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Asian Literature and Culture Courses

Courses marked with an * are available for graduate credit.

Asian Humanities

ASIAN LC 290 – Buddhism and Violence

Course Overview

Even a cursory reading of world history reminds us of the pervasive power religion possesses to incite violence, yet instances of violence incited in the name of Buddhism still tends to elicit surprise, given its associations with tranquility and nonviolence. In this course students will investigate the intersections between Buddhism and violence, with an eye toward considering their imbrication in specific cultural and historical contexts in Asia, including Myanmar, Sri Lanka, China, Tibet, Japan, and Thailand. In the first part of the course students will examine basic concepts and definitions of relevant categories including “religion,” “violence,” “sacrifice,” “ritual,” “martyrdom,” “nationalism,” and “terrorism.” The second part will focus on specific case studies in which Buddhism has played a significant role in inciting political violence, terrorism, and self-immolation in Asia. Some of the provocative questions that this course asks include: Do Buddhist texts condone violence in particular circumstances? Is there a Buddhist version of just war theory? How and why have Buddhist institutions aligned with state sanctioned forms of violence in certain contexts and resisted them in others? In what ways is there precedent in Buddhist cultural and textual history for self-immolation, and does this qualify as violence? There are no pre-requisites for this course aside from a curiosity to explore the relationship between religion and violence in Asia beyond the stereotype of Buddhism as the spiritual tradition of peace calm.
Teaching Method
Class participation, Discussion, Lecture (on Zoom), Presentations
Evaluation Method
Class participation, "Paper, final", Presentations
Class Material (required)
1. "Princeton Readings in Religion and Violence" by Mark Juergensmeyer and Margo Kitts, Princeton University Press, 2011 - 978-0691129143

2. "Buddhist Warfare" edited by Michael Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer, Oxford University Press, 2010 - 978-0195394849

Additional reading assignments will be provided as PDFs on Canvas

 

ASIAN LC 290 – Introduction to Tibetan Literature

Course overview
Following a chronological trajectory, students in this course will read Tibetan literature in English translation along with secondary sources to learn and reflect upon the long history of Tibetan literature from its inception in the 7th century to the present. Given the impact that religious concerns have had among Tibetans for centuries, in the first part of the course students will analyze the ways in which Buddhism and Tibetan literary forms are intertwined from the Tibetan imperial period forward. The second part of the course will survey modern and contemporary Tibetan literature and its myriad influences, such as Chinese literary and political theory. Students will gain familiarity with diverse genres of Tibetan literature in translation including fiction, poetry, biographies, and historical treatises.

Learning Objectives
- develop the ability to discuss and write about Tibetan literature
- understand the evolution of literature in Tibet
- cultivate critical thinking skills

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
class participation, weekly response papers, in-class presentation, final paper

Class Materials (required)
Tsering Dondrup. The Handsome Monk and Other Stories. Columbia University Press, 2019 ISBN 9780231190220

Tenzin Dickie. Old Demons, New Deities: Twenty-One Short Stories from Tibet . OR Books, 2017 ISBN 978-1944869519

Alai. Red Poppies. Viking (2002) ISBN 978-0143028499

ASIAN LC 390* – Environmental Cultures of East Asia

Overview of class
This course is dedicated to the study of environment and culture in east Asia, particularly in China. China is often imagined both as a site of localized environmental ruination that prefigures imminent global collapse and as a source of contamination and contagion that easily cross national borders. Particularly in the Global North, China has become a focal point for ambient ecoanxieties that are shadowed by longer histories of perceived racial, cultural, and economic threat. It is easy (and essential) to critique the demonization of China; the challenge lies in disentangling the imagined from the very real and present dangers that country’s environmental and public health problems pose at home and abroad. This course confronts that challenge by approaching our current environmental crises not as scientific issues with technological solutions, but as crises of culture and urgent objects of representation. How we imagine and depict our uncertain future has a direct impacts on how we act in the present. Course materials will include secondary scholarship from the field of the environmental humanities as well as works of speculative fiction, contemporary visual art, documentary photography, and film.

Learning Objectives
1. Students should be able to consider contemporary Asian environmental problems in their broader historical and geographical contexts; 2. Students should be able to reflect critically in writing on cultural dimensions of environmental problems; 3. Students should be familiar with the terminology and methods of the field of environmental humanities and display an ability to adapt them to Asian contexts; 4. Students should be able to carry out advanced research combining cultural and environmental approaches to the study of Asia as part of a final research project.

Teaching Method
Seminar discussion

Evaluation Method
Attendance and Participation: 25%; Response Posts: 15%; Essay 1: 20%; Final Project: 40%

Class Materials (Required)
Wu Ming-Yi, The Man with the Compound Eyes; Chen Qiufan, The Wastetide; Course Reader

ASIAN LC 390* – Fashion Matters: East Asia

Course overview
This course will focus on the historical, social, and cultural development of fashion, clothing, and consumption in East Asia. Using a variety of sources, from fiction to art, from bodily modification to textile production, from legal codes to advertisements, we will study both actual garments created and worn in society throughout history, as well as the ways in which they inform the social characterization of class, ethnicity, nationality, and gender in China, Japan, and Korea. Among the topics we will analyze in this sense will be hairstyle, foot-binding, plastic surgery, and, in a deeper sense, bodily practices that inform most fashion-related discourses in East Asia. We will also think through the issue of fashion consumption as an often-contested site of labor, modernity, especially in relationship to the issue of globalization and world-market. Thus, we will also include a discussion of international fashion designers, along with analysis of sites of production and circulation, from sweatshops to online platforms. Previous knowledge and familiarity with East Asian cultures and languages, while helpful, are not required.

Learning Objectives
-Acquisition of knowledge about fashion studies, fashion theory, East Asian clothing and fashion cultures and histories. This will entail exposure to both visual and literary primary sources (in English, and for those students able to, in the appropriate East Asian language), as well as to related secondary sources.

-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 East Asian Studies, Fashion Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Asian humanities.

-Growth as independent academic thinkers and writers.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

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

Course Materials (required)
All course material will be available on Canvas

ASIAN LC 390* – Chan/Zen Buddhism

Overview of Class
The Chinese Chan (Japanese Zen) Buddhist tradition is one of the most famous branches of Buddhism in the world, but also one of the most widely misunderstood. This course explores the history, literature, philosophy, visual culture, and monastic practices of Chan/Zen Buddhism in East Asia. We pay special attention to the ways Chan/Zen innovated within the Buddhist tradition to establish a uniquely East Asian school of Buddhism. Along the way we consider the changing place of meditation in Chan/Zen practice, closely read Chan/Zen sermons and koans, analyze the role of women and gender in Chan and Zen, and conclude by considering the modern reception of Zen in the West.

ASIAN LC 390* – East Asian Classics

Overview of class
This course explores some of the most influential texts of the major East Asian religious and philosophical traditions including Confucianism, Daoism, Chan/Zen Buddhism, and Tibetan Buddhism still prominent in China, Japan, Tibet, and several other Asian societies today. The goal is to understand the significance and the place that they have in East Asian cultures. This course will probe the following questions: What are the preoccupations these texts address? How can humans achieve contentment in the world? What are the moral values these texts instill? Beyond this historical focus, this course will also reflect on ways that these literary and religious texts have been appropriated and adapted in the modern context. Each period dedicated to a specific text will be preceded by an introduction to the tradition it represents offering an historical background together with biographical and/or content outlines.

Learning Objectives
a) Gain exposure to a set of classic texts that intersect the realms of religion and literature, leading to reflection on both of these forms of cultural expression. b) Explore a diversity of cultural worldviews reflected in the texts, thus exercising their imagination. c) Train in the critical analysis of different literary genres, including scriptural, philosophical, ethical, and biographical examples. d) Engage in consistent and cumulative writing practice in response to complex and challenging works. e) Develop their own unique understanding of the relationship between religion and literature.

Teaching Method
The course format will include a combination of lecture and discussion. Every student\'s active participation is required for a successful fulfillment of the course. Students will be encouraged to exercise critical thinking and to participate in class discussions. Students will analyze primary source material in translation, critically evaluate content and concepts, and will be encouraged to synthesize the information and communicate it effectively and thoroughly.

Evaluation Method
Regular attendance; in-class/online presentation; mid-term test/paper; end of term paper

Class Materials (required)
- Confucius / Annping Chin (transl). The Analects. Penguin Classics (2014) - ISBN 978-0143106852 - Lao Tzu / D.C. Lau (transl). Tao Te Ching. Penguin Classics; Reprint edition (1964) - ISBN 978-0140441314 - Tsangnyon Heruka / A. Quintman (transl). The Life of Milarepa. Penguin Classics; 1 edition (2010) - ISBN 978-0143106227 - Wu Cheng\'en / Anthony C Yu (transl). The Monkey and the Monk: An Abridgment of The Journey to the West. University of Chicago Press; 1 edition (2006) - ISBN 978-0226971568

ASIAN LC 397 – Senior Seminar

Overview of Class
What is Asia? Where is it? What makes a language, a culture, a people “Asian”, and why? When and how did “Asia” emerge as a concept and as a field of knowledge, and what does it mean for us as students and scholars situated in 21st century Northern American academia to enter the circuit of production, consumption, and re-production of knowledge of and about Asia? We will engage these questions by first of all understanding the genealogies and the definitions and research practices in the field of Asian studies, our own as well as others’. We will then move on to discuss together how to describe research topics, articulate research questions, and identify primary materials through which to explore them; how to find, read, evaluate, and make original use of existing scholarship; how to use library research to frame and inform the analysis of primary cultural materials; and how to communicate the aims and results of research to a community of peers. Regardless of whether our respective area/s of interest lies in the early modern, modern, and contemporary periods and in the local, national, regional contexts of Asia, the goal of our time together will be to imagine and map ways in which we can carry out and write meaningful research. Your individual student research projects will constitute the core of the seminar, and you will develop them progressively in a workshop setting. You will thus be expected to begin the course with a clear research topic, and a rough idea of what primary sources you may use to develop it. Over the course of the quarter, each of you will develop their research topic into an original 12-15 page research paper. For students who wish to complete a Senior Thesis in ALC, this paper will provide the core of the thesis, to be more thoroughly elaborated over the rest of the year. Students whose topics are not concerned with pre-modern, modern and contemporary China, East Asian studies, gender and sexuality studies, visual culture, and fashion theory (my main areas of specialization) are encouraged to seek out additional faculty support for their research, especially if they plan to complete a Senior Thesis in the quarters ahead.

Learning Objectives
- Choose and develop research questions that speak to critical Asian humanities and that are connected to specific materials and research topics -Find, read, evaluate, and integrate existing scholarship related to one’s chosen topic into one’s research and analysis of primary sources - Present original research orally and in writing to an audience of informed peers -Engage enthusiastically in the process of peer review -Development of methodological skills in studying, reading, and analyzing the primary and secondary sources related to the themes of the seminar. -Growth as independent researchers in the field of critical Asian humanities. -Growth as independent academic thinkers and writers in the above areas and disciplines.

Teaching Method
Discussion

Evaluation Method
Weekly assignments and peer reviews (35%), Final Presentation (10% total), Final Paper (30%), and participation and attendance (25%)

Class Materials (Required)
All readings and films, including optional material, will be available on Canvas

ASIAN LC 492* – Grad Seminar: Studies in Modern Buddhism

Course overview
This graduate seminar will probe the notion of modernity and modernism in the field of Buddhist studies. Through weekly readings of some of the most recent monographs on the subject, students will consider the meanings and implications of modern Buddhism as it is understood in relation to different contexts including Myanmar, China, Mongolia, Tibet, and the U.S. Questions we will explore include: What are the distinguishing features of modern Buddhism (and Buddhist modernism), and how are recent scholars invoking these categories? Who are the agents of Buddhist modernity, and how do they relate to forms of secularism, colonialism, and nationalism? What socio-political and intellectual forces are mobilizing innovation and rationalization of Buddhism on a global scale? Is modernism about homogenization? Is dis-indigenization and the re-emphasis on canonical scriptures aimed at appealing to Euro-American societies? Is mindfulness the new yoga? These questions and more that are tailored to the research interests of students in the course will fuel our classroom conversations.

Teaching Method
Discussion, Presentations, Seminar

Evaluation Method
Class participation, "Paper, final", Presentations, Readings

Class Material (required)
1. The Making of Buddhist Modernism by David L. McMahan, Oxford University Press, 2008 978-0195183276

2. Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu's Reforms by Don A. Pittman, University of Hawaii Press, 2001 978-0824822316
OR
- The Science of Chinese Buddhism: Early Twentieth-Century Engagements (The Sheng Yen Series in Chinese Buddhist Studies) by Erik J. Hammerstrom, Columbia University Press, 2015 978-0231170345

3. The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw (Buddhism and Modernity) by Erik Braun, University of Chicago Press, 2016 978-0226418575

4. Morality and Monastic Revival in Post-Mao Tibet (Contemporary Buddhism) by Jane E. Caple, University of Hawaii Press, 2019 978-0824869847

5. Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood: A Mongolian Monk in the Ruins of the Qing Empire by Matthew W. King, Columbia University Press, 2019 978-0231191067

6. Religious Bodies Politic: Rituals of Sovereignty in Buryat Buddhism (Buddhism and Modernity) by Anya Bernstein, University of Chicago Press, 2013 978-0226072722

7. American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity by Ann Gleig, Yale University Press, 2019 978-0300215809
McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality by Ronald Purser, Repeater, 2019 978-1912248315

Additional reading material will be offered as PDF

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Chinese Culture

ASIAN LC 200 – Flowers in the Mirror

Course overview
The focus of this course will be the study of sources authored by and about women throughout the course of Chinese history. We will address the issue of women as others represent them and women as they portray themselves in terms of gender, sexuality, social class, family, and material culture across time. We will deal with a wide range of texts, from poetry to drama, from novels and short stories to nüshu (the women-exclusive script invented by peasant women in a remote area of Hunan province) songs, from literary autobiographies to cinematic discourse. Focusing on issues such as reproduction, labor, foot-binding, sexuality, and romance, in the works of pre-modern Chinese writers, from Ban Zhao to Li Qingzhao, from Wang Yun to Qiu Jin, we will try to detect the presence and absence of female voices in the literature of different historical periods, and to understand how those literary works relate to male-authored literary works. We will also explore the ways in which representations of women and female figures, such as goddesses, ghosts, and supernatural beings , complicated and enriched these literary horizons. In addition to primary sources, we will integrate theoretical work in the field of gender and sexuality studies, feminist studies, and queer theory, as well as Chinese literature and culture.

Learning Objectives
-Acquisition of knowledge about voices, identities, and lives of women in pre-modern Chinese culture (over a period roughly spanning from the 8th century BCE to the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911). This will mean exposure to primary sources (in English, and for those students able to, in Chinese) produced by Chinese authors, as well as to related secondary sources.

-Development of methodological skills in studying, reading, and analyzing the primary and secondary sources related to the themes of the course in individual and communal spaces of dialogue and conversation.

-Growth as independent researchers in the field of Chinese literature, Asian humanities, and gender and sexuality studies.

-Growth as independent academic thinkers and writers.

Teaching Method
Discussion and Lecture

Evaluation Method
Paper 1 (20%); short writing assignments (25 % total); Final Paper (30%), and active participation and attendance (25%). You will find specific guidelines for each assignment on Canvas, under Assignments.

Course Materials (required)
All course materials will be available on Canvas

ASIAN LC 200 – Taiwanese New Wave Cinemas

Course overview
 “New wave” is a ubiquitous but notoriously imprecise term that has been applied to various trends in cinema that emerged around the world beginning in the mid-1950s. As an historical term it is used to delineate shared styles, themes, and techniques that define certain national and international film movements. As a kind of descriptive shorthand, it has been applied more broadly to movements that abandoned conventional narrative techniques in favor of experimentation with the cinematic medium, while also confronting social and political problems specific to the context of production. Thus, the inaugural French New Wave has lent its title to film trends in Britain, Iran, Japan, Hong Kong, and many other locations around the world. This course offers a critical and historical introduction to one of these latter-day new waves, the “New Taiwan Cinema,” which emerged in the early 1980s as a reaction against contemporaneous commercial cinema. Through a careful investigation of the work of the three most important representatives of this “new” cinema—Hou Hsiao-hsien 侯孝賢, Tsai Ming-Liang 蔡明亮, and Edward Yang 楊德昌—this course will consider not only the experimental form and social consciousness of the Taiwanese New Wave but also the specific economic, social, and institutional structures—national and transnational—that shaped it. We will also study critical and theoretical writings on this cinema to better understand both the Taiwanese cultural milieu that produced it, and the broader global film culture of which it has become such an important part. Whenever possible, we will place individual Taiwanese films in dialogue with the Asian and European film cultures that influenced them as well as the films and filmmakers that they have influenced. There are no prerequisites for this class and no previous knowledge of Chinese or Taiwanese literature, culture, language, or history is assumed.

Teaching Method
Asynchronous lecture, synchronous discussion.
Synchronous sessions on Thursdays

Evaluation Method
1. Participation, attendance and preparation: 25%

2. Review Posts: 15%

3. Scene Analysis: 10%

4. Essay 1: 25%

5. Essay 2: 25%

Class Materials (required)
All materials will be available through Canvas

ASIAN LC 300* – Threat! Orientalism, Yellow Peril, and other Fantagies of a Dangerous China

Course overview
China has long been an object of fascination and anxiety in the Euro-American imagination. In recent decades, a politicized and racialized discourse of a “rising” China has constructed that nation as an existential threat to America’s global hegemony. As a figure of possibility rather than probability, threat refers not to what is likely to happen but to what could conceivably happen. Threat, like risk, requires acts of the imagination, speculative fictions designed not simply to create fear but to inspire action. This course offers both a critical history of those speculative and often sensational visions of a threatening China (in literature, film, visual culture, and other media) as well as an introduction to key theoretical texts that allow us to better understand how China has been constructed as an object of imagination from the 19th century to the present day. Rather than simply centering on “Western” imaginaries, however, this course stages a broad dialogue between global visions of China and expressions of cultural, environmental, and political threat from within the Sinophone world. It asks how shared anxieties manifest in competing discourses of threat within and outside of China. The seminar will be organized around four units: “Orientations,” which provides our theoretical grounding; “Labor, Body, Race,” which traces how laboring Chinese bodies have been mobilized in expressions of racial anxiety; “Border Problems,” which looks at the geopolitics of threat within the greater Pacific region; and “Viral Imaginaries and Animal Entanglements,” which examines the long history and painful present of China’s association with zoonotic diseases, from the Bubonic Plague to SARS- CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Registration requirements
There are no pre-requisites for this course, though students are encouraged to have previously taken at least one 200-level Asian_LC course.

Teaching Method
Discussion with minimal lecturing
Synchronous sessions on Thursdays

Evaluation Method
1. Participation and Preparation (20%)
2. Discussion Posts and Comments (20%)
3. Midterm essay (20%)
4. Final Project Proposal (10%)
5. Final Project (30%)

Class Materials (required)
Materials for this class will be available through Canvas

ASIAN LC 300* – Religion and the Body in China

Overview of course
This seminar explores the place of the body in Chinese religion, from the ancient period to the present day. In the course of this exploration, we seek to challenge our presuppositions about a seemingly simple question: what is “the body,” and how do we know? We open by considering themes of dying and the afterlife, food and drink, health and medicine, gender and family. We then turn to Daoist traditions of visual culture that envision the human body as intimately connected with the cosmos and picture the body’s interior as a miniature landscape populated by a pantheon of gods. We read ghost stories and analyze the complex history of footbinding. Finally, we conclude with two case studies of religion and the body in contemporary China, one situated on the southwestern periphery, the other in the capital city of Beijing. Throughout the quarter, we investigate how the body has mediated relationships between Buddhist, Daoist, and popular religious traditions. By the course’s end, students will gain key resources for understanding historical and contemporary Chinese culture, and new perspectives on what it means to be religious and embodied.

ASIAN LC 300* – Grassroots Revolt in China Today

Overview of course
This course introduces you to the Chinese who have tried to build a civil society in China over the past three decades. After the Chinese Communist Party had crushed hopes for a sudden turn to democracy in 1989, the scope of activism has turned to smaller, more local initiatives like lawyers' activism in court, environmental activism, feminist activism, labor activism, and religious activism. You will analyze each of these activist causes for their tactics, strategy, and potential to force change. Activist initiatives provoke the repressive apparatus of the authoritarian state and expose each activist two grave personal danger. We will try to understand what sustains activists emotionally in the face of the constant threat from government repression. Not all activists see our Western combination of neoliberal capitalism and democracy as their lodestar. We will seek to identify what repels these activists about our Western ways of organizing society and politics, and what a Chinese third way as an alternative to authoritarian rule and Westernization might look like.

Learning Objectives
This course is intended to introduce you to a different, rarely seen China behind and beyond the razzle-dazzle of China's stunning economic rise. It will prod you to think about the power of ordinary people to organize against the state. You will learn to read and evaluate difficult books. You will also learn to write with primary source material to craft a short research paper from scratch.

Teaching Method
You will learn from class discussion that builds on your preparation of the assigned books, as well as from feedback on your work-in-progress as you are writing your short research paper.

Evaluation Method
Class Discussion 50% / Final Paper 35% / Mid-term Take-home 15%

Class Materials (required)

There will be another three books in addition to the four listed below. You do not need to purchase any of the required books because they will be available to you as e-books through our University Library website.

Rongbin Han. Contesting Cyberspace in China. Online Expression and Authoritarian Resilience. New York: Columbia University Press 2018. ISBN 9780231184755 $32

Ching Kwan Lee. Against the Law. Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 2007. ISBN - 13: 978- 0-520-25097-0 $34.95

David Ownby. Falun Gong and the Future of China. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008. ISBN 978-0-19-973853-3 $28.95

Sebastian Veg. Minjian. The Rise of China's Grassroots Intellectuals. New York: Columbia University Press 2019. ISBN 978-0-231-19140-1 $65

ASIAN LC 300* – Religion and Politics in the PRC

Course overview
This course will examine the role of religion in post-1980’s China and the political implications of the practice of religion in the People’s Republic of China. To place this field in context, students will read various forms of literature and policy documents to assess the extent to which Marxist theory is central to the interpretation of religion in Communist China. Primary sources will include Chinese constitutional articles, white papers, and editorials in English translation. Secondary sources will cover a wide range of interpretations and perspectives on the position of religious institutions and religious practices in the PRC. Topics that this course will investigate include the expression of religiosity under Communism in China; the rehabilitation of Confucian values; the constitutional protection of religion and religious belief in China; the relationship between ethnicity and religious policies; the Sinicization of religion; and the administration of the five officially accepted religious traditions in the People’s Republic of China (Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Islam). The second part of the course will be dedicated to a detailed exploration of the recent cases related to the Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang and the Tibetan Buddhists of Western China. The class will explore some of the most controversial issues related to these two ethnic minorities including terrorism, religious violence, nationalism, assimilation, foreign influence, and soft power.

Learning Objectives
- effectively consider issues pertaining to religion and politics in China
- acquire knowledge about minorities, rights, and ethnicity in China
- cultivate critical thinking
- improve writing skills

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
class participation, weekly response papers, final paper

Class Materials (required)
Fenggang Yang, Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule, Oxford University Press 2011 - ISBN 978-0199735648

Anna Sun, Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities, Princeton University Press, 2015 (2013) ISBN 978-0691168111

Ian Johnson, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion after Mao. Pantheon Books, 2017 ISBN 978-1101870051

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First-Year Seminar

ASIAN LC 110 – Bollywood, Muslims and Modern India

Course overview
India is home to the second largest population of Muslims on earth. It’s also host to the world’s largest film industry, best known as Bollywood. Bollywood films regularly feature Muslim characters, social spaces, and cultural references that are readily marked or coded as “Islamic.” But in spite of a large coterie of Muslims working within the industry – as actors, song writers, or producers – the representation of Muslims in Indian films has consistently raised complex issues around ideas of identity and belonging in a nation where they constitute a clear and conspicuous minority. This course will read influential Muslims, Bollywood and Modern Indiafilms against the historical backdrop of the search for national identity in post-colonial India, as well as in the context of the so-called “war on terror.” Students will be given the opportunity not only to learn about Indian (particularly Bombay) cinema, but also to explore how cinematic representations intersect with issues of identity and belonging in the modern nation-state.

Teaching Method
synchronous lectures/discussion

Evaluation Method
Attendance, participation, pop quizzes 20%
Discussion Questions 20%
Film analyses (20% each, three total) 60%

Class Material (required)
None

ASIAN LC 110 – Book History of 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.

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

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Final grade will be determined by: (1) in-class and in-app (Perusall) participation; (2) one-page weekly response paper inspired by the reading(s); (3) a final paper.

Class Materials (Required)
Two or three books amounting to no more than 30$

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Japanese Culture

ASIAN LC 220 – Girl Meets Girl in Japan

Overview of course
In this class students analyze cultural representations of female bonds in contemporary Japanese literature, manga, anime and film. Female bonds encompass a wide range of relationships, from friendship to rivalry and romance. Students will consider the recurring themes and tropes used to depict female bonds and will identify some of the principles that structure female homosociality. No knowledge of Japanese language or culture required.

Learning Objectives
Acquiring basic knowledge about Japan.
Developing close reading and critical thinking skills

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Class participation, weekly response papers and 6-page long final paper

Class Materials (required)
Novala Takemoto, Kamikaze Girls (Viz Media LLC, 2008) ISBN-13 : 978-1421513959
Kawakami Mieko, Breasts and Eggs (Tr., Sam Bett and David Boyd, Europa Editions, NY, ISBN-10 : 1609455878)

ASIAN LC 220 – TBA

Course description coming soon!

ASIAN LC 320* – Art and Activism in Modern Japan

Overview of course
This course examines the relationship between the arts and political movements in modern Japan. We will examine historical examples of how art has been conceived as a form of political activism and how social movements have, in turn, shaped cultural and aesthetic forms. The course will move chronologically while exploring a set of historically persistent questions: How have art and politics been defined as distinct or overlapping realms of human activity? What is the relationship between aesthetic forms and political ideologies? How is artistic production itself a form of social organization and engagement? We will consider, among other topics, how transnational anarchism and struggles for democracy in the late 19th century shaped the modern novel; feminist literature; the proletarian arts movements; fascist aesthetics; practices of democracy in the postwar avant-garde; Afro-Japanese solidarities and cultural exchange; the intersection of art and social protest in the sixties; and the role of the arts in anti-nuclear movements. Drawing from an array of disciplinary perspectives, this course investigates how the arts have been used to imagine and enact social change on local, national, and global scales.

Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, the student is expected to be able to: 1. Identify major art and political movements in modern Japanese history, and describe them from various disciplinary perspectives. 2. Use multiple, contrasting theoretical concepts in interpreting primary texts of Japanese literature and culture. 3. Read, summarize, and critically evaluate secondary scholarship on topics related to art and politics in modern Japan. 4. Articulate the relationship between the formal qualities of cultural works and their political valence within historical contexts

Teaching Method
Lecture and discussion

Evaluation Method
Weekly Discussion
Posts Midterm Assessment
Final Assessment

Class Material (required)
Course Reader (available for download through Canvas)

 

ASIAN LC 320* – Finance Fictions: The Japanese Economic Novel

Course description coming soon!

ASIAN LC 320* – Japanese Popular Literature

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. No prior knowledge of Japan is required.

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

Teaching Method
Lecture and discussion

Evaluation Method
Final grade will be determined by: (1) in-class and in-app (Perusall) participation; (2) one-page weekly response paper inspired by the reading(s); (3) a final paper.

Class Materials (Required)
Two or three books amounting to no more than 30$

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Korean Culture

ASIAN LC 240 – Intro to Korean Cinema

Overview of class
This course offers a survey to Korean film history as understood through the lens of collective social imagination. Since its birth, cinema has contributed to the making of collective experiences in the public sphere. Examining how Korean films have continued envisioning the modern transformations of society, this course gives special attention to films which engage intensively with the relevant themes of colonization, national division, industrialization, democratization, and globalization. Through film screenings, readings, and in-depth discussions on each text, students will gain insight into the larger historical, social, and cultural contexts that informed and shaped the production and consumption of Korean cinema.

Learning Objectives
The course aims to: (1) understand the larger historical, social, and cultural contexts surrounding Korean cinema; (2) examine chosen film texts in regard to its spectatorship; (3) introduce theoretical frameworks of national/transnational cinema discourse, genre films, and independent filmmaking; (4) develop skills to analyze the moving images; and (5) gain experience in presenting research (oral and written), thinking and reflecting critically on the given texts, and critiquing scholarly work.

Teaching Method
Discussion with Lectures

Evaluation Method
Attendance, Weekly Responses, Film Analysis Essays, Final Paper, Presentations

Class Materials (required)
All assigned readings are accessible through the course website.

ASIAN LC 240 – Korean Popular Culture in Global Context

Overview of class
This course critically examines contemporary Korean popular culture and the phenomenon of its growing global circulation, prominence, and visibility. It explores the various forms of Korean popular culture not as “mere entertainment” but as economic, political, and social texts, situated both in domestic and global context. With diverse selected cultural forms, such as television, film, music, sports and the internet culture, we will investigate various global cultural forces that are at work in the production, distribution, and consumption of Korean popular culture. The course aims to foster in-depth understanding of the place of Korean popular culture in Korean society, both historically and within contemporary moment as well as within the continuously changing global dynamics.

Learning Objectives
The course aims to: (1) have a broad-based understanding of Korean culture and society; (2) develop analytical tools for understanding Korean Popular Culture in today’s global media landscape; (3) gain experience in presenting research (oral and written), thinking and reflecting critically on the given texts, and critiquing scholarly work; (4) craft a structured argument advancing a specific original claim in the form of a carefully constructed final paper.

Teaching Method
Discussion with Lectures

Evaluation Method
Attendance, Weekly Responses,Midterm Paper, Final Paper, Presentations

Class Materials (required)
All assigned readings are accessible through the course website.

ASIAN LC 340* – Women's Narratives in Modern Korean Culture

Overview of course
This course examines the diverse narratives of Korean women in modern and contemporary South Korea, offering a survey of Korean culture from the perspective of women. We will investigate historical and cultural transformations in South Korean society precisely by listening to those voices that have all too often been silenced or muffled. Incorporating feature films, documentaries, literature, sound recordings, theater recordings, and exhibition catalogues, the class will facilitate students' understanding of the many female perspectives in modern and contemporary Korean society and prompt broader critical examinations of Korean culture at large. The key issues we will follow are: the new women discourse in colonial Korea, war memory and women's testimony, industrialization and female workers, questions of motherhood, and the #MeToo Movement in recent South Korean feminist discourse.

Learning Objectives
The course aims to: (1) develop a critical understanding of the broad sweep of modern Korean history; (2) develop skills to analyze cultural texts such as literature, film, and TV drama; and (3) apply women's perspectives to reassess Korea's modern history from colonization to the contemporary era.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Attendance and Participation, Presentations, Essays

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

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South Asian Culture

ASIAN LC 260 – Cities and Modernity in South Asia

Course Overview
When Gandhi said that “India does not live in its towns but in its villages,” he was agreeing with the conventional wisdom of his contemporaries, both Indian and British. In this course, we will disregard this view and focus instead on South Asia’s mesmerizing, contentious cities.

The class’s organization is thematic as well as chronological; but over the course of the quarter, we will move from the early nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. We will spend time with a variety of texts, including fiction, poetry, memoirs, blog posts, and films. 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 cities, art, and society. Approaching these texts as documents of ways of thinking and living, while remaining alert to their aesthetic qualities, will help us think about what makes modernity modern, what makes cities urban, and what makes a colony colonial.

At the same time as we consider the form and content of the texts, we will also address questions of translation. Translation is famously difficult, or maybe impossible, but at the same time it is not only necessary but can also offer us new ways to read. By critically approaching texts in the original and in translation, and by reading reflections on the practice of translation, we will seek to understand the dilemmas and insights that emerge from reading and writing translations.

Two overlapping courses are offered: ASIAN_LC 260 (meeting MW) is open to anyone and will be taught entirely in English, while HIND_URD 316 (meeting MF) 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.

Prerequisites:
HIND-URD 211-1,2,3, with a C- or better, or instructor consent.

Learning objectives:
Students will be able to:
- understand and interpret South Asian literary works.
- evaluate the relationship between texts and their cultural and historical contexts;
- critically evaluate translations of South Asian literature;
- critically evaluate scholarly work relating to South Asian history and culture;
- make cogent and persuasive arguments, orally and in writing, incorporating careful analysis of primary and secondary materials;
- work with classmates to produce knowledge collaboratively.

Teaching method:
seminar
Evaluation Method:
papers and presentations
Class Materials (required):
None (all class materials will be distributed on Canvas).

ASIAN LC 260 – Kings, Courtesans, and Khan Artists Picturizing Islam and Muslims in Bombay Cinema

Course overview
India is home to the second largest population of Muslims on earth. It’s also host to the world’s largest film industry, best known as Bollywood. Little wonder, then, that Bollywood films regularly feature Muslim characters, social spaces, and cultural references that are readily marked or coded as “Islamic.” But in spite of a large coterie of Muslims working within the industry – as actors, song writers, or producers – the representation of Muslims in Indian films has consistently raised complex issues around ideas of identity and belonging in a nation where they constitute a clear (and conspicuous) minority. We will read these films against the historical backdrop of the search for national identity in post-colonial India, as well as in the context of the so-called “war on terror.” Students will be given the opportunity not only to learn about Indian (particularly Bombay) cinema, but also to explore how cinematic representations intersect with issues of identity and belonging in the modern nation-state.

Teaching Method
synchronous lectures/discussion

Evaluation Method
Attendance, participation, pop quizzes 20%
Discussion Questions 20%
Film analyses (20% each, three total) 60%

Class Materials (required)
None

ASIAN LC 260 – 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, the studios in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) 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 perhaps in the world, is Amitabh Bachchan. With his brooding, rebellious charisma, not to mention his ready wit, resonant baritone voice, 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.

Learning Objectives
At the end of this course, students will be able to analyze Hindi films, and other elements of South Asian popular culture, in light of cultural, social, and political considerations; critically evaluate scholarly work relating to South Asian history and culture; work with classmates to produce knowledge collaboratively; and make cogent and persuasive arguments, orally and in writing, incorporating careful analysis of primary and secondary materials.

Teaching Method
Seminar

Evaluation Method
participation, papers, and presentations

Class Materials (Required)
William Elison, Christian Lee Novetzke, and Andy Rotman, Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation (Harvard University Press, 2016, ISBN 9780674504486)

ASIAN LC 360* – Love, Literature and the Divine: Islamic Mysticism and Sufi Writing in South Asia

Course description coming soon!

ASIAN LC 370* – South Asian Feminist Fictions

Course overview
In this course we will engage critically and closely with diverse works by women writers and filmmakers from both India and Pakistan. We will pay special attention to how these artists articulate and re-imagine the female experience in South Asian societies, offering diverse and fierce challenges to multiple foundations of patriarchy.

Learning Objectives
1. to understand and interpret primary South Asian feminist literature in its cultural context
2. to apply literary and feminist theories in the analysis of South Asian feminist literary texts
3. to contextualize South Asian women's literature in a global frame
4. to become familiar with some of the most significant twentieth-century South Asian women writers

Teaching Method
lecture and discussion

Evaluation Method
The evaluation for this class will depend largely on close, engaged reading and discussion of literary texts. Students will demonstrate their engagement with primary and secondary readings through written or oral responses, in addition to discussion with peers. Students will also choose a writer from among those whose work we will read in class, or one not on the syllabus, and write an analytical essay after doing more extensive reading in that writer's oeuvre.

Class Materials (required)
Most reading materials for the class will be available online in pdf form. We will also read the following novels. Any edition (electronic or printed) is fine.

Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
Samra Habib, We Have Always Been Here
Kamila Shamsie, Kartography

ASIAN LC 375* – Politics of Exclusion: Caste and Race in India and the United States

Overview of Course
In this course we will explore the historical, political, intellectual, and aesthetic connections between caste in India and race in the United States. We will use the occasion of the recent publication of Isabel Wilkerson’s book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which has brought increased public attention to the shared structures and political philosophies that underwrite both U.S. racial segregation and Hindu/Indian caste hierarchies as particular kinds of political systems that mobilize social hierarchies through color and colorism. We’ll seek to contextualize Wilkerson’s evocative analogy through a focused reading of the works of scholars of race, caste, postcolonialism, religion, history, ethnic and area studies who have traced this relationship in more specific contexts. We will also pay special attention to the genre of memoir, reading several recent examples from both Dalit and Black American writers.

Learning Objectives
In this class students will learn to - make informed connections between the histories and literatures of race in the US and caste in India - synthesize and compare nuanced historical and literary work to support original analytical arguments orally and in writing.

Teaching Method
Discussion

Evaluation Method
Class participation and daily preparedness, response papers, analytical essay

Class Materials (required)
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (Random House, 2020) 0593230256 Frank B. Wilderson III, Afropessimism (Liveright, 2020) 163149614X Kiese Laymon, Heavy (Sribner, 2019) 1501125664 Suraj Yengde, Caste Matters (Viking, 2019) 0670091227 Yashica Dutt, Coming Out As Dalit (Aleph, 2019) 9388292405

ASIAN LC 390* – Hindu Epics: Rāmāyaṇa

Course description coming soon!

ASIAN LC 390* – Hindu Law

Course description coming soon!

ASIAN LC 390* – Imaginary Homelands: South Asian Literatures in English

Course overview
South Asian writers win prizes. Ever since Salman Rushdie catapulted to international fame with the Booker Prize in 1981, writers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have become the mainstay of not only literary prize cultures and the festival circuit but also U.S. university campuses. What has made South Asian literature so popular, especially when it deals with somber questions of anticolonial resistance, postcolonial nation-building, violence, and loss? This course will introduce students to twentieth and twenty-first century South Asian Literatures in English characterized by exciting stylistic innovations in magical realism, modernist language games, lyrical prose, and biting satire. By examining novels, short stories, poems, political writing, and films, we will ask, how has literature shaped both the promise and failure of the postcolonial nation-state? What might South Asian writing teach us about the global project of democratic world-making? Topics of discussion will include gender, caste, empire, globalization, migrancy, and environmentalism.

Teaching Method
Discussion

Evaluation Method
TBA

Class Materials (required)
Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World Mulk Raj Anand, Untouchable Sa’adat Hassan Manto, “Boo” (Short story in translation) Ismat Chugtai, “Lihaaf” (Short story in translation) Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children Tahmima Anam, A Golden Age Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire (Film) Mohammed Hanif, A Case of Exploding Mangoes

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