start with some rare surviving colonial period films and work our way to the very recent films of the "Korean wave" era. Our thermatic focus will be post-coloniality, ideological division, war, national reconstruction, democratization, and intensified global capitalism; our critical focus will be on problems of nation, class, and gender. At the heart of work for the course will be attention to the films themselves, where we will try to account critically for shifts in style and form.

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.

Using applied microeconomic theory and case studies, this course examines the impact of digital technology on markets. In a connected market, information is freely and instantly available to all participants. We ask how these features affect the way markets function. Topics include the economics of platform markets and multisided markets, the impact of the internet on the news media, education, health care and new industries, such as big-data driven industries, social networks, technological innovation and intellectual property, internet security, privacy and other regulatory issues.