DEPARTMENT OF ASIAN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES

Asian Literature and Culture Courses

• Asian Humanities
  • ASIAN LC 390 – Cultures of Information: Neoliberalism, Affect, Global Media
  • ASIAN LC 390 – Transnational Media: Globalization and China
  • ASIAN LC 397 – Senior Seminar
  • ASIAN LC 492 – Readings in Tibetan Texts
  • ASIAN LC 492 – Cultural Studies: Concepts and Practice

• Chinese Culture
  • ASIAN LC 200 – A History of Love: Chinese Romance in Time
  • ASIAN LC 205 – Modern Chinese Popular Culture II
  • ASIAN LC 290 – Confronting the Canon
  • ASIAN LC 300 – Religion and the Body in China (RHM, RSG)
  • ASIAN LC 492 – Graduate Seminar: Deleuze, Desire, Guattari, and Sex/uality
  • ASIAN LC 492 – Graduate Seminar: Chinese and Other Animals: An Introduction to Animal Studies

• First-Year Seminar
  • ASIAN LC 110 – Rebellion and Its Enemies in China Today
  • ASIAN LC 110 – Book History in Japan: Manuscripts, Maps and Manga
  • ASIAN LC 110 – The Big B: Amitabh Bachchan and Bollywood Stardom

• Japanese Culture
  • ASIAN LC 220 – Contemporary Japanese Culture
  • ASIAN LC 221 – The Floating World: Roots of Japanese Popular Culture
  • ASIAN LC 224 – Introduction to Japanese Cinema I: From Early Cinema to the Golden Age
  • ASIAN LC 224 – Introduction to Japanese Cinema II: From New Waves to the Present
  • ASIAN LC 322 – The Novel in Japan: 19th Century
  • ASIAN LC 390 – Japanese Popular Literature: From Historical Novels to Science Fiction
  • ASIAN LC 390 – Undergraduate Seminar: Japanese Woodblock Prints: From 1660 to the Present

• Korean Culture
  • ASIAN LC 240 – Introduction to Modern Korean Literature
  • ASIAN LC 290 – Cinematic Imagination on Korean Society
  • ASIAN LC 340 – Korean Diaspora and “Homecomings” in East Asia

• South Asian Culture
  • ASIAN LC 260 – Masala: Food and South Asia
  • ASIAN LC 260 – Midnight's Children: South Asian Literature and Culture, 1947-77
  • ASIAN LC 260 – Ahiṃsā: Nonviolence in South Asia and Beyond
  • ASIAN LC 360 – Islam and the Global Renaissance
  • ASIAN LC 360 – Hindu Epics: Mahābhārata
  • ASIAN LC 390 – Buddhist Auto/biography
  • ASIAN LC 390 – History of Modern South Asia, 1500-1800

Asian Humanities

ASIAN LC 390 – Cultures of Information: Neoliberalism, Affect, Global Media

Overview of class

What does the information age feel like? This course follows the rise of hyper-modernized cultures of information that developed in Japan and the Western world in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It does so by attending to the advent of new technologies that defined this period, and also through the rise of “neoliberalism:” an economic and political paradigm prizing the creation of new markets and a focus on the productivity and care of the self. We will attend to a variety of texts and forms (a novel, poetry, a video game, films, and critical writings) that will allow us to follow the history of neoliberalism in its global, national, and aesthetic contexts.

Teaching Method

Discussion, Short Lectures

Evaluation Method

Essays, Class Participation, Projects

Class Materials (Required)

*Course Reader * Anne Allison, Precarious Japan 978-0822355625 * Claudia Rankine, Don't Let Me Be Lonely 978-1555974077 * Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 978-0060839871

ASIAN LC 390 – Transnational Media: Globalization and China

Overview of class

This course provides an overview of the development of transnational media in the US and China, including social media (e.g. Facebook and Wechat), video platform (e.g. Netflix and Bilibili), user-generated websites (e.g. YouTube and TikTok), online shopping sites (e.g. Amazon and Taobao), to name a few. The main objective is to help students understand, first, the operation of these transnational media from a global/ comparative perspective, and second, the implications of their operation for cultural globalization, democracy, creativity, privacy, and soft power in conjunction with information communication technology adopted and developed.

Learning Objectives
Upon finishing the course, students are expected to be able (1) to acquire fundamental knowledge on major transnational media in the world, (2) to understand and evaluate their differences, and (3) to apply relevant theories to conduct research on transnational media.

Teaching Method

Lecture + Discussion

Evaluation Method

Presentation + Presentation Report 40 points
Final Paper 50 points
In-class Discussion 10 points

Class Materials (required)

Readings of each week can be downloaded from links specified on syllabus.

ASIAN LC 397 – Senior Seminar

Overview of class:
This course is an advanced seminar in research methods for Asian humanities. Students will work through the research process: exploring possible topics, sources, and considering the relationship between the two; posing interesting, meaningful, and answerable research questions; finding, evaluating, and making productive reference to existing scholarship and methodology; articulating and refining arguments; and developing a research plan through written and oral presentation. Students will also be introduced to methods, problems, and questions fundamental to humanistic scholarship on Asia. The course will be conducted in a workshop format in which each student will develop an individual project in dialog with the group; students planning to write a senior thesis are expected to use this course to develop their research projects. This course is required of all senior ALC majors.

Learning Objectives:
Students who have completed this course are expected to be able to: • Identify and articulate research topics regarding literature, media, and culture, identify primary sources and texts relevant to those interests, and pose research questions that are meaningful to a specialist audience • Find scholarly sources related to a given topic, and critically evaluate scholarship in fields related to Asian humanities • Use writing as both a private medium for developing research interests and as a public medium for presenting research to an audience of peers. • Explain research interests and results orally in informal and formal settings. • Draw connections between individual research projects and major problems and questions in Asian studies • Identify and employ effective work habits and time management skills necessary for effective research

Teaching Method:
Lecture, discussion, workshop

Evaluation Method:
Attendance and participation (20%), writing assignments (30%), oral presentations (20%), final paper (30%)

ASIAN LC 492 – Readings in Tibetan Texts

The aim of this intermediate-level Tibetan language course is to develop colloquial Tibetan speaking and comprehension skills as well as Tibetan-English translation skills. The colloquial portion of the course will focus on furthering Tibetan speaking and reading skills, improving pronunciation and expanding vocabulary. The translation portion of the course will focus on enhancing proficiency in Tibetan-English translation. Students will be able to suggest Tibetan texts to translate relevant for their respective research projects. Over the course of the year, Tibetan texts will cover a range of genres as relevant for enrolled students ranging from religious scripture, essay, poetry, history, and biography.

ASIAN LC 492 – Cultural Studies: Concepts and Practice

Overview of class

This course provides an overview of the major concepts, theories and underlying theoretical foundation of cultural studies. The main objective is to help students understand, first, the classic literatures of cultural studies, including theories, origins, models, findings, representative scholars and their work, and second, the contemporary issues and theories of cultural studies. Finally, students can make use of these theories and apply them into their own research areas.

Learning Objectives
Upon finishing the course, students are expected to be able (1) to acquire fundamental knowledge on cultural studies, (2) to understand and evaluate work on cultural studies, and to be able to (3) apply cultural studies and relevant theories to develop their research and academic projects.

Teaching Method

Lecture + Discussion

Evaluation Method

Assignments/ Discussion Papers (2 x 10 points) (2 out of 3) 20 points
In class quiz (only 2 highest scores are counted) (2 out of 3) 20 points
Presentation + Presentation Report 25 points
Final Paper 25 points
In-class Discussion 10 points

Class Materials (required)

Barker, Chris and Emma, Janes (2016) 5th ed. Cultural Studies: Theories and Practice. Thousand Oaks: Sage. ISBN: 978-1473919457

Class Materials (suggested)

Hall, Stuart, Hobson, Dorothy, Lowe, Andrew and Willis, Paul (2000) Culture, Media, Language. London: Routledge.

Hall, Stuart, Jennifer Daryl Slack and Grossberg, Lawrence (2016) Stuart Hall 1983: A Theoretical History. Durham: Duke University Press.

Chinese Culture

ASIAN LC 200 – A History of Love: Chinese Romance in Time

Overview of class

This course focuses on the world of romance in traditional Chinese culture, with a special attention to plays and theatrical texts. Our aim shall be to engage the main discourses circulating about the experience of passion, love, and lust in narratives from the eighth century CE dynasty up until the 18th century (in their English translation). What are the meanings attached to love by the changing authors and audiences in this span of time? What relationships existed between love and sex? And what about marriage? Did gender and sexual identity matter in questions of the heart, and if so, how? Taking a genealogical approach to the exploration of the tales of love in various genres and media, we will in turn address issues such as the place of romance, sentiment, and sentimentality in Chinese literature; the changing roles played by religion, societal and economic pressures; the relevance of gender in terms of authorship and readership; as well as by femininity, masculinity, sexuality and their discontents across various dynastic and historical changes and shifts, among other things. In addition to the primary sources, representative theoretical work in the field of Chinese literature will be incorporated as much as possible.

Learning Objectives

Acquisition of knowledge about romance narratives in Chinese literary sources written between the eighth century CE until the 18th century. This will entail exposure to primary sources (in English, and for those students able to, in Chinese) produced by Chinese authors of the time, as well as to related secondary sources. -Familiarization with the literary and performative conventions of pre-modern Chinese drama. -Development of methodological skills in studying, reading, and analyzing the primary and secondary sources related to the themes of the course. -Growth as independent researchers in the field of Chinese literature, Asian humanities, and gender and sexuality studies. -Growth as independent academic thinkers and writers in the above areas and disciplines.

Teaching Method
Discussion and Lecture

Evaluation Method
The final grade will be based on the following criteria: -Active class participation (attendance, preparation, and discussion) 30% -Assignments (writing statements, short papers, etc.) 35% -Final Project 35%

Class Materials (required)
The books listed below are required texts for the course and may be purchased at the Northwestern Bookstore. Additional required readings for the course will be available through Canvas. Meng Chengshun, Mistress and Maid, Columbia University Press, 2001 780231121699 Tang Xianzu, The Peony Pavilion: Mudan ting, Indiana University Press; Second edition (March 1, 2002), ISBN-13: 9780253215277 Wang Shifu, The Story of the Western Wing, University of California Press, 1995, ISBN-13: 9780520201842

ASIAN LC 205 – Modern Chinese Popular Culture II

Overview of class

Modern Chinese Popular Cultures, Part II: The Sinophone Sphere, 1949 to the Present Day.  Modern Chinese Popular Cultures, Part II, centers on the popular cultures of the Chinese-speaking, or "Sinophone," world. It takes the 1949 founding of the People’s Republic of China as its starting point, but it ranges far from Mainland China, incorporating works produced in Taiwan and Hong Kong as well as examples of a global Chinese popular culture, from the music of Grace Chang and the films of Bruce Lee to Crazy Rich Asians. It explores not only the cultural products that found favor with the public but also a selection of works that engage more broadly with conceptions of the popular. Over the course of the quarter we will learn how to discuss and write about a wide variety of media, including material culture, film, science fiction, and pop music, among others. We will consider such works in light of a series of related questions: What is the relationship between pop and consumer cultures? Between high and low cultures? Between entertainment and ideology? What makes a work popular, particularly when cultural production, circulation and consumption are tightly controlled by the state? Under what conditions and with what effects do cultural forms circulate among Chinese-speaking populations? What role has popular culture played in the creation of a “Chinese” identity constituted across national borders?

Teaching Method

Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method

1. Participation, Attendance and Preparation: 20%
2. Response Posts: 10%
3. Close Looking/Reading Exercise: 15%
4. Film Scene Analysis and Close Reading: 15% 5. Midterm Essay: 20% 6. Final Project: 20%

Class Materials (required)

Course Reader (available for purchase at Quartet Digital Printing, Evanston)

ASIAN LC 290 – Confronting the Canon

Overview of class
When does modern literature become a category in China? What does that category include/exclude and what are its standards of inclusion/exclusion? How do individual works and authors enter “the canon”? Confronting the Canon examines literary prose (novels, short stories, essays) written in Mainland China between the late nineteenth century and the Communist Revolution in 1949. It provides an introduction to many of the best known works and authors of this period—Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Ba Jin, and Ding Ling, among others—but it does not treat their canonicity as an aesthetic or historical given. Carefully curated and hotly contested, literary canons are not simply the “sacred works” of the nation; they help create the nation and its people. We no longer ascribe such powers to novels and short stories, but in 20th China these were politically explosive forms. This course places canonical literary works in their historical context in order to better understand how and why we continue to read and re-read certain texts today, while also exploring some of the literary paths (including experimental modernism and science fiction) that were foreclosed or discounted for political reasons. All readings will be in English. No previous knowledge of China or Chinese is required.

Learning Objectives
To gain familiarity with some of the major authors and texts of Chinese prose literature written between the late 19th century and the Communist revolution in 1949. To place those texts in their historical and cultural contexts in order to better understand how and why national literary canons are formed. To develop skills in formal description, textual analysis, and interpretation through close reading of primary texts, and to refine skills of analytical writing and scholarly argumentation using literary sources.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
1. Participation, attendance and preparation: 20% 2. Discussion posts: 10% 3. Midterm: 15% 4. 1 short paper (2-3 pages): 15% 5. 2 longer papers (5-6 pages): 40% (20% each)

Class Materials (Required)
The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun (Penguin Classics) ISBN-10: 0140455485 Students will also be required to buy a course reader.

ASIAN LC 300 – Religion and the Body in China (RHM, RSG)

ASIAN LC 492 – Graduate Seminar: Deleuze, Desire, Guattari, and Sex/uality

Overview of class

This collaborative seminar aims to critically and playfully engage foundational works by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and to interrogate their potential significance to current theories, methodologies, and applications within gender, feminist, queer and sexuality studies, with the ultimate goal to come to define, challenge, and reimagine the boundaries of our own disciplines and research. Our first step will therefore entail familiarizing ourselves with the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, and with Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature, in terms of their history, background, intended audiences, with the aim to demystify key terms like “rhizome,” “schizoanalysis,” “body without organs,” and “deterritorialization,” among others, especially as they intersect (or fail to) with desire, gender, sex, and sexuality. We will then move to discuss a selection of Deleuze and Guattari’s individual works that expand and complicate ,our understandings of these authors’ collaborative projects. Finally, we will turn our attention to the most recent appropriations, hybridizations, and deterritorializations of said materials, through a selection of current scholarship in gender, sexuality, queer, non/human, and feminist studies, among others. In this last phase of the seminar, participants will take an even greater role in thinking and writing/creating through parts and/or the totality of Deleuze and Guattari’s work through the lenses of respective disciplinary goals, concerns, and aspirations.

Learning Objectives
•To develop critical literacy of the main collaborative works by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. •To transfer the critical understandings of said works to a larger context, beginning with materials composed by Deleuze and Guattari individually at different stages of their careers and collaboration, and then those by 21st disciplinary scholarly perspectives on gender and sexuality . -To develop pragmatic and theoretical deployments of primary and secondary sources within the range of disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and research trajectories represented by the seminar’s participants.

Teaching Method
Discussion

Evaluation Method
• Thorough reading and preparation of primary and secondary readings for each seminar discussion. • Depending on seminar’s size, seminar participants may take turns in leading discussion for each meeting. Dynamic and consistent contributions are expected of everyone in the seminar for each meeting. • Occasional short writing assignments (250 to 550 words, max.), pre-circulated electronically for discussion in the seminar. • A final project that, depending on each participant’s needs and interests, can take the form of a research paper, a creative piece, performance, video, script, among others, and that contributes substantially to the critical conversations, concerns, and materials covered in the course. Seminar participants will present their final project’s ideas to their peers before the due date.

Class Materials (required)
All primary and secondary readings for the course will be available through the course's website on Canvas. Participants who so desire are welcome to purchase hard copies of the materials listed below from their preferred book sellers.

Class Materials (suggested)
Primary Works Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1972. Anti-Oedipus. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Trans. of L'Anti-Oedipe. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 0-8264-7695-3. _____________1975. Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature. Trans. Dana Polan. Theory and History of Literature 30. Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P, 1986. _____________1980. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 2 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2 vols. 1972–1980. Trans. of Mille Plateaux. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. ISBN 0-8264-769 Gilles Deleuze. 1967. Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty & Venus in Furs Translated from French by Jean McNeil and Aude Willm. New York: Zone Books, 1991. ISBN 978-0942299557 Felix Guattari. 1969-1973. The Anti-Oedipus Papers. Ed. Stéphane Nadaud. Trans. Kélina Gotman. New York: Semiotext(e), 2006. ISBN 1-58435-031-8. Secondary Works Frida Beckmann, ed., Deleuze and Sexuality, Edinburgh University Press, 2011 Ian Buchanan and Claire Colebrook, eds., Deleuze and Sex, Edinburgh University Press, 2000 Cheri Carr, and Janae Sholtz, eds., Deleuze and the SchizoAnalysis of Feminism, Bloomsbury Academic, 2019 Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr, eds., Deleuze and Queer Theory, Edinburgh University Press, 2009 Jon Raffe and Hannah Stark, eds., Deleuze and the non/human, Palgrave, 2015 Tony See and Joff Bradley, Deleuze and Buddhism, Palgrave, 2016

ASIAN LC 492 – Graduate Seminar: Chinese and Other Animals: An Introduction to Animal Studies

Overview of class

This seminar offers an introduction to key works, ideas, and trends in the interdisciplinary field of animal studies. It is designed not only to explore how and why "the question of the animal" has been asked so many times and in so many ways, but also to experiment with methods of provincializing historically Eurocentric approaches to animals. Theoretical readings will range widely across disciplines, including philosophy, literary and film studies, anthropology, and the environmental humanities, among others. Possible units will center on relations and ethics, intimacy, extinction, bio/zoopolitics, and animal representations. While some of the course's primary materials will come from Asia (China in particular) the seminar is designed for students with no prior knowledge of Asia or Asian languages.

Teaching Method

Discussion

Evaluation Method

1. Participation, Attendance and Preparation: 15%
2. Bi-weekly responses: 15%
3. Conference Paper: 20%
4. Final Project: 50%

Class Materials (required)

Provisional List (final list will be provided closer to the course start date)

Jacques Derrida, The Animal that I Therefore Am (ISBN 9780823227914)
Thom van Dooren, Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction (ISBN 0231166192)
J. M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (ISBN 0691173907)
Kang Han, The Vegetarian (ISBN 9781101906118)
Akira Mizuta Lippit, Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife (ISBN 0816634866)
Mo Yan, Life and Death are Wearing me Out (ISBN 1611454271)

First-Year Seminar

ASIAN LC 110 – Rebellion and Its Enemies in China Today

Overview of class

The Chinese have achieved enormous economic growth over the last forty years which has dramatically raised living conditions in China. The Chinese Communist Party has steered this economic development through authoritarian rule which denies the Chinese liberties you take for granted. Thirty years ago, the Communist Party killed Chinese who demanded these liberties by employing the military inside the country. Since the massacre of 1989, protest in the streets has moved to networking on the internet. You will write your paper about this challenge to authoritarian rule by engaging some of the following questions: How have urban Chinese lived with the trauma of the massacre? What exactly happened thirty years ago? Making and uploading videos to the internet is a crucial weapon for activists. How do you evaluate the power of individual videos to force political change? These videos are documentaries, performance art, interviews, covert recordings of state agents, cries for help of fugitives in real time, and witness testimony. The creators of these videos are prepared to take risks because they feel there is something wrong with China today. These feelings are value judgments, or valuations. How do you tease out the values by which activists judge the state and evaluate their lives in China? What in turn are the value judgments of American reporters who report on Chinese activism to the American public? What are the value judgments of American professors who study Chinese activism? And what are your own value judgments: If it turns out that U.S. capitalism in its combination with democracy cannot economically compete with Chinese capitalism in its combination with authoritarian rule, and you were forced to choose, would you choose capitalism or democracy? What parts of your life would be impossible under authoritarian rule? Which line would populism and neo-authoritarianism in America have to cross for you to fight the government?

Learning Objectives

This class will sharpen your writing. You will write and present a seven-to-nine page paper on civic activism in contemporary China. In the process of writing this paper, you will practice identifying a theme you find interesting, formulating an argument, finding data and source material on the internet from China in English translation, and relating your theme to the scholarly literature we read and discuss together in class. Some of the progress you will make in your writing abilities will be technical – what counts as evidence, what is the difference between data and scholarly texts, how do you cite and give credit to those who preceded you; some will be intellectual – how do you refute and how do you prove, how do you evaluate your own argument to be clear about its limitations, how do you assess the political relevance of your theme; and some of it will be emotional – how do you cope with the panic that is welling up when you are expected to tame the chaos of reality into a tidy argument, how do you cope with disappointment and ire when I tell you that your second draft is not good enough, how do you cope with your self-doubts when you are trying to find a needle of evidence in the haystack of the internet under time-pressure?

Teaching Method

Writing assignments and class discussion.

Class Materials (Required)

Timothy Brook. Quelling the People. The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement. Second Edition. Stanford 1998. ISBN-13: 978-0804736381 Louisa Lim. The People’s Republic of Amnesia. Tiananmen Revisited. Oxford 2015 (paperback edition; original publication 2014). ISBN-13: 978-0190227913 Bin Xu. The Politics of Compassion. The Sichuan Earthquake and Civic Engagement in China. Stanford 2017. ISBN-13: 978-1503603363 Susanne Bregnbaek. Fragile Elite. The Dilemmas of China’s Top University Students. Stanford 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0804797788

ASIAN LC 110 – Book History in Japan: Manuscripts, Maps and Manga

Overview of class

In this class, we examine writing and books as “technologies” that not only facilitate communication but also impact the very way we think: through writing, our thoughts become more structured and coherent. We seek to defamiliarize the seemingly trivial object that is the book and challenge Eurocentric histories of writing and publishing. While analyzing the material format of writing, we also consider what makes good prose and hone our academic writing skills.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Participation and Final Paper

Class Materials (required)
Eric Hayot, "The Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities" and a couple more paperbacks. Total cost will not exceed $50.

ASIAN LC 110 – The Big B: Amitabh Bachchan and Bollywood Stardom

Overview of class
The Hindi film industry, often called Bollywood, is famously one of the world’s biggest and most recognizable. Every year, Mumbai’s studios put out hundreds of movies, in addition to the hundreds more that are released by India’s other film industries in languages like Tamil, Telugu, and Bengali. Most of these movies are full of songs and dances, and bring action, comedy, tragedy, and romance together into one (often very complex) story. As the subject of our class has said, Hindi cinema “offers poetic justice in three hours. You walk away with a smile on your lips and dried tears on your cheeks.” Film industries everywhere choose a few actors to elevate above all others. The biggest of these movie stars in India, and probably in the world, is Amitabh Bachchan. With his brooding, rebellious charisma, not to mention his ready wit and enviable dance moves, his “angry young man” persona dominated the films of the 1970s. Today, half a century after his film debut, he is still a major star. His face and voice are instantly recognizable, not only throughout South Asia and its diaspora, but in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere. As his characters have aged from youthful rebels to somewhat less youthful rebels to stern patriarchs to goofy old men obsessed with their digestive tracts, he has at times seemed inescapable off the movie screen as well. He has spent time in politics, hosted a wildly successful game show, and starred in children’s comic books; one fan has even built a temple to worship him as a literal idol. In this course, we will focus on Amitabh Bachchan, not only because he and his films are so interesting, but because he has so much to tell us about how Indian films work and what a star is. Students will have opportunities to think and write, not only about Amitabh and his films, but about film and celebrity more broadly.

Teaching Method
Seminar

Evaluation Method
Students will be evaluated primarily based upon written work.

Class Materials (Required)
William Elison, Christian Lee Novetzke, and Andy Rotman, Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation (ISBN 9780674504486)

Japanese Culture

ASIAN LC 220 – Contemporary Japanese Culture

Overview of class

This course offers an introduction to Japanese literature, film, animation, and manga from the 1960s to the present. We will consider these media in relation to the historical developments that defined this period such as globalization, the “bursting” of the bubble economy, natural and human-made disasters, and the extension of digital technology into daily life. We will pay special attention to the transformations in media culture that shaped the production, distribution, and consumption of these cultural forms. An overview of Japanese culture in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this course provides training in the analysis of literary texts and forms of visual narration.

Learning Objectives
This course introduces students to humanistic approaches to analyzing the literature and visual culture of contemporary Japan. Students will learn: 1. methods for interpreting the significance of formal techniques used in literature, film, animation, and manga. 2. how to connect these media to their historical contexts 3. how to write clearly and incisively about these media.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Attendance and Participation 20% Weekly Discussion Posts 15% Short Essays (3 x 15%) 30% Final Exam 35%

Class Materials (required)
Katsuhiro Otomo, Akira Vol., 1 978-1935429005 Yoshimoto Banana, Kitchen, 978-0802142443 Kirino Natsuo, Out, 978-1400078370 Reader available as PDFs through Canvas

Class Materials (suggested)
Christopher Goto Jones, Modern Japan: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2009) Kenneth Pyle, The Making of Modern Japan (Cengage, 1995) [on reserve]

ASIAN LC 221 – The Floating World: Roots of Japanese Popular Culture

Overview of class

his course explores the roots of Japanese popular culture in the literature, theater, and print culture of early modern or Edo-period (1600-1868) Japan. We will examine the earliest emergence of commercial publishing and a cultural marketplace in the 17th century, the commodification of literature and theater, the blending of text and image in forms of illustrated narrative that predate manga, and the gratuitous depiction of sex, violence, and comedy from the printed page to the theatrical stage. But what does it mean for culture to be “popular”? What does popular culture do: does it entertain or educate, does it affirm the social status quo or subvert it? How is the stratification of culture and the emergence of popular forms related to the structures of the social field: who is popular culture produced by and for, and what determines who has access to it? And how does popular culture work: how does it communicate with its readers and viewers, what literacies does it depend on or produce, and how is it related to other forms of culture—elite, high, traditional? What was the “Floating World” of early modern Japan—what floats and what sinks? All readings are in English, no prior study of Japan required or expected.

Learning Objectives

• Describe the major genres, authors, works of Japanese literature, theater, and popular culture from the 17th to 19th century. • Analyze the thematic content and formal structure of literary works as a basis for interpretation and comparison. • Situate literary and dramatic works in relation to meaningful social and cultural contexts, and interpret how they both reflected and shaped those contexts. • Interpret basic historical and theoretical issues surrounding the idea of “popular culture” and related concepts; situate such concepts meaningfully in specific historical contexts in relation to primary texts. • Communicate and debate humanistic knowledge from multiple, possibly conflicting perspectives, both orally and in writing

Teaching Method

Lecture, Discussion

Evaluation Method

Attendance (10%), participation (20%), essays (20%), quizzes (20%), final exam (30%)

Class Materials (required)

No texts are required for purchase: all class materials will be provided in PDF form via Canvas

ASIAN LC 224 – Introduction to Japanese Cinema I: From Early Cinema to the Golden Age

Introduction to Japanese Cinema I: From Early Cinema to the Golden Age

Overview of class

This course offers a history of Japanese cinema from its earliest days through the so-called “Golden Age” of the 1950s. We will consider how film and other moving image technologies have reflected historical moments and shaped cultural discourses in modern Japan. Focusing on films that raise disciplinary questions related to both the cinematic medium and Japan, we will examine, among other topics, the era of silent cinema, the relationship between nationhood and the formation of a “national” cinema; technological transformations and the coming of sound; the wartime period; cinema during the occupation; and 1950s modernism. We will also study the place of important individual directors – Ozu, Mizoguchi, and Kurosawa – within the broader economic and institutional contexts of Japanese cinema and its global circulation. Students will learn how to critically analyze various films from multiple theoretical perspectives while gaining an understanding of the major figures and movements in the history of Japanese cinema.

Teaching Method

Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method

Attendance and Participation; Short Papers; Midterm Paper; Final Interview

Class Materials (required)

All readings will be available on Canvas as downloadable pdfs. Films will be available for streaming through Canvas or the library website.

ASIAN LC 224 – Introduction to Japanese Cinema II: From New Waves to the Present

Overview of class

This course offers a history of Japanese cinema from the beginning of the New Wave movements in the mid-1950s to the present moment. We will consider how the cinematic has reflected historical moments and shaped cultural discourses in this period. Focusing on films that raise disciplinary questions related to both the cinematic medium and Japan, we will examine, among other topics: the relationship between cinema and the era of high economic growth, the decline of the studio system, postmodernism, and cinematic responses to the post-bubble economic recession. We will also study the shifting position directors within the broader economic and institutional contexts of Japanese cinema and its global circulation. Students will learn how to critically analyze various films from multiple theoretical perspectives while gaining an understanding of the major figures and trends in the history of postwar Japanese cinema. Syllabus subject to change.

Learning Objectives
1. Describe the historical evolution and major genres, producers, works of Japanese cinema. 2. Situate and interpret individual film in relation to meaningful social and cultural contexts. 3.Analyze the thematic content and formal structure of cinema as a basis for interpretation and comparison.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Class Participation, Screening Posts, 3 Short Essays (2-3 pages), Final Interview

Class Materials (required)
Course reader will be available for purchase. Films can be streamed through Canvas.

ASIAN LC 322 – The Novel in Japan: 19th Century

Overview of Course

When Japan opened to the West in the mid-19th century, Japanese writers and readers were introduced to a new and exotic literary form: the novel. The arrival of the novel inaugurated one of the most dramatic and rapid evolutions of literary form in the history of Japanese literature, as existing genres were modified, transformed, or abandoned, new and experimental forms of language were created, and writers, critics, and intellectuals vigorously debated the nature of literature itself. What is literature supposed to do—for its authors, for its readers, for society, for the modern nation-state—and what forms of language and narrative will allow it to do so? This course traces the evolution of narrative fiction in Japan through this transitional period, from the humorous and fanciful “frivolous compositions” (gesaku) of the early 19th century to the literary and linguistic reform movements of the 1880s and the Naturalist experiments of the early 1900s. Special attention is given to genre and the relationship of the modern novel to earlier literary forms, and to the relationship between literature and its social and political contexts. All readings are in English; no knowledge of Japanese is required or expected.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, students are expected to be able to do the following: • Describe genre concepts related to the novel/shōsetsu in the context of 19th-century Japanese literary history, and develop a holistic, flexible, multi-dimensional understanding of what constituted a “novel” in late 19th-century Japan. • Analyze the roles played by the idea of the novel (and related genres) in shaping literary production, and discuss the ways in which individual texts and authors worked within, drew on, or innovated upon these genres. • Summarize and compare major theoretical approaches to the novel and related genres. • Apply multiple, contrasting theoretical models in analyzing individual works both within and tangential to the novel genre in Japan. • Explain how core literary concepts—novel, literature, realism—can be interpreted and operate differently in different cultural and historical contexts.

Teaching Method

Lecture and discussion.

Evaluation Method

Attendance and participation 20% Weekly response essays 10% Written assignments 20% Student presentations 20% Final paper 30%

Class Materials (Required)

Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro, trans. Edwin McClellan (Dover, 2006). ISBN: 978-0486451398

ASIAN LC 390 – Japanese Popular Literature: From Historical Novels to Science Fiction

Overview of class
This course examines Japanese historical novels, mysteries, horror stories and other genres of popular literature, framing them against issues such as class, gender, sexuality, colonialism, consumerism, and globalism. Students also consider the relation between popular fiction and other media, including manga and anime, and explore key theoretical concepts such as intermediality and fandom, as well as aesthetic categories like "cuteness" and "Lolita-style." In the process, students will deepen their understanding of Japanese history and culture, and acquire a conceptual vocabulary for analyzing a wide range of audiovisual and print media. All reading materials are in English.

Registration Requirements
These are the class attributes listed for this class:
Literature & Fine Arts

Learning Objectives
The development of close reading and critical thinking skills.

Teaching Method
Lecture and discussion

Evaluation Method
Attendance and in-class participation 15% Weekly response papers 25% Presentation 20% Final paper 40%

Class Materials (Required)
Nagaru Tanigawa, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (Haruhi Suzumiya #1), New York: Yen Press, 2012. (ISBN-13: 9780316228619) The rest of the reading materials will be available on Canvas.

ASIAN LC 390 – Undergraduate Seminar: Japanese Woodblock Prints: From 1660 to the Present

Overview of class

What does the information age feel like? This course follows the rise of hyper-modernized cultures of information that developed in Japan and the Western world in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It does so by attending to the advent of new technologies that defined this period, and also through the rise of "neoliberalism:" an economic and political paradigm prizing the creation of new markets and a focus on the productivity and care of the self. We will attend to a variety of texts and forms (a novel, poetry, a video game, films, and critical writings) that will allow us to follow the history of neoliberalism in its global, national, and aesthetic contexts.

Teaching Method

Discussion, Short Lectures

Evaluation Method

Essays, Class Participation, Projects

Class Materials (required)

*Course Reader * Anne Allison, Precarious Japan 978-0822355625 * Claudia Rankine, Don't Let Me Be Lonely 978-1555974077 * Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 978-0060839871

Note

This class is taught at The Art Institute of Chicago

Korean Culture

ASIAN LC 240 – Introduction to Modern Korean Literature

Overview of class

This course is a survey of modern Korean literature from the early 20th century to the present. The modern period in Korea began with the end of Confucian monarchy and ended with the beginning of neoliberal globalization. Along the way, the country underwent a thorough transformation of economy and experienced great political upheavals, including colonial rule, civil war, foreign occupation, partition, military dictatorships, and several major and minor revolutions en route to democratization. This course charts the formal and thematic development of Korean literature in this period, focusing on the relationship of literature to politics and history. Readings will consist of short and medium-length fiction in English translation, arranged chronologically from the earliest to the most recent.

Learning Objectives
The aims of this course are to (1) develop familiarity with selected works of major twentieth-century Korean writers; (2) situate literature within sociopolitical history and examine the relationship between texts and contexts, and (3) improve skills necessary for close reading and critical analysis of literature.

Teaching Method
Lectures, Student Presentations, Discussions

Evaluation Method
Attendance 15% Weekly Analysis 15% Leading Discussions 20% Close-reading Essays 20% Final Paper 30%

Class Materials (required)
All the readings are available through the course Canvas website.

ASIAN LC 290 – Cinematic Imagination on Korean Society

ASIAN LC 340 – Korean Diaspora and “Homecomings” in East Asia

Overview of class

For ethnic Koreans residing in Japan and China, the questions of what homeland means and what the host countries can mean to them have been tremendously complicated through Japan’s colonization of its neighboring nations, the emergence of the divided Korea, wars—hot and cold—waged in the region, the thinning of the Iron Curtain, and the advent of globalization. With their host countries being either the former colonizer (i.e. Japan) or a communist republic (i.e. China), and with their divided homeland (Korea) itself generating conditions for split loyalties, many diasporic Koreans have lived lives replete with unspoken and unspeakable dilemmas and predicaments while coping with fluctuating and fluid diasporic identities. The course examines a selection of cinematic and literary works that recount the personal and communal history of the Korean diaspora and were produced in East Asia during the past seven decades since the mid-twentieth century. No knowledge of Korean is required.

Learning Objectives

The objective of the course is to study the unusually complex and intricate relationships between the homeland and host countries as well as the vexed subjective belongings and longings that characterize narratives about Korean diasporic experiences. By analyzing the filmic and literary representations of and by Korean diasporic subjects in China and Japan, the class not only examines ethnic Koreans’ pressing issues in their own terms but aims to generate inter-disciplinary and intra-regional discussions on the paths that different national groups and generations have crossed towards larger collective memories of twentieth-century East Asia.

Teaching Method

Lectures, Student Presentations, Discussions

Evaluation Method

Attendance and Participation, Weekly Responses, Presentation and Discussion Leading, Final Paper

Class Materials (required)

All the assigned primary and secondary texts will be available on the Canvas course site, subtitled or translated in English.

South Asian Culture

ASIAN LC 260 – Masala: Food and South Asia

Overview of class

Everyone eats, but not everyone eats the same way. What we eat, and when, and how, and with whom—all of these choices have the potential to define us. In this course, we will explore the meanings and practices surrounding food in South Asia and its diaspora. Whether in conflicts over forbidden foods, in crises of famine, in exoticist evocations of “the land of spices,” or in nostalgic yearnings for the lost flavors of home, food has profound power over the imagination and the body. We will examine literature, films, cookbooks, and other materials—some of which we will eat!—to understand the roles that food plays in ritual, politics, art, and everyday life.

Teaching Method
Seminar

Evaluation Method
Papers and presentations

Class Materials (required)
Readings will be made available on Canvas or in class.

ASIAN LC 260 – Midnight's Children: South Asian Literature and Culture, 1947-77

Overview of class

In August 1947, colonial India was divided into the newly independent nations of India and Pakistan. At the same moment as former colonial subjects celebrated their liberation, millions of people experienced, and perpetrated, violence and terror on a cataclysmic scale. As the strife of Partition continued to reverberate, the following years saw extremes of idealism, cynicism, invention, and ambition. In this course, we will examine the literature and culture of the decades after 1947, as the namesake children of Salman Rushdie’s famous novel grew up in their new postcolonial nations. In addition to reading Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, we will spend time with a variety of literary and artistic works, including fiction, memoir, poetry, and film. Secondary works by scholars of literature and history will help us get below the surface and to consider a variety of ways to think about democracy, conflict, artistic modernism, and the postcolonial condition, among other themes. At the same time as we consider the form and content of the texts, we will also seek to understand the dilemmas and insights that emerge from reading and writing translations.

Two overlapping courses are offered: ASIAN_LC is open to anyone and will be taught entirely in English, while HIND_URD 316 is open to students with suitable proficiency in Hindi or Urdu. Readings for HIND_URD 316 will be available in both Hindi and Urdu scripts.

Teaching Method

Seminar

Evaluation

papers and presentations

Class Materials (required)

Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (ISBN: 9780812976533)

ASIAN LC 260 – Ahiṃsā: Nonviolence in South Asia and Beyond

Overview of class
Ahiṃsā is a Sanskrit term that means "noninjury." It is ancient spiritual value developed within South Asian religious traditions. Ahiṃsā undergirds the modern concept of "nonviolence," which refers to any spiritual, ethical, or political disposition that refuses to use violence in the navigation of daily life and/or in the resolution of conflict. The practice of nonviolence, by whatever name, is found in cultures around the globe and throughout history. Some people and communities feel a strong ethical or spiritual impulse toward nonviolence. For them, nonviolence is a matter of principle and may or may not also be seen as a tool for political change. For others, nonviolent strategies are ways to resolve social conflict at all levels. In the 20th century nonviolence came to be seen as a powerful force against repressive regimes. This course will examine critically the history, theory, and practice of nonviolence and assess its limitations and potential. We will look at the feasibility of nonviolence for our species through an inquiry into the connection between violence, nonviolence, and human nature. We will also examine at the role of spiritual and ethical conviction in the establishment of nonviolent dispositions and explore the uses and limits of nonviolence toward contemporary political ends.

Learning Objectives
1. assess the many meanings of the term "violence" and critically analyze various definitions 2. identify the implications of debates about human nature to the potential viability of nonviolence 3. discuss how ethical and spiritual visions shape attitudes to violence and nonviolence 4. articulate the differences and similarities in different philosophies of nonviolence 5. outline the principles of nonviolence and conflict resolution as taught by Gandhi and Sharpe 6. critically analyze the potential of nonviolence in a contemporary context 7. articulate a coherent personal philosophy on violence/nonviolence that takes the foregoing into account

Teaching Method
lecture, class participation, discussion, group work, presentations, writing assignments

Evaluation Method
attendance, participation, papers, presentations

Class Materials (Required)
Mark Juergensmeyer. Gandhi's Way. ISBN 978-0520244979

Cormac McCarthy. The Road. ISBN 978-0307387899

Gene Sharp. Waging Nonviolent Struggle. ISBN 978-0875581620

ASIAN LC 360 – Islam and the Global Renaissance

Overview of class

This course will introduce students to various aspects of Islamic cultural and intellectual history that contributed to Renaissance thought, and to early modern "Western Civilization" generally. In modern times, of course, the Islamic world has gotten a pretty bad rap for (allegedly) lacking the things that made the modern west "modern": a spirit of rational philosophical and scientific inquiry, a commitment to religious tolerance, a humanistic respect for intellectual freedom and curiosity, a historical consciousness, and so on. But as we will see, Muslim scholars, intellectuals, and literati throughout history have not only espoused such values, many were pioneering thinkers whose works had a profound influence on the development of early modern European intellectual culture. It is a feature of our shared intellectual past that has largely been forgotten in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But recuperating such global genealogies of modern thought -- and specifically, the modern humanities -- is perhaps more urgent than ever today, in our own era of resurgent ethnic, nationalist, and sectarian chauvinism around the world.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, students will be expected to know more about the Islamic world, but also more about the global history of "Western" civilization. Critical writing, reading, and thinking skills will also be an emphasis of the course.

Teaching Method

Lecture, Seminar

Evaluation Method

Discussion, Presentations, Papers

Class Materials (required)

TENTATIVE
Stewart Gordon, When Asia was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks Who Created the “Riches of the East” (Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2009)

All other course materials will be posted to the course Canvas site.

ASIAN LC 360 – Hindu Epics: Mahābhārata

The Mahābhārata is an epic of ancient India that tells the story of a cataclysmic war between two sets of cousins, a war that eventually came to involve all the peoples of earth and gods in heaven. Interwoven among the main narrative are myriad shorter tales and religious teachings, so that the Mahābhārata represents a kind of encyclopedia of classical Hinduism. For over two thousand years, the Mahābhārata has continued to entertain and edify audiences as one of the best-known and most-beloved of Hindu sacred texts.

As a class we will read an abridged version of the text in translation. Graduate students may elect to read portions in the original Sanskrit. Our engagement with the text will focus on immersing ourselves in its story-world and thinking about narrative as a form of scripture: what are the basic aspects of the human condition? how are we to make our way in the world? from where do we derive our sense of purpose? how are stories especially good at accommodating complex perspectives of the cosmos and the human condition? what role do entertainment and enjoyment play in edification from scripture? how does ancient Hinduism appear through the lens of the text?

ASIAN LC 390 – Buddhist Auto/biography

ASIAN LC 390 – History of Modern South Asia, 1500-1800