East Asian Lang & Lit (LLEA)

This course is intended for complete beginners who want to get a quick "bite" of Chinese language and culture. It will cover an introduction to the sound, writing, and grammatical systems of Chinese language, gives an insight into ancient versus modern Chinese culture and society, as well as introducing some basic conversational Mandarin Chinese over the course. For those who are interested in further developing their competence in Chinese language and culture after completion of this course, they can take Elementary Chinese I in spring or First Year Chinese I in fall.

For all students. This course is designed to equip students with the fundamental knowledge about the history of Japanese language in its social and cultural contexts, along with the essential linguistic characteristics of the language. Although the main focus of the course is "language", this course is not part of the regular language courses. Students will learn basic facts about how the language "evolved" into its modern form through the history of Japanese civilization. They will also learn fundamental features of Japanese sounds, grammar, and usage in social contexts that are not explicitly covered in language classes from a linguistic perspective. This course is experimental in a way that it explores the language from a variety of perspectives such as linguistics, history, and culture.

This course is designed to equip students with the fundamental knowledge about the history of Japanese language in its social and cultural contexts, along with the essential linguistic characteristics of the language. Students will learn basic facts about how the language "evolved" into its modern form through the history of Japanese civilization. They will also learn fundamental features of Japanese sounds, grammar, and usage in social contexts. For those who are interested in learning the language, this course will be especially beneficial in preparing themselves as a beginning language learner. Upon completion of this course, those students may take Elementary Japanese I (offered in spring semesters) or First Year Japanese I (offered in fall semesters).

An introduction to the study of East Asian literature. The course will focus on either Chinese or Japanese literature.

This course emphasizes language structure, including phonetics (the sounds of language), phonology (the sound systems of language), morphology and lexicon (structured meanings in words), morphemes (units of meaning), syntax, and semantics.

This course is designed to equip students with the fundamental knowledge about the history of Japanese language in its social and cultural contexts, along with the essential linguistic characteristics of the language. Although the main focus of the course is the language, this course is not part of the regular language courses. Students will learn basic facts about how the language "evolved" into its modern form through the history of Japanese civilization. They will also learn fundamental features of Japanese sounds, grammar, and usage in social contexts that are not explicitly covered in language classes from a linguistic perspective. Students who plan to take the beginning level of Japanese language course, this course will be especially beneficial in gaining a head start.

What does it mean to be Korean? How are definitions of Korea and “Koreanness” affected by recent waves of globalization and migration? This course investigates the social construction of race and nationhood within the context of South Korea. While many believe South Korea to be ethnically and racially homogeneous, the country has increasingly opened up its borders to foreign migration to offset the adverse impact of its rapidly aging society. More than one in ten marriages in South Korea involves a foreign-born person today, and growing numbers of racially mixed people consider themselves Korean. In addition, members of the Korean diaspora have started to “return” to their country of origin in recent years, only to find that they are marginalized because of their culturally different backgrounds. This course introduces students to sociological theories of race, ethnicity, and nationhood by analyzing how South Koreans define self and Other. We will learn how racial and ethnic identities continue to evolve as the contexts of migration change. We will also learn why it is difficult for individuals of particular backgrounds to find a sense of belonging in the societies in which they live and work.

In this course, you will learn theoretical frameworks and contemporary works in linguistic variation and change, examining how this variation can reflect social structures and construct diverse social identities. You will also examine those places where language and culture come together to affect our interactions, concentrating on areas particularly important to language teaching, learning, and usage.

This course offers a comprehensive understanding of digital literacy in relation to teaching and researching language acquisition. Students will learn a variety of digital writing technologies and be trained to think critically about cultural and communicative consequences of the digital media. Students will also gain the critical perspective and literacy tools needed to actively apply in language teaching and researching.

This course offers a comprehensive understanding of digital literacy in relation to teaching and researching language acquisition. Students will learn a variety of digital writing technologies and be trained to think critically about cultural and communicative consequences of the digital media. Students will also gain the critical perspective and literacy tools needed to actively apply in language teaching and researching.

This course enlists the martial arts to explore themes from history, philosophy, anthropology, aesthetic theory, media studies, and sports as embodied practice. By merging multiple dimensions of historical identity, artistic expression, and cultural practice, martial arts have a unique ability to access the human imagination. From Hong Kong cinemas, to MMA pay-per-view events, to online video games, martial arts are intertwined with global popular culture. This course synthesizes the global transmission of martial arts through an interdisciplinary approach to the anthropological history of symbolically violent media. By tracking the proliferation of the martial arts in popular media, from Yip Man film sequels, to muay thai youtube clips, to karate supply catalogues and dojo iconography, the cultural lives of these arts are revealed. We will examine these cultural expressions in a range of styles including gōngfu styles in China, jujitsu in Japan, kali/escrima in the Philippines, pencak silat in Indonesia, and savate in France. In this way, the course crafts informative linkages between the cultural variations of martial arts and their global influence in popular consciousness.

Silk embroidery. Jade carving. Stone sculpture. Woodblock printing. Ink painting. Brush calligraphy. This course offers an introduction to the broad field of Asian art through its key artistic techniques, artworks, and historical contexts. The semester is organized into units covering fundamental art processes that reveal the closely intertwined development of arts and culture across Asia. Through hands-on making activities, classroom discussion, and close examination of objects, we will explore a span of nearly three thousand years in China, Korea, and Japan. Over the course of the semester, we will also discover the surprising ways in which the study of Asian art can be brought into meaningful dialogue with approaches to contemporary art and with broader debates throughout the fields of art history, Asian studies, and the history of religion.

In 1997 Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) suggested that in the future Buddhism, rather than Marxism, might be the principal challenge to the Church. He has also, of course, fully endorsed the declaration of the Second Vatican Council that the Church "rejects nothing that is true and holy" in other religions, including Buddhism. Against the background of these two judgments - which may seem, but really are not, mutually contradictory - this course will consider: The fundamental differences between Christianity and Buddhism, both in matters of doctrine and in matters of spiritual and moral practice. The reasons why - despite, or perhaps because of, those differences - Buddhism today attracts increasing interest in cultures once shaped chiefly by Christianity The beliefs and values that both Buddhism and Christianity can legitimately be said to share and the ways in which they can reasonably be expected to collaborate with one another. Our overriding purpose will be to explore the ways in which Christians, especially Catholic Christians, can, should, or must view and relate to Buddhism. In the course of this exploration, the course will also provide a basic introduction to the fundamentals of Buddhism.

This course focuses on major films representing milestones in Japanese film history, from the 1930s to the turn of the twenty-first century. We will examine masterpieces by great directors, including, Kurosawa Akira, Ozu Yasujirô, Mizoguchi Kenji, and Miyazaki Hayao, among others. We will explore genres from samurai and historical dramas to comedy, science fiction, and animated fantasy. In addition, we will consider the capacity of movies to provide and provoke cultural, social, and political commentary. On the way, we will take stock of significant contributions to film technique and film theory.

An overview of the principles of language structure, the processes of first and second language acquisition, and the issues involved in assessing language proficiency with special attention paid to the application of linguistic knowledge to the multilingual and multicultural school setting.

Where do regional and national identities collide? Has the rise of the internet and globalization made national borders increasingly obsolete? Or, has it ironically caused people to embrace ultra-nationalism and xenophobia? This class analyzes these questions within the context of East Asia. We will study the growing impact of cultural hybridization—and in particular, the soft power of K-Pop boy bands and Korean soap operas—on fan culture, online communities, and migratory patterns. We will then juxtapose these trends with more sobering evidence of the lingering effects of Cold War politics, the Japanese empire, and territorial disputes in Korea, China, and Japan in the past decade. By using materials from history, anthropology, and literature, students will explore the influence of colonialism, nationalism, and globalization on everyday life across the continent. All majors and backgrounds are welcome. No prior knowledge about Asian languages or topics is required.

The course provides students with a unique introduction to Asia in all its diversity, ranging from its languages, cultures, and histories to its political and economic systems and its relations with the United States. As the global balance of power continues to shift towards Asia, it is more important than ever for Notre Dame students to understand the continent's many complexities. This course provides just that: an opportunity to understand the multiple domestic and foreign forces that constitute the expanding global presence of these nations and regions (Burma, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam). Classroom sessions will be structured around a set of common assumptions about Asia as a whole or about specific Asian countries. Through reading, discussion, and lectures, students will be encouraged to reflect critically on those assumptions and consider a range of alternative interpretations. Assignments include primary work from visiting experts and will revolve around making comparative connections across the range of topics. Readings for the course will introduce perspectives gained from these experts' research and practice so that students will be able to formulate their own critical understanding of the region and its global environment.

This course covers the inherently interdisciplinary underpinnings of sociolinguistics, the distinct subfield of linguistic study which seeks to understand the complexities of how human language is used in a myriad of contexts. More simply put: determining and measuring the relationship between language and society. Students examine spaces where language and constructs like class, gender, race, regional orientation, come together to affect our interactions on a micro (interpersonal) and macro (international) scale. With sociolinguistic lenses, we can evaluate how we use language to influence large-scale discourse like political rhetoric to anthropological understandings of diverse cultural identities and even internally investigating how our brains react to varieties of linguistic style, register, and dialect based on the social constructs informing the social group in question.

This course is on the religion, philosophy, and intellectual history of China and introduces the student to the worldview and life experience of Chinese as they have been drawn from local traditions, as well as worship and sacrifice to heroes and the cult of the dead. Through a close reading of primary texts in translation, it also surveys China’s grand philosophical legacy of Daoism, Buddhism, “Confucianism,” and “Neo-Confucianism.”

This new lecture and discussion course offers students a detailed introduction to the diverse, dynamic and widespread presence of religion in contemporary Chinese life. China is—increasingly—a nation of energetic religious believers. Today there are more than 95 million Christians in China, 25 million Muslims, and as many as 500,000,000 practitioners of traditional local rites of sacrifice and worship to deities and spirits (most importantly ancestors). In the last decade plural religious traditions have grown with a speed greater than that of the economic and political reforms. It is within this specific context that students will learn about the impact of religious ideas, practices, and organizations on social, political and economic phenomena and explore the role of religion in the consolidation of individual, communal, and national identity. Adopting a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the class will ascertain the impact of `various Chinese religious traditions: Catholicism, Christianity, Islam, Daoism, Buddhism, and popular sects, on the internal socio-political structure of the Chinese state. As well the course will evaluate religions and their effects on shaping power relations on a regional, national, and local level. The class is discussion based, supplemented by lectures, student presentations, and documentary films. No knowledge of Chinese is required.

History is not a single "true story," but many competing narratives, each defined by values, interests, and political commitments. This course on ancient Japanese history provides an overview of three sets of competing narratives: first, the politically charged question of Japan's origins, when we explore archeological evidence and chronicles of the Sun Goddess; second, the question of whether culture (through continental imports of writing, religious forms, and statecraft) or nature (as disease and environmental degradation) defined the Yamato state from the sixth to the ninth century; and, third, whether Heian court power rested on economic, political, military, judicial, or aesthetic grounds and if its foundations were undermined internally or by the invasion of the Mongols. In examining these competing narratives, we aim to develop the disciplined imagination necessary to enter another culture and another time.

Around 1600, Japan closed itself off for 250 years, neither importing food nor exporting people. It was, in short, an almost hermetic ecological system, and yet, instead of outstripping their natural resources, Japanese people managed to attain a level of well-being above that of most other people. Some scholars have acclaimed this era an "eco-utopia" while others point to problems with this view. This course explores the interplay between political, social, economic, and ecological forces asking whether Tokugawa Japan modeled resilience.

This course provides students with a critical understanding of how South Korean society is organized, the major social issues that have dominated the contemporary era, and how systems of social inequality have changed since the postwar period. We will analyze in particular, three major periods of social change, including 1) the democratization movement of the 1970s and 1980s, 2) the Asian financial crisis and its impact on social inequality and poverty, and finally, 3) South Korea’s aging crisis and its implications for the future. No prior knowledge of Asian languages or topics is required.

This course is an interdisciplinary introduction to Chinese history and culture, beginning with the archaeological record and extending over the dynastic period and into early 17th century. Providing a chronological overview of development of the Chinese civilization, this course will focus on a few themes and a few approaches. We pose several questions, such as: what forces came together to produce Chinese civilization, and how did those forces adhere or grow apart, persist or perish, over time? How can literature from the past reveal details of the way people lived, of the values and ideas that captivated people's attention, and of the way important historical forces were played out in people's lives? Finally, when first encounter ring the West in modern times, China underwent economic, military, and cultural crises. How did their leaders and subjects respond to those challenges and how did their perceptions of modernity shape the way they treated their cultural heritage, engaged the present, and envisioned their future?

This course offers an opportunity for an exploration of arguably the most significant natural and man-made disaster in recent history, an event with critical implications for social and environmental justice. The 2011 Tohoku, Japan, earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent Fukushima nuclear tragedy presents a compelling case study of the challenges to recovery and resilience in the wake of major disruption. Around the world, communities are grappling with unprecedented health, economic, and social challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic - the topic of recovery and resilience is more salient than ever. Building on faculty research and site experiences in Japan, students will examine public reports, scholarly analyses, and community stakeholder testimonials to formulate informed perspectives on the elements of and challenges to community recovery and resilience in the wake of this disaster. Central activities will be determining and assessing specific indicators of resilience, to include socioeconomic indicators, which are often left out of existing analyses that typically focus on infrastructure, and considering the issues of economic and social justice inherent in community preparation for, vulnerability to, and response management of natural and man-made disasters.

How has the Internet changed the ways people voice their opinions, gather information, and organize social movements? Have marginalized groups become more empowered by mobilizing online? Why does increased social media activity often exacerbate political polarization and populism? How has social media affected national elections? This course will analyze these questions and more within the context of East Asia. In analyzing the impact of the Internet on state-society relations, students will analyze state attempts to control media consumption and surveil Internet-use in Communist regimes like North Korea and China. We will compare these trends with similar efforts made by state actors in advanced industrialized countries such as Japan and South Korea. While the Internet-usage is in many ways, still tightly regulated by the state, the Web has in many ways, also empowered people formerly detached from politics to become politically engaged. This has led to both political polarization (and the influx of political extremist groups), as well as large-scale grassroots movements for democratization. Along these lines, we will examine the growth of far-right "netizen" groups in Japan, South Korea, and China and the subsequent proliferation of hate crimes, populism, and ultra-nationalism. We will also read studies of how teenagers used their presence on social media and the blogosphere to eventually lead large-scaled national protests like the 2016 Candlelight Movement in Seoul and the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Finally, in studying the global diffusion of social protests in the digital age, we will analyze how the #MeToo movement reignited new waves of feminism in South Korea, Japan, and China. What implications does the Internet have for the future democracy?

The English word “love” encompasses a variety of meanings: love of one’s family, love of one’s country, love for a friend, even God’s love, but the subject of much Western poetry and popular songs for centuries, to say nothing of countless stories, is erotic love—our desire to possess another, to become one with another. In Japan’s classical literature, erotic love is often seen as a kind of “demonic” or spiritual possession, an out-of-body passion so powerful that it transcends even death. In this course we will explore how this view of love compares to our own views, as depicted in Japanese fiction, poetry, and drama. If our view of love has been largely shaped by our Judeo-Christian tradition, the various images of love we find in Japanese literature were shaped by a quite different tradition: the indigenous religion of Shinto (‘the way of the gods’), and Buddhism and Confucianism imported from China. How different are these views from our own? If we believe that erotic love is a universal human attribute, how and why does culture, ours or any other, rein in such basic human impulses and to what end?

Modern Japanese history has seen a series of revolutions - in politics and government, but also in science and technology, media, gender roles, and lifestyle. The Japanese people tested, debated, encouraged, and denied the near-constant revolutions they were living through via literature that metamorphosed to resemble everything from millennium-old Japanese romantic poetry to contemporary French travelogues. In this course, students will traverse constantly-evolving territory of modern Japanese literature to see how revolutions affect literature, and how literature affects revolutions.

This course offers an in-depth examination of one of the world's most popular media: Japanese animation. Students will study the art of animation and the development of the anime industry with an eye toward understanding how this supposedly unique form of art in fact responds to and affects global events and art forms. Students will learn to not only passively watch, but actively see what the colors and lines on screen are accomplishing.

This course examines how emotion and power are explored in modern Korean literature from the early 20 th century to our contemporary moment of the 2020s. We will read novels, short stories, autobiography, poetry, and critical essays by colonial period intellectuals, activists of the democratization movement, contemporary novelists, and artists of the Korean diaspora. How do Korean writers, past and present, represent emotion and power in literature? What does emotion reveal about power, and what does power feel like? Topics discussed in the course will include popular culture, social movements, colonialism, gender and sexuality, race, class, and diaspora. From our vantage point as readers witnessing the global popularization of Korean culture, we will examine how modern Korean literature navigates Korean identity, creates new communities, and imagines a more just world. All course materials are in English and no previous knowledge of Korean is required.

This course provides an introduction to Korean culture and history through contemporary Korean films. Exploring Korean culture and history through films is recognized as an effective method which helps students understand the past events and interpret embedded messages from the periods as well as explore cinematic representations of past events. This course will guide students to an extensive understanding of modern and contemporary Korean history and thematic issues, including colonization by Japan and Korean nationalism until 1945, the division of the Korean peninsula and Korean War in the 1950s, rapid industrialization in the 1960s to 1980s, democracy and human rights in the 1980s to 1990s, social issues in the 2000s such as Korean diaspora, multiculturalism, inter-Korean confrontation and reconciliation, feminism, familism, cultural hybridity, Korean capitalism and social class. No prior acquaintance with the Korean language and history is required.

This course surveys Chinese culture and civilization from the beginnings to the present time. Readings include traditional historical, philosophical, political, religious and literary texts as well as modern scholarship. Students are encouraged to bring in their experience, living or reading, of Western culture in order to form comparative and reflective perspectives.

This course introduces Chinese popular culture through the lens of contemporary Chinese cultural phenomena, including food culture, popular music, documentary films, martial arts movies, copycat culture, youth culture, and social media. It will be organized thematically. The lectures will introduce the major themes, including gender issues, social justice, government censorship, subcultures, family and state, localization and globalization, in a broad form and employ examples and case studies to provide students with a better understanding of actual Chinese society as it exists today. We will investigate the historical, sociopolitical, and aesthetical roots and impacts of the cultural phenomena. All readings are in English, no prior knowledge of Chinese language or culture is required.

This course provides an overview of the historical development of Japanese civilization and culture from the prehistoric era up through the 19th Century. Students will acquire a basic knowledge of Japanese geography, historical periods, changing class structure and political organization. The main emphasis, however, is on the development of the fine arts, such as painting, architecture, gardens, and sculpture. The course also introduces students to the important and continuous influence of Chinese art, literature, Buddhism and Confucianism. Through readings of selected literary works (prose fiction, poetry, essays on aesthetics), students will learn how shared aesthetic values changed over time in relation to their social and political context.

LLEA 30501 is an introductory course to classical Chinese for students who have completed at least 4th year Chinese or its equivalent. Students will learn a variety of texts ranging from idiom stories to canonical works such as Confucian Analects and Mencius. Classroom discussion emphasizes on sentence structures, the usage of grammatical particles, and Chinese culture. Upon successful completion of this course, students are expected to understand the main structures of classical Chinese, appreciate the differences between classical Chinese and modern Chinese, and be able to translate classical texts into modern Chinese. They will learn more about Chinese history and culture and acquire the basic skills of using classical Chinese in formal situations and writings. The course helps to lay a solid foundation for future advanced research on traditional Chinese culture or modern Chinese society. As the course is conducted exclusively in Chinese, students will also be able to solidify and enhance their proficiency in modern Chinese. Credits earned from this course may be used to fulfill Chinese major and minor requirements for upper-division courses in Chinese literature and culture.

This introduction to modern Japanese history focuses on political, social, economic, and military affairs in Japan from around 1600 to the early post-World War II period. It considers such paradoxes as samurai bureaucrats, entrepreneurial peasants, upper-class revolutionaries, and Asian fascists. The course has two purposes: (1) to provide a chronological and structural framework for understanding the debates over modern Japanese history, and (2) to develop the skill of reading texts analytically to discover the argument being made. The assumption operating both in the selection of readings and in the lectures is that Japanese history, as with all histories, is the site of controversy. Our efforts at this introductory level will be dedicated to understanding the contours of some of the most important of these controversies and judging, as far as possible, the evidence brought to bear in them.

Philosophers and theologians have long been interested in Buddhism, not least because it promises a complete religion, spirituality, and culture without the existence of God. This class introduces students to the life of the Buddha, the Buddhist religious orders, and the various schools of Buddhist philosophy in India, China, Korea, Japan, and Tibet. Topics explored include refutations of God's existence, reincarnation and future lives, the nature of the human person, and the origin of suffering. In addition to these fundamentals of Buddhist doctrine, we will also look at the various Buddhist practices (including meditation, liturgy, monastic life, and canon formation) in light of the larger social, artistic, and cultural traditions of Asia. No previous knowledge of Buddhism is required.

In this special course designed for inquisitive international economics / Chinese and Japanese majors, students will attend a number of lectures, panels, and seminars on campus during the semester, with a follow-up discussion for each led by either a visitor or a member of the economics or romance languages faculty. Before each session, students will be expected to complete a short reading assignment. At each follow-up session, the students will submit a 1-2 page summary and analysis of the talk, with a critical question for discussion. The goal is to encourage students to enrich their major experience by participating in the intellectual discussions that occur amongst ND and visiting scholars across the campus, distinguished alumni, and professionals in the field.

This class aims to examine the issues surrounding media technology's relationship to society through the lens of science fiction, which takes these issues as one of its core concerns. We will structure our inquiry around three important moments in Japanese media history, beginning with the popularization of film in the early 20th century before jumping ahead to the Cold War-era flowering of cybernetic discourse in the 1960s, and concluding at the turn of the 21st century with the rapid spread of the internet. Guiding our discussions will be a few central questions: How does sci-fi both reflect issues of its day, and how does it comment upon those issues? What work is the genre of sci-fi performing for each text? How does science fiction contribute to ideas of individual and social identity? Students can expect to come away from the class with a more sophisticated understanding of modern and contemporary Japanese history, sharper skills of academically rigorous communication, and more nuanced ideas about the interplay of text, society, and identity.

A survey course introducing students to the major themes and genres of Chinese literature through selected readings of representative texts.

This course provides students with a unique introduction to Asia in all its diversity, ranging from its languages, cultures, and histories to its political and economic systems and its relations with the US. As the global balance of power is shifting towards Asia, it is more important than ever for Notre Dame students to have more than just basic knowledge about the continent. This course provides just that: an opportunity to take your understanding of Asia beyond the level of what you read in the newspapers, providing you with the knowledge and the tools to formulate your own critical understanding of the region and its global environment. Different types of writing about Asia – academic, journalistic, diplomatic, political, popular – will be examined alongside different ways in which Asia has been and continues to be represented in the western imagination. Asian perspectives will be accessed through English-language writings and English-language media published in Asia. Guest lecturers with specific expertise on individual Asian countries will join the class at regular intervals. Assessment methods will include both written work and classroom (group) presentations.

In the chaotic period that followed the bursting of postwar Japan’s economic bubble, Japanese popular culture has provided one of few bright spots in an ongoing economic malaise. This course traces the development of that popular culture through manga, literature, fashion, music, and animation.

Korean popular culture permeates transnational mediascapes as evidenced by the virality of films such as Parasite and K-Pop Demon Hunters and the international success of writers such as Han Kang. We are witnessing the ongoing global popularization of Korean culture and its widespread circulation to the public in Korea and around the world. This course will examine Korean popular culture through film, literature, television, and streaming media with a focus on how popular culture shapes the human experience as well as our global geopolitical realities. We will think about Korean popular culture in creative ways that include a variety of forms and explore scholarship from an array of fields such as cultural studies, cinema and media studies, and performance studies that debate history, reception, identity, and soft power among other topics. All course materials will be in English and no knowledge of Korean is required. This course fulfills the literature and culture requirement for the Korean minor.

What can popular culture do? What makes culture popular? What makes popular culture Japanese? This class represents an invitation to think critically about our entertainment, and to take popular culture seriously. In this class, we will take the materials of pop culture as our primary objects of analysis and ask what they say about the society that produced them, as well as what they say to that society. In other words, we¿ll be thinking of anime, manga, film, and other popular media not just as objects that reflect their culture of origin, but also as objects that offer meaningful critique of that culture. Furthermore, we will consider the ways that Japanese popular culture interacts with global flows of popular culture in the contemporary world. Students should expect this course to equip them with the intercultural competencies necessary to engage with the global flows of contemporary culture, introduce them to the socio-historical development of Japanese popular culture, and guide them through considerations of different methodological approaches to cultural studies.

This course will explore the development and expansion of Japanese animation during a period between the late 1980s and the early 2010s. From cyberpunk dystopia to nostalgic rural fantasylands, we will examine the primary themes in the works of anime auteurs, including, Miyazaki Hayao, Takahata Isao, Otomo Katsuhiro, and Oshii Mamoru, among others. A core component of this course will be to engage in the theoretical approaches that have arisen around the study of anime in the United States--so students should be prepared to discuss race, technology, gender, ethics, and social history in the contexts of Japanese animation. No Japanese language is required.

The sword-wielding samurai warrior is perhaps the most familiar icon of pre-modern Japan, one that continues to influence how Japanese think of themselves and how others think of Japan even in modern times. Who were the samurai? How did they see themselves? How did other members of Japanese society see them in the past? How did the role and the image of the samurai change over time? To answer these questions, we will explore the depiction of samurai in various kinds of texts: episodes from quasi-historical chronicles, 14th century Noh plays, 18th century Kabuki and puppet plays (many Kabuki plays (a theater of live actors), were first written for the puppet theater). While some of these texts emphasize themes loyalty, honor, and military prowess, others focus on the problems faced by samurai in their domestic lives. The last part of the course will be devoted to the most famous of all samurai stories, The Revenge of the 47 Samurai. Students will read eyewitness accounts of this vendetta, which occurred in 1703, and then explore how the well-known Kabuki/puppet play, Chushingura (A Treasury of Loyal Retainers, 1748) dramatizes the conflicting opinions surrounding it. All readings will be English translation and no previous knowledge of Japan is required.

This course will introduce students to modern Japanese literature, starting from the emergence of the shōsetsu and discourses surrounding it through the postwar era. We will look at changes in the conception of literary texts and readership, and their relationship to changes in Japanese society and the construction of the image of "Japan" during this period. Readings will cover canonical authors from the late Meiji Period through the 1960s such as Mori Ōgai, Natsume Sōseki, Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Kawabata Yasunari, Hayashi Fumiko, Mishima Yukio, and Ōe Kenzaburō; they will also include key works of Gothic literature, proletarian literature, and colonial literature. We will focus on close textual analysis within this specific cultural and historical context, the politics of canonization, and the role of literature in constructing the ideas of modernity and nationhood in modern Japan.

This course examines the historical manifestations, literary representations, and contemporary re-imaginations in popular media of China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644-1911). The Qing Dynasty was born as a Manchu empire that arose outside of China proper to become one of the largest land empires in human history, but was undone by foreign encroachment and internal unrest and eventually fell in 1911. The Qing's dramatic trajectory continues in the competing narratives circulated over a century after its fall. On the one hand, despite its domination by a non-Han people, it is regarded as the pinnacle of China's past, while on the other, it is frequently condemned for its decadency and arrogance precipitating a well-deserved downfall. We will explore the fundamental issues pertaining to the Qing as well as the lasting fascination with the dynasty regularly captured in contemporary film and television. Through reading, thinking, discussing, and debating, we will enter a different culture and a different time, and come to appreciate how the past continues to influence our world.

Vengeful spirits, foxes that turn into alluring women, green and red ogres, Godzilla, and Pokémon: these are some of the monsters that have spooked and beguiled Japanese people across time. This course explores how medieval legends and local histories of monsters and gods play an important role in identifying and resolving social anxieties throughout Japan's cultural history, from the 8th to the 21st century. The materials we will examine include literature, manga, film, and anime, in addition to scholarly essays and historical texts.

The modern period of Japanese history has seen an extreme degree of flux in everything from language to technology, and government to social roles. The many and varied changes Japanese people underwent effectively reconstituted reality itself on a regular basis. This course examines how Japanese people negotiated the confusing changes facing them and continually re-defined what it meant to be a modern Japanese person through their writing.

This course will provide an introduction to the Catholic Church in China, with a focus on the inculturation of Catholic theology in the context of Chinese culture. The course starts with the Sanjiao ("three teachings of China"): Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. We will also discuss the legacy of Matteo Ricci, his fellow Jesuits, and their interaction with Chinese Catholics.

Is sushi a 'high' or 'low' class food? What makes a cuisine a 'national' dish? How does food tell us a story about the changes in a society? These questions and more will be answered in our course, where we will examine the history and cultural representation of food in Japan. The sources of our inquiry will range from classical cookbooks to short stories, comedic films to scholarly articles. As part of the coursework, students will learn how to cook a Japanese dish and how to order from a menu in a Japanese restaurant.

This course encourages students to read and discuss English translations of key modern Chinese literary texts, selected from among those that have delighted western audiences (such as the Nobel Prize winners Gao Xingjian and Mo Yan) as well as those that have been considered of huge significance by Chinese communities at different times. Most of the readings will be short stories and (parts of) novels, but due attention will be paid also to poetry and the prose essay, both incredibly important genres in the Chinese context. Students will be provided with a key vocabulary to discuss the texts, including both western and Chinese critical terminology, and with a range of interpretative methods. They will also be expected to carry out background reading, including academic studies of the literary works under scrutiny, and general works introducing the relevant historical contexts. At the end of the semester, students will have gained a good knowledge of the modern Chinese literary canon and will have gained critical ability in analyzing modern Chinese literary works from a range of perspectives.

Site of the delayed 2020 Olympics, Tokyo has recently been under scrutiny as a problematic international space. Tokyo's role as a complicated space of both exclusion and inclusion has a deeper history, however, extending back to a relatively recent founding in the late 16th century. This course looks at how the imaginative figuration of Tokyo has been a battleground for contesting different ethnic, social, and gendered identities in historical documents, literature, and popular culture.

Japan is renowned for its modern comic book genre "manga," but humorous and action-packed visual-verbal stories populate its literary history. This course examines a specific period where the urban culture of Edo (modern Tokyo) is colorfully expressed in playful literature and woodblock-prints. We will examine questions of status and class, sexuality, materialism, and the role of technology in shaping the book. As a hands-on project, we will learn Edo period woodblock carving techniques and, as a class, publish our own comic book!

This course focuses on major films representing milestones in Japanese film history, from the 1930s to the turn of the twenty-first century. We will examine masterpieces by great directors, including, Kurosawa Akira, Ozu Yasujirô, Mizoguchi Kenji, and Miyazaki Hayao, among others. We will explore genres from samurai and historical dramas to comedy, science fiction, and animated fantasy. In addition, we will consider the capacity of movies to provide and provoke cultural, social, and political commentary. On the way, we will take stock of significant contributions to film technique and film theory.

Politics has always been theatrical, but perhaps nowhere has this been taken to such an extreme as in modern China. From the celebrity-like "cult of personality" surrounding Chairman Mao Zedong to student protests to performances like the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China has been home to some of the most spectacular political displays of the last century. This course explores how and why political performance became such a prominent phenomenon in China, especially under the People's Republic (PRC), through two lines of inquiry. First, it examines how theatre and performance themselves have been used as political tools, both in support of and in protest against ruling regimes. Second, it looks at the ways in which political events such as mass rallies, show trials, and protests have taken on highly performative and theatrical qualities in the Chinese context. It considers cases that relate directly to state and Party politics, as well as to the politics of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. Through this course, students gain a deeper understanding of modern China, as well as the critical and theoretical tools necessary to analyze political theatre and theatrical politics in China and beyond. All readings in English or English translation. No prior study of China or Chinese language required.

Though the technique, technology and language of cinema was invented, practiced and disseminated by the West, it has been prevalent in such places as India, Japan and Egypt since the 1910s. Since the 1960s, it has become a global phenomenon, and today Bollywood is only one of several rich South Asian regional film industries, matched by equally robust film cultures in Brazil, Nigeria, Hong Kong, Japan, China and Iran. Non-Western cinema has produced a remarkable body of creative work that has transformed both film language and film theory, ranging from the Third Cinema of Latin America to auteurs like Satyajit Ray, Akira Kurosawa, Abbas Kiarostami, Wong Kar Wai, Kim ki Duk, and Jhang Yimou. This course will deal with case studies across a range of non-Western cinema cultures, exploring their diverse cultural backgrounds, historiography and sociopolitical realities. Topics will include both historical and contemporary cinematic practices in non-Western countries, with particular attention to filmmakers and film cultures that have received recent global attention.

This undergraduate film seminar course will study East Asian cinema and its social and historical context mostly between the 1980s and early 2000s. We will focus primarily on three large topics/movements within East Asia: Slow Cinema, Neo-Noir, and contemporary short form film. Navigating the general arc of Trans-East Asian film history, we will learn to recognize the localized global through readings and films by prominent filmmakers such as Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Wong Kar Wai, and Park Chan Wook, that define genres of East Asian film.

Asian theatre- and film-makers have produced some of the most innovative and exciting versions of Shakespeare's work. His strong presence in Asia also speaks to the histories and legacies of colonization and cultural imperialism. This course explores several well-known Shakespearean plays through the lens of Asian adaptation, rooted in both close reading of the plays themselves and the historical-cultural contexts of their adaptations. How, when, and why have specific Shakespearean plays captured the imaginations of Asian theatre artists and filmmakers? How have they transformed Shakespearean texts through translation, the use of local performance forms, new geographic and historical settings, and other techniques? How do these reimaginings rethink what "Shakespeare" might mean? By exploring such questions, students will gain a deeper understanding of Shakespeare, Asian theatre, and the complexities of their conjoining.

This course is an introduction to the Chinese sound and writing system, morphology, and syntax of the modern standard forms from a historical and linguistic perspective. The purpose of this course is to lead students who have the limited or no knowledge of Chinese to explore some interesting language phenomena by comparing Chinese and English, and to familiarize students with fundamental and systematical knowledge of the modern Chinese word formation and sentence structures.

Soon after modern printing technology was introduced by western missionaries in the 19 th century, China developed an exciting new culture characterized by tremendous creativity and productivity, enthusiastic experimentation with media technologies, high-speed interaction between creators and users, and countless unique ways of mixing textual and visual material. Ranging from the pictorial magazines of the early twentieth century to the Internet sites of the early twenty-first century, China’s modern culture has expressed and engaged with massive historical, social, and political changes, captured in writing and in images. This course takes students on a whirlwind tour of modern Chinese cultural expression in newspapers, magazines, posters, films, TV shows, websites, and social media, using original visual materials in addition to readings in English translation. The aim is to provide students with a comprehensive overview of the main developments in modern Chinese culture, while training their ability to analyse different types of cultural products. At the end of the course, students will have produced their own blog site, using visual and textual material to express their own critical opinions on the materials we studied.

From martial arts blockbusters to extravagant expos to space-age cityscapes, countries in East and Southeast Asia have achieved worldwide renown both for their affinity for mega-events and as spectacular backdrops for filmed narratives, multinational gatherings, and global tourism. But what forces are at work in the creation and dissemination of such spectacle? To what ends and for whom are these spectacles designed? How do different spectators interact with and interpret them? And what resistance, if any, has there been to the seeming excess and superficiality of extravaganza and its attendant mass-mediated images? This course examines recent works of performance, visual art, and film from China, Taiwan, Japan, the Koreas, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines in relation to the politics of spectatorship and theories of spectacle. Covering a period roughly from the mid-20th century rise of the "society of the spectacle" to the present, we will ask how different forms of spectacle—still and moving, mediated and live—come to represent Asian nations and shape viewers' experiences of Asian cultures. Doing so will enable us to better understand the dynamics of seeing and being seen on a global scale, as well as to explore how alternative modes of performance, visual culture, and viewership engendered by Asian contexts challenge established power hierarchies and modes of audience engagement.

This course introduces contemporary cinemas of mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan by focusing on a selection of internationally acclaimed Chinese films. In addition to examining cultural background, narrative themes and cinematic technique of the films, we will be exploring how these selected films response to fundamental issues such as history, gender, identity, memory, social justice, nationalism, and globalization. The goals of the course are to introduce students to major films and directors in contemporary China, to learn Chinese culture, value and history through films, and to refine students' abilities to analyze and write about film critically. All readings are in English, no prior knowledge of Chinese language or culture is required. All films selected for the course have English subtitles.

What is race? How do concepts of race change according to social, political, and historical context? Do Asian understandings of race differ from those in the West? How are concepts like "blackness" and "white privilege" interpreted in Asia? In this class, we will grapple with this set of questions by looking at how competing definitions of race and nationhood emerged in conjunction with the rise of the Japanese empire (1910-1945), and American military occupation in Asia during the Cold War. Students will investigate how this historical context has continued to affect the ways more contemporary flows of migrants from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa are racialized in Asia, by analyzing sociological, anthropological, and historical texts of everyday life. No prior knowledge about Asian languages or topics is required.

This undergraduate film seminar course will study East Asian cinema and its social and historical context mostly between the 1980s and early 2000s. We will focus primarily on three large topics/movements within East Asia: Slow Cinema, Neo-Noir, and contemporary short form film. Navigating the general arc of Trans-East Asian film history, we will learn to recognize the localized global through readings and films by prominent filmmakers such as Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Wong Kar Wai, and Park Chan Wook, that define genres of East Asian film.

Directed study of special topics under the direction of a faculty member. Agreement by the faculty member and the Director of Undergraduate Studies required.

Requires "contractual agreement" with the professor prior to scheduling. For advanced students who wish to pursue an independent research project reading advanced materials.