Asian Literature and Culture Courses

Courses marked with an * are available for graduate credit.

Asian Humanities

Chinese Culture

College Seminar
- ASIAN LC 110 – The Japanese Role-Playing Game

Japanese Culture

Korean Culture

South Asian Culture

Asian Humanities

ASIAN LC 290 – Intro to Tibetan Literature

Overview of Course
What are Tibetan literature’s distinctive features? In what ways has Buddhism determined Tibetan literary genres? How have modern forms of Tibetan literature developed? 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 up 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 an undergraduate-level understanding of the variety and genres of Tibetan literature
• Reflect upon the role of Buddhism in Tibetan literature
• Understand the Chinese influence on modern Tibetan literature
• Gain familiarity with Tibetan literary developments in the Tibetan Diaspora
• Consider the continuities and innovations that separate traditional genres of Tibetan literature from its modern developments.

Teaching Method
Lecture and class discussion

Evaluation Method
Class participation, in-class presentations, weekly response papers and term paper

Class Materials (required)
Heruka, Tsangnyon, Life of Milarepa. PENGUIN. ISBN 13: 9780143106227
All the rest of the literary material will be available in PDF format on CANVAS

Class Materials (suggested)

ASIAN LC 390* – Buddhist Cultures and the Rhetoric of Violence

Overview of Course
This course investigates the intersections between religion and violence in the context of Buddhist Asia while also considering why in many religious traditions there seem to be a link between the two. The course will be structured in two parts: in the first part students will be encouraged to build expertise in the basic concepts, definitions, and general academic consensus (as well as debates) about categories including “religion,” “violence,” “sacrifice,” “ritual,” “martyrdom,” and also “nationalism,” “politics,” and “terrorism” through reading both primary sources (in English translation) and secondary sources (scholarly writings). We will then move into an analysis of case studies that focus on specific circumstances where Buddhist rhetoric, scriptural authority, and religious practices have played a role in violence including suicide, terrorist-related actions, and self-immolation predominantly in pre- and modern Asia. Some of the provocative questions that this course asks include: Why and how is religion involved in politics? Is Buddhism a pacifist religion? How does religion rationalize violence? How can some Buddhist leaders embrace terror as a political tool? Are the recent practices of self-immolation in Tibet acts of violence? Can non-violence be violent?

Teaching Method
Lecture and class discussion

Evaluation Method
In-class participation and presentation Weekly response papers Term paper

Class Materials (required)
Mark Juergensmeyer and Margo Kitts, Princeton Readings in Religion and Violence, Princeton University Press, 2011 - ISBN 978-0691129143 Michael Jerryson & Mark Juergensmeyer (eds), Buddhist Warfare. Oxford University Press, 2010 - ISBN 978-0195394849

Class Materials (suggested)
Michael Jerryson, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road: Buddhism, Politics, and Violence. Oxford University Press, 2010 - ISBN 9780190683566 Michael K. Jerryson, Buddhist Fury: Religion and Violence in Southern Thailand. Oxford University Press, 2011 - 978-0199793242 Brian Victoria. Zen at War, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.; 2nd edition (June 28, 2006) - ISBN 978-0742539266

ASIAN LC 390* – Martial Arts, Religion, and Philosophy in East Asia

Overview of Course
This course offers the opportunity to investigate martial art culture in Japanese society in the centuries between the Tokugawa shogunate takeover in the sixteenth century until the aftermath of WWII. Students will learn how samurai military culture and the Japanese art of sword fighting (kenjutsu) evolved conceptually from a system of fighting to cut down an adversary to one aimed at personal spiritual growth and cultivation of the mind. Course readings include treatises, essays, and poetry (waka, haiku) by several expert Japanese swordsmen including feudal lords, samurai, Buddhist monks, and philosophers who highlight not just actual combat techniques, but also the inward aspects that can lead to psycho-spiritual realization.

Grounded in Confucian virtues, Buddhist doctrine, and the Shinto worldview, these figures discuss martial arts not only as mere external techniques of death, but also as inner techniques of life. In this course students will read works in English translation by and about several authors including Yagyu Munenori (1571-1646), Soho Takuan (1573-1645), Miyamoto Musashi (1582-1645), Kaibara Ekiken (1630-1714), Yamamoto Tsenetomo (1659-1719), Daidoji Yuzan (1639-1730), Yamaoka Tesshu (1836-1888), Takahashi Deishu (1835-1903), Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki (1870-1966), Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969), Taisen Deshimaru (1914-1982), and Omori Sogen Roshi (1904-1994).

Some of the probing questions we will address are: what instigated the separation between traditional martial systems (bujustu) and modern martial arts (budo)? Where do the spiritual and the physical intersect in martial arts? What is the relationship between Buddhist doctrine and violence in the art of the sword? What does it mean for Aikido to be promoted as an “art of peace”? What kind of values can modern martial arts instill in their practitioners?

Learning Objectives
Understand the difference tradition and modernity in East Asian martial arts.
Understand where spirituality and violence intersect in the practice of martial arts in Japan.
Grasp Buddhist, Confucian and Shinto values that martial culture instill(ed) in practitioners.
Understand the role of Buddhist philosophy in the elaboration of modern Japanese swordsmanship.
Discuss the content of some of the most famous treatises of Japanese martial art.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Weekly Response paper; in-class presentation; in-class discussion; term paper.

Class Materials (required)
Takuan Soho. The Unfettered Mind: Writings from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman. 2012 - ISBN 978-1590309865

Musashi, Miyamoto and Thomas Cleary - The Book of Five Rings: A Classic Text on the Japanese Way of the Sword (Shambhala Library) Mass Market Paperback - ISBN 978-1590302484

Yagyu Munenori and Hiroaki Sato - The Sword and the Mind - Overlook Press 1986 - ISBN 978-0879512569

William S. Wilson - Budoshoshinshu (Paperback) - Shambala ISBN 978-1569571897

Taisen Deshimaru - The Zen Way to the Martial Arts - ISBN 978-0140193442

Morihei Ueshiba - The Art of Peace: Teachings of the Founder of Aikido (Paperback) - Shambala ISBN 978-0877738510

Class Materials (suggested)
PDFs and additional material will be provided in class.

ASIAN LC 390* – Buddhist Literature and Translation

Overview of class
In this course, students will read writings from Buddhist canonical and non-canonical literature on a variety of subjects to gain an introduction to the variety of literary genres used in Buddhist works, as well as to consider the central tenets of the Buddhist literary tradition these works convey. Who was the Buddha? What did he preach? Why do we suffer and how do we realize enlightenment? How should one follow the Buddhist path? What metaphors and parables have Buddhists used to convey these insights over the centuries? Students will be able to explore these and other questions through a selection of English translations of original texts in Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, and Tibetan including the life of the Buddha, his sayings, Buddhist sutras, and Buddhist autobiographies. As this course is an introduction to Buddhist literature, there are no prerequisites, and students will gain familiarity with Buddhist teachings through engaging directly with primary sources in translation.

Teaching Method
Lecture
Discussion

Evaluation Method
Paper, final
Presentations
Class participation
Paper, mid-term

Class Materials (Required)
- The Life of the Buddha (Penguin Classics 2015 - by Tenzin Chogyel and Kurtis R. Schaeffer. 978-0143107200 - The Dhammapada (Penguin Classics) Paperback - 2010 by Valerie Roebuck (Editor, Translator, Introduction) ISBN 978-0140449419 - The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng, by Red Pine, Counterpoint 2008, ISBN 978-1593761776 - Himalayan Hermitess: The Life of a Tibetan Buddhist Nun 1st Edition, by Kurtis R. Schaeffer, ‎Oxford University Press, 2004 - ISBN 978-0195152999

ASIAN LC 390* – Fate, Fortune, and Karma in East Asia

Overview of class
Are our actions free or fated? What larger forces shape the choices we make? To what do we owe our successes, and what is to blame for our mistakes? In East Asian religions, such questions have been answered with reference to a variety of different concepts of fate, fortune, and karma. These concepts shape not only how people have viewed the world, but also how they have made their way through life. This class focuses on religious approaches to questions of destiny in premodern East Asia. We begin by studying Indian Buddhist ideas of karma and early Chinese notions of fate and fortune preceding Buddhism's arrival in China, then turn to the ways people in China and Japan negotiated these various concepts over the many centuries following the arrival of Buddhism. In the end, we discover important throughlines amid the diversity of religious responses to the problem of destiny in East Asian history.

Learning Objectives
1. Learn about the history of religion in East Asia by studying concepts of fate, fortune, and karma 2. Engage with key themes and methods in the academic study of religion 3. Develop skill in analyzing textual and visual primary sources, as well as in engaging with secondary scholarship 4. Build skill in critically and constructively analyzing complex subjects through reading, writing, discussing, undertaking research, and formulating original arguments

Class Materials (Required)
All assigned readings will be uploaded to Canvas.

ASIAN LC 390* – From the Ramayana to Rhoma Irama: India, Indonesia, and the Indian Ocean World

Overview of Course
India and Indonesia share more than just a name. For thousands of years, these two regions—distant in geographical terms, but united by the winds and tides of the Indian Ocean—have been in close contact. Alongside trade, India and Indonesia have engaged in a continuous religious and cultural dialog that persists to the present day. This course takes an transoceanic approach to examine the past of these two regions. Our focus will range from tangible connections—from the rise of Hindu kingdoms in Indonesia and the exchange of Sufism-tinged Islam, to the influence of Bollywood film songs on the Indonesian music industry today. It will also engage shared conceptual issues—how, for example, have Indonesia, India, and Pakistan approached such vexing questions as selecting and creating a national language or unifying diverse populations? By the end of the course, students will have a strong historical understanding of the history of dialog and exchange between South and Southeast Asia, as well as a framework for thinking conceptually across borders. This course is an advanced seminar. Prerequisite: strong familiarity with one of the following: India, Indonesia, Pakistan. For more information, email dmaj@northwestern.edu.

Teaching Method
Seminar

Evaluation Method
discussion, final essay/project

Class Materials (Required)
None

ASIAN LC 390* – Introduction to Contemporary Tibetan Literature

Overview of class
This course will explore Tibetan literature beginning in the 1950s when Tibet became part of the newly established People’s Republic of China. Although Tibet was a civilization uniquely characterized by a religious literature produced and consumed in monastic institutions, the nature of literature and literacy has changed in Tibet in the past seventy years, becoming more accessible to the wider public. Tibetan writers have used fiction and poetry in new ways to reflect on life, rapidly changing worldviews, and critiques of the past as well as the present. This course will introduce students to a number of modern and contemporary Tibetan literary works, mostly secular in nature, including short novels, fiction, and poetry in English translation, as well as academic studies and scholarly analysis of modern Tibetan literature.

Learning Objectives
Read, analyze, and write about Tibetan literary works from the contemporary (1950-present) period in English translation. Discuss contemporary Tibetan literary works with fluency and increasing sophistication, demonstrating facility for expressing subjective judgments on literature and other abstract topics. Analyze and discuss contemporary Tibetan literary genres, works, and authors in their social, historical, and religious contexts.

Teaching Method
Lectures and Discussions

Evaluation Method
Class participation, in-class presentation, final paper

Class Materials (Required)
Tsering Döndrup, The Handsome Monk and Other Stories. Columbia University Press, 2019 ISBN 978-0231190237 Tenzin Deckie. Old Demons, New Deities. 21 Short Stories from Tibet. OR Books, 2017 ISBN 978-1944869519 Alai, Red Poppies. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition, 2002 ISBN 978-0618119646

ASIAN LC 390* – Reading China in Translation

Overview of Course
What do we lose and gain by reading about non-Western cultures in English rather than in their native languages? Can we have an “authentic” understanding of these cultures (if there ever is one) when they have already been translated into another language? This advanced undergraduate course focuses on the methodological and ethical question of linguistic medium in approaching the non-West: why are they always in translation? In this course, we will cover a wide range of Western (mis)representations of China (and the Chinese) from the nineteenth century to the present. From the lumbering, stagnant, opium-poisoned country of the nineteenth century, to “The World’s Factory” and “Crazy Rich Asians” in contemporary discussions of global capitalism, China and the Chinese have featured in Western imagination as an ultimate other, both hopelessly backward and disturbingly modernized. As we contextualize the West’s changing perceptions of China through historical writings, we will reflect on our own positions and methods of learning about China through English-language materials (both originals and translations). The main literary text we will read throughout the quarter is R. F. Kuang’s Hugo-award winning bestseller Babel (2022), a counterfactual history of the nineteenth century in which translation makes all the difference in the world, including Britain’s domination of China. We will situate Kuang’s fantasy novel (also a campus novel, if that makes it even more enticing!) about translation in relation to contemporary theories of translation. This course provides students with a grounding in contemporary topics in translation studies, and it mobilizes these theoretical insights to approach a historically situated China that has continually been imagined, read, and produced through (mis)translation.

Teaching Method
Discussion

Evaluation Method
Class Participation Presentation Short Paper Final Paper

Class Materials (required)
R. F. Kuang, Babel ISBN: 9780063021426

ASIAN LC 392 – Media in East Asia

Overview of Course

course information coming soon!

Teaching Method

Evaluation Method

Class materials (required)

ASIAN LC 397 – Senior Seminar

Overview of Course for ALC majors only
Re-orienting Asias.

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? How do we decolonize epistemologies about Asia in our research and pedagogies? 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, queer theory, 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 Objective
- Choose and develop research questions that speak to critical Asian humanities and that are connected to specific materials and research topics both in English and at least one Asian language
-Find, read, evaluate, and integrate existing scholarship related to one’s chosen topic into one’s research and analysis of primary and secondary sources
- Present original research orally and in writing to an audience of informed peers as well as of teachers and faculty
-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 based seminar

Evaluation Method
Weekly assignments and peer reviews (35%), Final Presentation (10% total), Final Paper (30%), and participation and attendance (25%). The short writing assignments will count towards participation grade. Specific guidelines for each assignment will be available on Canvas, under Assignments.

Class Materials (required)
All materials available on CANVAS

ASIAN LC 492* – Readings in Tibetan Texts: Religious & Literary Texts

1) Overview of Course

This class over three quarters is designed to assist students who already have the equivalent of at least two-years of Tibetan language study. The course is intended to build on this foundation so that students gain greater proficiency in reading a variety of classical Tibetan writing styles and genres, including (especially in the third quarter) texts relevant to their research.

We will explore various genres: canonical and other religious texts, religious songs (mgur), poetry (snyan ngag), biographies (rnam thar), avadanas (rtogs brjod), and histories. We will also look at administrative documents (gzhung yig), other manuscripts and scrolls to become familiar with the most common forms of Tibetan calligraphy. Students will gain facility in the use of Tibetan dictionaries essential for reading classical texts, in particular for understanding kāvya-derived ornamental vocabulary and rhetorical devices.

2) Learning Objectives

Students will learn to identify commonly found vocabulary, grammatical constructions and other conventions appearing in Classical Tibetan texts, including religious, literary, and historical genres. In the third quarter, students will be introduced to texts in dbu-med scripts and the abbreviated words (skung yig) often employed in these. They will learn how to identify texts helpful for their research and begin reading those texts.

3) Teaching Method:

Online only
4) Evaluation Method:
Class participation & Homework	Percentage of Final Grade 30%
3 Short quizzes	15%
Mid-Term	25%
Final Examination	30%

Class materials (required)

མར་པ་ལོ་ཙཱ་བའི་རང་རྣམ་མགུར། Autobiographical Song of Marpa the Translator

Author: མར་པ་ཆོས་ཀྱི་བློ་གྲོས། Marpa Chokyi Lodroe, 1036-1102

Selected Excerpts from བཀའ་ཐང་སྡེ་ལྔ། (Five Chronicles)

Terma by ཨོ་རྒྱན་གླིང་པ། Ogyen Lingpa (b. 1323-1360/67/74?)

རྣམ་ཐར་ཁོག་འབུབ། (An overview of Tibetan life-writing forms)

Author: ཀརྨ་ཆགས་མེད། Karma Chakmé (1613-1678)

གཏེར་འབྱུང་ལོ་རྒྱུས་བསྡུས་པ། Brief of history of Terma

Terma by Do Khyentse Yeshe Dorjé, 1800-1859?

རྩེ་སློབ་གྲྭའི་བཅའ་ཡིག The regulations or guidelines (bca' yig) for the Rtse School

Author: 13th Dalai Lama, 1876-1933

ཚིགས་བཅད་ཀྱི་རྩོམ་སྟངས། The rules for metrical verse composition

Author: དུང་དཀར་བློ་བཟང་འཕྲིན་ལས། Dungkar Lozang Trinlé, 1927-1997

ASIAN LC 492* – Orientalism and Its Discontents

Overview of Course
Orientalism and Its Discontents Edward Said's "Orientalism" (1978) has been one of the most influential -- and controversial -- works of scholarship of the last half century. As a pioneering work of postcolonial theory, it has reshaped entire disciplines, from history and area studies to comparative literature, anthropology, and even the study of English literature(s). But Said has also had his critics, some very astute and others not so much. In this course, we will begin by closely reading Said's own works to try to understand them in all their nuance and complexity, and then examine some of the arguments of his critics of various disciplinary backgrounds.

Evaluation
papers

Course Material (required)
Edward Said, Orientalism (1978) Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993) Miscellaneous works on Canvas

ASIAN LC 492* – Readings in Tibetan Texts: Manuscripts and Research-Focused Readings

1) Overview of Course

2) Learning Objectives

3) Teaching Method:

Online only
4) Evaluation Method:
Class participation & Homework	Percentage of Final Grade 30%
3 Short quizzes	15%
Mid-Term	25%
Final Examination	30%

Class materials (required)

མར་པ་ལོ་ཙཱ་བའི་རང་རྣམ་མགུར། Autobiographical Song of Marpa the Translator

Author: མར་པ་ཆོས་ཀྱི་བློ་གྲོས། Marpa Chokyi Lodroe, 1036-1102

Selected Excerpts from བཀའ་ཐང་སྡེ་ལྔ། (Five Chronicles)

Terma by ཨོ་རྒྱན་གླིང་པ། Ogyen Lingpa (b. 1323-1360/67/74?)

རྣམ་ཐར་ཁོག་འབུབ། (An overview of Tibetan life-writing forms)

Author: ཀརྨ་ཆགས་མེད། Karma Chakmé (1613-1678)

གཏེར་འབྱུང་ལོ་རྒྱུས་བསྡུས་པ། Brief of history of Terma

Terma by Do Khyentse Yeshe Dorjé, 1800-1859?

རྩེ་སློབ་གྲྭའི་བཅའ་ཡིག The regulations or guidelines (bca' yig) for the Rtse School

Author: 13th Dalai Lama, 1876-1933

ཚིགས་བཅད་ཀྱི་རྩོམ་སྟངས། The rules for metrical verse composition

Author: དུང་དཀར་བློ་བཟང་འཕྲིན་ལས། Dungkar Lozang Trinlé, 1927-1997

ASIAN LC 492* – Readings in Tibetan Texts: Historical texts and Biographies

1) Overview of Course

2) Learning Objectives

3) Teaching Method:

Online only
4) Evaluation Method:
Class participation & Homework	Percentage of Final Grade 30%
3 Short quizzes	15%
Mid-Term	25%
Final Examination	30%

Class materials (required)

མར་པ་ལོ་ཙཱ་བའི་རང་རྣམ་མགུར། Autobiographical Song of Marpa the Translator

Author: མར་པ་ཆོས་ཀྱི་བློ་གྲོས། Marpa Chokyi Lodroe, 1036-1102

Selected Excerpts from བཀའ་ཐང་སྡེ་ལྔ། (Five Chronicles)

Terma by ཨོ་རྒྱན་གླིང་པ། Ogyen Lingpa (b. 1323-1360/67/74?)

རྣམ་ཐར་ཁོག་འབུབ། (An overview of Tibetan life-writing forms)

Author: ཀརྨ་ཆགས་མེད། Karma Chakmé (1613-1678)

གཏེར་འབྱུང་ལོ་རྒྱུས་བསྡུས་པ། Brief of history of Terma

Terma by Do Khyentse Yeshe Dorjé, 1800-1859?

རྩེ་སློབ་གྲྭའི་བཅའ་ཡིག The regulations or guidelines (bca' yig) for the Rtse School

Author: 13th Dalai Lama, 1876-1933

ཚིགས་བཅད་ཀྱི་རྩོམ་སྟངས། The rules for metrical verse composition

Author: དུང་དཀར་བློ་བཟང་འཕྲིན་ལས། Dungkar Lozang Trinlé, 1927-1997

ASIAN LC 492* – Approaches to Asia

Overview of Course

This seminar considers methods of cultural analysis that have shaped the field of Asian Studies and questioned its status as an academic discipline and institutional formation. We begin with a brief history of the field, examining its roots in the philological practices and colonial knowledge production of its various subfields, before moving through the critique of area studies and into contemporary developments. While attending to the epistemological and political stakes of producing scholarship about literature, media, theory, and other forms of cultural production in Asia, we will explore the efficacy of particular practices of interpretation: from modes of theorization and historicization to close reading and translation. In terms of praxis, we will consider how we position ourselves within and between fields through the methods we use in our research. We will ask, for example: how can we make our work legible to scholars in overlapping disciplines and areas while remaining focused on a specific project? How and why might we put our work into dialogue with scholarship from academic fields outside of the Euro-American context? What role does translation play in the interpretive and writing process? How do we identify our audiences and how do we speak to them? Designed for students whose research involves studying aesthetic media and cultural practices in Asia, this seminar will approach these issues by examining the methods employed in recent and past scholarship in the fields that constitute Asian studies.

Registration requirements
Open to graduate students; undergraduate students with permission of the instructor

Teaching Method
Seminar discussion, student presentations

Evaluation Method
Attendance and participation, in-class presentations, final assessment

Class Materials (required)
All materials will be available on Canvas for download

ASIAN LC 492* – Fanon Now: Race, Gender, Coloniality

Overview of Course
A revolutionary, thinker, psychiatrist, and physician, Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) has produced a diverse and groundbreaking life work from Martinique to Algeria that has shaped and continues to shape generations of activists and scholars today.

This graduate seminar will examine major writings of Fanon, from his early to late life, and a selection of scholarship on and influenced by Fanon in the fields of critical race theory, feminist theory, and decolonial thought, such as Gordon, Karera, Maldonado-Torres, Zambrana, Mbembe, Al-Saji, Snorton, and Wynter, among others. The range and nature of responses to Fanon’s work since his time speaks to the continued problem of colonialism, anti-Blackness, and the racialized gender system, as well as the changes in paradigms and discourse surrounding these issues. The course encourages seminar participants to think critically with and about Fanon’s work, to find ways to incorporate Fanon into their respective research agendas and explore the renewed significance of Fanon’s work today.

Teaching Method
Seminar

Evaluation Method
Long Paper

Class Materials (required)

Black Skin, White Masks. Frantz Fanon. Trans. By Richard Philcox. ISBN: 978-0802143006
Toward the African Revolution. Frantz Fanon. Trans. By Haakon Chevalier. ISBN: 978-0802130907
The Wretched of the Earth. Frantz Fanon. Trans. By Richard Philcox. ISBN: 978-0802158635

ASIAN LC 492* – Global Caste

Overview of Course
Critical and comparative caste studies is a rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field. This is a graduate-level, reading intensive course in which we will collectively investigate both classic and emerging scholarship on caste in South Asia and around the world from a number of different disciplinary perspectives (literature, history, media, performance, anthropology, religious studies etc.). The organization of the class will be democratic and syllabus will be built collectively: everyone will contribute texts and/or critical questions from their own fields of expertise and inquiry and together we will shape the intellectual journey of the course. Books may include: Aniket Jaaware, "Practicing Caste: On Touching and Not Touching" (Fordham UP 2018), Nico Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Fordham UP 2017), Shailaja Paik, The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford UP 2022), and Joel Lee, Deceptive Majority: Dalits, Hinduism, and Underground Religion (Cambridge UP 2021).

Learning Objectives
In this course we will become familiar with the dynamic interdisciplinary field of critical and comparative caste studies. Reading and discussing both classic and cueing-edge new scholarship, we will understand global caste from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. Students will each craft a research paper from the perspective of their own disciplinary fields of inquiry and expertise.

Teaching Method
Discussion

Evaluation Method
Evaluation will be based on engagement with the course materials and class participation, including regular reading responses and leading discussion. There will be a final research paper.

Course Materials (required)
Aniket Jaaware, "Practicing Caste: On Touching and Not Touching" (Fordham UP 2018) ISBN 0823282260 Nico Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Fordham UP 2017) ISBN 0674979727 Shailaja Paik, The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford UP 2022) ISBN 1503634086 Joel Lee, Deceptive Majority: Dalits, Hinduism, and Underground Religion (Cambridge UP 2021) ISBN 1108826660

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Chinese Culture

ASIAN LC 200 – East Asian Classics

Overview of Course
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 their significance in East Asian cultures, as well as consider what we can learn from these texts today. This course will probe the following questions: What are the major themes, dilemmas, and issues 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 influential literary texts that combine the realms of religion and philosophy.
b) Reflect upon a diversity of cultural worldviews represented in the texts.
c) Critically analyze different literary genres, including doctrine, philosophy, ethics, and biography.
d) Cultivate a deeper understanding of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism
e) Engage in consistent and cumulative writing practice in response to complex and challenging wo

Teaching Method
Lecture and discussion

Evaluation Method
Class participation, weekly response papers, in-class presentation, 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

- Red Pine. The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng (Paperback – November 28, 2008). Counterpoint, 2008. ISBN 978-1593761776

ASIAN LC 200 – From Page to Screen. The (Many) Afterlives of Premodern Chinese fiction

Overview of Course
In this course we will read early and early modern short stories, plays, and novels, either in their entirety, if possible, and if not in excerpted form, and trace the evolution of their textual narrative, character development, and overarching themes to their 20th and 21st century adaptations in a variety of new media, from film to drama to TV series and graphic novels. The early and early modern Chinese stories we may discuss will include Six Dynasties zhiguai, tales of the supernatural; Yuan dynasty plays such as Xixiang ji, The Romance of the Western Chamber, and Jiu fengchen, Zhao Pan’er Rescues a Fallen Woman; and Ming and Qing novels like Xiyou ji, The Journey to the West; Xiyou pu, The Supplement to the Journey to the West; Jin Ping Mei, The Plum in the Golden Vase; Shuihu zhuan, The Water Margins; and Honglou meng, Dream of the Red Chambers. In our analytical approach we will rely on close readings that focus on narrative structure, plot and character development, as well as the permutations that such key elements undergo with changes and shifts in media technologies. In addition to the primary sources, representative theoretical work in the fields of Chinese culture, history, gender theory, feminist and sexuality studies, and adaptation studies will be incorporated as much as possible.
No pre-requisite necessary, though previous exposure to pre-modern and modern and contemporary Chinese literature and culture may be helpful. Please note that in our in-class discussions and for all written assignments for the course, we will default to the English translations of the sources we will focus on, but anyone who can read the original versions– be they in Classical Chinese or early modern vernacular–is welcome to do so.

Learning Objectives
-Acquisition of knowledge about early and early modern fiction (meaning fictional narratives in a variety of genres, from short stories in Classical Chinese to plays and novels). This will entail exposure to primary sources (in English, and for those students able to, in Chinese) produced by Chinese authors in a variety of genres and media over a span of about two thousand years, 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 fields of Asian humanities, Chinese cultural and visual studies, adaptation and media studies.
-Growth as independent academic thinkers and writers.

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, in class presentations, etc.) 35%
-Final Project 35%

Class Materials (required)
All required readings are listed in the syllabus and will be available through Canvas, in the Modules Section. Some of you may prefer or wish to read our sources in hard copy. All required readings will also be available on Reserve at the Main library.

ASIAN LC 202 – Taiwanese New Wave Cinema

Overview of Course
“New wave” is a ubiquitous but 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.

Learning Objectives
To learn how to use methods of “close viewing,” “close reading,” and analysis effectively

To acquire a formal vocabulary for discussing and writing about film in general

To develop a more sophisticated understanding of the techniques used in experiments with cinematic form

To develop techniques for writing clearly and effectively about film

To understand the historical, cultural, and economic contexts that shaped Taiwanese filmmaking in the period under discussion

To critically explore the category of “New Wave” and to consider Taiwanese film in its broader global cinematic contexts

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Participation, Attendance, and Preparation: 20% Review Posts: 15% Scene Analysis: 5% Essay 1: 20% Essay 2: 20% Essay 3: 20%

Course Materials (required)
course reader

ASIAN LC 290 – Religion and Politics in the People's Republic of China

Overview of Course

Course description coming soon!

ASIAN LC 300* – Chinese Feminisms

Overview of Course
The aim of this course is to introduce the histories of feminism and feminist consciousness in modern and contemporary mainland China, and to thus provide students with exposure to non-Western-centered cases of feminist struggles for human rights and social justice from the late nineteenth century to the present. To achieve this goal, we will analyze a variety of sources, including literature, films, and other media by authors and activists concerned with the lives and realities of Chinese women. We will be joined in this enterprise by guest speakers based in the USA, mainland China, and Taiwan who, in their roles as scholars and activists, will help us navigate questions like:
What do Chinese women wish to liberate themselves from, how do they enact this and to what end? In what ways does the problem of gender complicate the ideological advent of modernity in China? How do different technologies of communication and exchange, from the literary journal to cinematic narratives to cyberspace, help and/or hinder activism aimed at fostering gender equality and diversity in China? What connections exist between feminists and gender, sexuality, the body, media, nationhood, and politics? What changes and breakages do we see in the paradigms of traditional Chinese culture and the evolving expectations of women under Confucianism, communism and capitalism in the late nineteenth, twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, especially in the contemporary situation of globalization?

Learning Objectives
• Learn about feminisms and their histories in mainland China, and, where possible and relevant, in other Sinophone areas, including the ways feminist projects across time intersect with debates on colonialism, postcolonialism, and globalization. • Become familiar with theoretical discussions of power and agency in recent feminist discourses as well as specific information on the situation of women in China in various historical settings. • Become familiar with the terms of feminism, activism, media and technology, gender, and sexuality that are crucial to understand the past and current cultural, political, social, and economic trends occurring within mainland China, and, where possible, in the Sinophone. • Apply key theoretical concepts from the course to understand and analyze social issues related to gender, sexuality, new media, social equity and justice from a feminist perspective. • Critically investigate, explain and analyze the readings and topics of the course in class discussion and writing assignments, and improve analytical skills in these two connected spheres. •Reflect on questions of location and privilege especially in relation to scholarship and activism. • Integrate course insights into one’s daily lives and cultivate activism about gender equality and diversity that takes into consideration global, regional, political, historical, and cultural contexts. • Understand the cultural logic of a time and place not our own

Teaching Method
Lecture, discussion, films, group work, guest speakers, presentations, readings, research and creative projects

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, in class presentations, etc.) 35% -Final Project 35%

Class Materials Required
All course materials will be provided on Canvas.

ASIAN LC 300* – Grassroots Revolt in China Today

Overview of Course
How have urban Chinese challenged the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party in the twenty-first century? What are the activist causes around which urban Chinese have rallied despite the risk of state repression? Given that activists risk persecution, prison, and torture, who would do this? How do activists maintain the emotional resilience to stand up to authoritarian rule? What are activists’ tactics and strategies? To answer these questions, we will study reporters, labor organizers, environmental activists, religious activists, lawyers, and feminist activists. Many activists oppose the authoritarian state in the name of freedom. I have found that many urban Chinese are happy, or at least content, in their lives today. The insight that hundreds of millions of people can be happy or content even though they are lacking freedom is so astonishing to me, I have begun to question my own understanding of freedom. Is freedom a specifically Western concept? Should the notion of freedom have universal relevance? Should we demand of the Chinese people that they democratize? Or is this demand Orientalist? Or racist? Is the demand that Chinese democratize another way of saying, “They must become like us”? The Chinese Communist Party is a threat to United States democracy. Thinking about China and acting toward China, how are we to combine the defense of our democracy and the injunction to stay clear of Orientalism? Who is a greater threat to our democracy, the Chinese Communist Party or the Republican Party? It turns out that we, unfortunately, cannot study Chinese activists without finding a framework to evaluate Chinese authoritarian rule in political and ethical terms. Evaluating Chinese authoritarian rule involves thinking about ourselves. Are some Americans benefitting from authoritarian rule in China? Is the Chinese Communist Party profitable for some Americans? Would the United States economy collapse without Chinese poverty? Who are we in moral, political, and ethical terms to claim the high ground and criticize the Chinese Communist Party? It is possible to argue that Western modernity is flawed beyond rescue. From this perspective, are we in a desperate search for an alternative modernity? Can China be our inspiration for an alternative modernity? Or, would you agree with those Hong Kong activists who have coined the term Chinazi to indicate that, in their view, China increasingly resembles Hitler’s Germany?

Registration Requirements
No prerequisites. All teaching materials are in English

Learning Objectives
This class shall alert students to the fragility of democracy: Is our democracy in existential peril? Does the Chinese Communist Party pose a threat to our democracy? What is life like under authoritarian rule? What are the odds in the struggle of ordinary people against an authoritarian state? Which Americans have benefitted from Chinese authoritarian rule? Can we make demands on Chinese people in the name of universal values? Given the planetary scope of human-made global warming, can we demand that Chinese people restructure their economy?

Teaching Method
Discussion

Evaluation Method
You will read about sixty pages per class meeting, or circa one hundred twenty pages per week. To participate actively in class discussion, you must prepare the assigned readings outside of class for six hours per week. This includes taking good reading notes and bringing your reading notes to class. Class Discussion 50% Take-home Exam 15% Final Paper 35%

Course Materials (required)
We will discuss select chapters from the following books. All of these required books are available to you as e-books through the Library’s website.

Sebastian Veg. Minjian. The Rise of China’s Grassroots Intellectuals. New York: Columbia 2019. 978-0-231-19140-1

Ching Kwan Lee. Against the Law. Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt. Berkeley: California 2007.978-0-520-25097-0

David Ownby. Falun Gong and the Future of China. New York: Oxford 2008. 978-0-19-973853-3

Joshua Goldstein. Remains of the Everyday. A Century of Recycling in Beijing. Oakland: California 2021.

Rongbin Han. Contesting Cyberspace in China. Online Expression and Authoritarian Resilience. New York: Columbia 2018.

Leta Hong Fincher. Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China. New York: Verso 2018. 978-1-78663-364-4

Margaret Hillenbrand. Negative Exposure: Knowing What Not to Know in Contemporary China. Durham: Duke 2020. 978-1-4780-0800-2

ASIAN LC 300* – Religion and Politics in the People's Republic of China

Overview of Course
This course will examine the role of religion in post-1980’s China with an emphasis on the political implications of the practice of religion in the People’s Republic of China. 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. The first part of this course will investigate 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 focus on 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.

Teaching Method
Lecture and discussion

Evaluation Method
In-class participation and presentation Weekly response papers Final paper

Class Materials (required)
Anna Sun, Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities, Princeton University Press, 2015 (2013) ISBN 978-0691168111 Adam Yuet-Chau, Religion in China. Polity Press, 2019 - ISBN 978-0745679150

Class Materials (suggested)
Ian Johnson, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion after Mao. Pantheon Books, 2017 ISBN 978-1101870051 Fenggang Yang, Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule, Oxford University Press 2011 - ISBN 978-0199735648

ASIAN LC 300* – Sinophobia, Yellow Peril, and other Fantasies of China as Threat

Overview of Course
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 the19th 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.

Teaching Method
Discussion

Evaluation Method
Tentative Evaluation Breakdown
Participation and Preparation (15%)
Short Essays: 30%
Final Essay Proposal: 10%
Final Essay: 45%

Class Materials (required)
Ling Ma, Severance (ISBN 1250214998)

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College Seminar

ASIAN LC 110 – The Japanese Role-Playing Game

Overview of Course

How do video games tell stories, and what kind of stories do they tell? How do the formal elements of the game experience shape the stories that they tell and the meanings that they convey? What historical contexts make those stories meaningful, and what is the significance of historical shifts in game form? In this class, we answer these questions through a study of the Japanese Role-Playing Game—the JRPG. We approach the JRPG as a genre, under the premises that cultural genres represent the formal crystallization of a set of cultural meanings, that individual works express particular meanings through manipulation of the details of form, that the evolution of form reflects historical shifts in cultural meanings, and that interpretation of an individual work thus demands knowledge of genre conventions, careful attention to the nuances of form, and rich historical contextualization. To study this genre, we begin by building skills of formal description and analysis, with attention to how scholars in different disciplines have attempted to theorize various formal elements. We then situate this genre in its historical context—the social and cultural crises facing Japan at the end of the 20th century—and examine the evolution and permutation of the form as it has been adapted to different narrative concerns between the late 90s and the present day. Though our focus is on the JRPG, the skills and modes of thinking that we develop—formal description and analysis, historical contextualization and interpretation, theoretical framing, critical evaluation—form the basis of humanistic study at the college level.

Teaching Method
Discussion

Evaluation Method
Attendance (10%), participation (10%), game journal (5%), online forum (10%), short essays (20%), group presentations (10%), final project proposal (5%), final project (30%)

Class Materials (required)
All reading materials provided in PDF form; games will be made available in the Kresge Media and Design Studio

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Japanese Culture

ASIAN LC 221 – The Floating World

Overview of Course
This course examines the “floating world” (ukiyo) of early modern or Edo-period Japan: an ephemeral and eroticised world of urban leisure and consumption, simultaneously apart from and intertwined with the realities of everyday life. This “floating world” was also linked to the early modern media complex, a quasi-imaginary realm produced and existing through representations in literature, theater, and print culture; we aim to understand both the nature of this virtual world and the social realities behind it. We approach these issues as a form of popular culture: what social subjectivities constituted the “popular” in early modern Japan, what forms of culture did they use to express themselves, and how did, these dynamics result in the particular forms and functions of the “floating world”? We give particular attention to the stratification of society and culture by status, class, and gender, as well as the ways in which different subjectivities intersect and hybridize in cultural production and consumption. Topics include the rise of a merchant class and the emergence of a commercial marketplace for literature, theater, and sex; warrior identity and the culture of revenge; satire and social critique; illustrated narrative and early modern book culture; and more. No prerequisites. All readings are in English, no prior study of Japan required or expected.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Attendance (10%), participation and discussion (10%), response postings (10%), extension essays (20%), quizzes (20%), final exam (30%)

Class Materials (required)
All required readings will be provided in PDF format.

ASIAN LC 222 – Birth of Modern Japan

Overview of Course
This course is an introduction to the literature and culture of Japan’s Meiji period (1868-1912). This was a moment of rapid social and cultural transformation as Japan rushed to adopt the institutions of Western modernity, and Japanese writers and readers turned to literature to make sense of the changes taking place around them. In order to understand this moment, we will read a series of major literary works (novels and short stories) that focus on the shifting mores, social opportunities, and moods brought on by Japan’s embrace of modernity. The main emphasis of the class is on understanding these works in historical context: on furnishing ourselves with the historical knowledge of Meiji Japan necessary to understand, appreciate, and interpret literary texts. In interpreting these works, we pay particular attention to the feelings they represent or produce, and to what those feelings might tell us about the experience of modernity in Japan and the non-West broadly speaking. All readings are in English; no knowledge of Japanese or prior study of Japan is required or expected.

Teaching Objectives
• Describe major genres and works of Japanese literature, as well as major cultural keywords, from the Meiji period (late 19th-early 20th c.).
• Situate literary works in relation to meaningful social and cultural contexts, and interpret how they both reflected and commented creatively upon those contexts.
• Analyze the thematic content and formal structure of literary works as a basis for interpretation and comparison.
• Interpret key conceptual terms like ‘modernity” and ‘the novel’ in historical and cultural contexts and in relation to primary texts.
• Communicate and debate humanistic knowledge, including interpretation and critical evaluation of literary works from multiple, possibly conflicting perspectives, both orally and in writing

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Attendance and participation, discussion forum, collective annotation, midterm essay, quizzes, final paper

Class Materials (required)
All materials will be provided digitally in PDF format.

ASIAN LC 223 – Contemporary Japanese Culture

Overview of course
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
Weekly Discussion Posts
Three Short Essays
Final Assessment

Class Materials (required)
All Materials will be available on Canvas

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

Overview of course
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. Syllabus subject to change

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Attendance and Participation Weekly Assignments Short Writing Assignments

Class Materials (required)
All readings will be available as PDFs All films will be accessible through Canvas

ASIAN LC 224 – Japanese Cinema II

Overview of course
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 cinema 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 of 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
This course introduces students to humanistic approaches to analyzing cinema in postwar Japan. Students will learn: 1. methods for interpreting the significance of formal techniques used in cinema 2. how to connect particular films to their historical contexts 3. how to write clearly and incisively about cinema.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Class Participation; Weekly Responses; Short Essays; Possible Short Presentations

Class Materials (required)
All readings are available on Canvas as individual files. All films can be streamed through Canvas.

ASIAN LC 321* – Paying For It: Sex, Money, and LIterature in Early Modern Japan

Overview of Course
In early modern or Edo-period (1600-1868) Japan, the licensed prostitution quarters of the three main cities (Kyoto, Osaka, Edo) were among the most fertile sites of literary production, and the courtesan was one of the most complex literary figures. This course examines the relationship between prostitution and literature in Japan during this period: how was the commodification of literature, through the emergence of a commercial publishing industry, related to the commodification of sex? Topics addressed include representation and the use of the courtesan as a literary symbol; tensions between literary image, lived experience, and embodied performance; questions of agency and identity politics, and the methodological challenges of reconstructing marginalized historical subjectivities; the role of media in producing sexual desires and norms of gender; ideological functions of the figures of courtesan and “geisha” in modern cultural imaginaries; and more. Our orienting concern is with understanding the logics of commodification in the early modern context: what was the impact of the commodity form on cultural production and social relations in early modern Japan, and how was it shaped by hierarchies of gender, class, and status? All readings are in English; no knowledge of Japanese is required or expected.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Attendance (10%), participation (10%), forum essays (15%), response comments (5%), working annotation (10%), midterm paper (20%), final paper (30%)

Class Materials (required)
All materials will be provided in PDF format.

ASIAN LC 322* – Finance Fictions: The Japanese Economic Novel

Overview of Course
The economic novel is one of the most popular literary genres in postwar Japan. Since their inception in the late 1950s, economic novels have sold as well as, if not better, than mysteries and twice as well as the more high-brow form of “pure literature” (jun bungaku). Centering on the economic realities of life under capitalism, Japanese economic novels portray the workings of financial corruption, the mechanics of production and distribution, and the experience of laboring within one of the largest consumer economies in the world. This course traces this genre from its origins in 1957 to the contemporary moment. Reading works by early practitioners of the form to its more recent inflections in the literature of writers like Oyamada Hiroko (The Factory), Tsumuro Kikuko (There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job), and Murata Sayaka (Convenience Store Woman), we will examine the relationship between literature and the transformations in Japan’s capitalist economy. We will consider, among other topics, how this genre depicts changes in the workplace and forms of labor, systemic modes of economic exploitation, the psychological and emotional experience of debt in a financialized economy, and the gendering of particular types of work. Guiding our inquiry will be an overarching question: what are the connections between literary and economic form. The syllabus is subject to change.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Class Participation, Short in-class presentations, Midterm Paper, Final Paper

Class Materials (Required)
The instructor will try to make all class materials available as PDFS but student may need to purchase the following books: Azuchi Satoshi, Supermarket (trans. Paul Warham, ISBN 0312382944) Miyabe Miyuki, All She Was Worth (trans. Alfred Birnbaum, ISBN 0395966582) Kirino Natsuo, Out (trans. Stephen Snyder, ISBN 1400078377) Oyamada Hiroko, The Factory (trans David Boyd, ISBN 0811228851) Tsumura Kikuko, There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job (trans Polly Barton, ISBN 1635576911) Murata Sayaka, Convenient Store Woman (trans. Ginny Tapley Takemori, ISBN 0802128254)

ASIAN LC 322* – Modern Japanese Literature (1912-1945): Erotic Grotesque Nonsense to the Aesthetics of War

Overview of Course
The period from 1912 to 1945, spanning the Taisho and Early Showa Periods, was one of the most tumultuous in modern Japanese history. It witnessed the brief flowering of democracy, the rise of women’s suffrage, robust left-wing movements, colonial expansion, and fifteen years of war driven by fascist ideology. This course focuses on the literature of this period. It examines how writers experimented with the formal resources of the literary medium while responding to the economic, political, and social transformations that characterized these pivotal years. We will consider, among other topics, the rejection of naturalist modes of writing and the rise of “modernist” experimentation, the relationship between the political and artistic avant-gardes, the literary construction of a timeless national identity, and the role that writers and their work played in Japanese imperialism. Our exploration of Taisho and Early Showa literature not only sheds light on the contradictions of the past but also highlights the legacy these contradictions have left on Japan’s contemporary cultural and historical landscape.

Teaching Method
Lecture, Seminar Discussion

Evaluation Method
Attendance and Participation In-class Presentations Writing Assignments

Class Materials (Required)
Course Reader on Canvas as PDFs Books for Purchase (possibly available for download on Canvas)

ASIAN LC 322* – Video Games in/as Japanese Culture

Overview of Course
This course places video games in the context of Japanese cultural history from the 1990s to the present. It aims to furnish the historical and conceptual contexts necessary to interpret how games reflect upon the crises faced by Japan at the turn of the new millennium. The course centers on a series of dominant narrative paradigms and subcultural tropes—apocalyptic fantasy, world-type, survival, etc.—and asks how these are rendered in game form. While our focus is ultimately on games as a form of narrative, we aim also to understand how the active and interactive nature of the game medium shapes the meanings that these texts convey.

Teaching Method
Seminar

Evaluation Method
Attendance, participation, discussion forum, weekly group presentations, final group project, final paper

Course Materials Required
All materials available on CANVAS

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Korean Culture

ASIAN LC 240 – Contemporary Women Authors of South Korea and Feminist Criticism

Overview of Course

“A coldness that masks a burning rage”: A Guardian article introduces South Korean female writers who have received global commercial success and acclaim in recent years, notably Han Kang, drawing commonalities among their writings in aspects such as rage and violence. Indeed, one commonality among their literary ventures is the coupling of women’s suffering in a highly modern, yet patriarchal society with their anger and “madness,” an old literary trope that is widely shared across different cultures around the world. But how are these Korean “madwomen” similar to and different from the mad women written by, for instance, Charlotte Brontë or Toni Morrison? How can we reread the tradition of feminist literary criticism that aims to derive emancipatory politics from the long social association between women with “madness,” a concept that carries “seductive inexactness in its archaism” (Megan Finch), in light of its critical revival in disability studies and mad studies? Most of all, how should we connect the literary representation of angry, violent, or depressed women whose voices are denied by the patriarchal social order with the explosive rise of the feminist movement in contemporary South Korea? With these questions in mind, this course closely reads major South Korean novels and short stories written by women writers, often juxtaposing them with the voices of ordinary Korean feminists today. In this context, another guiding question will focus on how Korean feminists develop and articulate radical politics and voices, navigating between the global rise of neoliberal feminism and the persisting patriarchal violence of capitalist society that continues to label women’s voices for social justice as irrational. This question aligns with the longstanding critical inquiry into the nature of women’s writing, or écriture féminine.

Teaching Method
Discussion with lectures.

Evaluation Method
Grades will largely be determined by student comprehension of lectures and readings, discussion, and a combination of smaller and in-depth writing assignments.

Course Materials (required)
updated March 14

Cho Nam-ju, Kim Ji-young, Born in 1982, Liveright (2020)

Han Kang, The Vegetarian, Hogarth (2016)

Kim Sagwa, Mina, Two Lines Press (2018)

ASIAN LC 240 – Colonial Korean Literature and Culture

Overview of Course
Why is the Korean-Japanese relationship so strained to this day? How might we think about the colonial period (1910-1945) on the Korean peninsula from our present, and about intra-Asian colonialism? This introductory course offers students some snapshots of colonial era Korean literature and culture and tackles difficult but rewarding questions about this period. We will read short fictions from prominent authors of the time and discuss visual cultures (illustrations, art, films) surrounding New Woman, Indigeneity, race, and wartime mobilization. The course also invites students to consider the often-forgotten Korean diaspora and migrations created under the vast Japanese empire that exceed the limits of the peninsula: what does it mean to be “Korean” in the shifting identities of the colonized in these different places around the empire? Finally, the course examines more contemporary representations of the colonial period to think about how the colonial period haunts the present as we desire and consume the colonial. No prior knowledge of Korean language or culture is necessary to take this course. Course assignments include a deconstructed paper (short writing exercises), a group presentation, and a final creative group project. Participation in class discussion and peer collaboration are important aspects of this course.

Learning Objectives
Observe the forms, genres, and styles of Korean literature and culture through close reading and analysis. Develop the skills to build layered, advanced, and well-reasoned arguments on Korean literature and culture. Engage the arguments of authors without reducing or unquestioningly accepting them as one’s own. Practice expressing advanced, multi-stage arguments in both writing and verbal presentation. Provide analyses of adequate and well-chosen evidence. Develop clarity and creativity of expression on Korean literature and culture.

Teaching Method
Discussion, Short Lectures

Evaluation Method
Presentation, Short and Long Written Assignments

Class Materials (required)
All materials will be uploaded on Canvas.

ASIAN LC 240 – Introduction to Korean Culture

Overview of Course
In 2017, the world witnessed a profound aspiration for national reconciliation and the possible future reunification of the Korean peninsula. Indeed, this aspiration for reunion expresses a vigorous and deep historical belief in the shared ethnic and cultural heritage of the entire peninsula that imagines North and South Korea as tragically and temporarily separated entities bound to be reunited. At the same time, the contemporary everyday meaning of the word "Korea" (hankuk) is often limited to only their nation for many young South Koreans. How do we understand this seeming contradiction? With this question in mind, this course provides students with a set of critical frames for exploring Korean history and culture while simultaneously questioning presumptions of a nation or civilization with an unchanging or seemingly "natural" essence. This course focuses on the modern cultural history of the Korean peninsula by investigating the discursive constructions of national subjectivity carried out by disparate groups and social institutions since the Choson Dynasty's inclusion in the modern nation-state world system and the political realities resulting from those discursive constructions. The term culture in the course title is defined in a broad sense as it encompasses not only works of art but also systems of thought and social practices developed throughout the history of modern Korea.

Learning Objectives
This course is designed to give students a set of critical techniques for exploring Korean culture through its art, literature, history, and systems of thought.

Teaching Method
Discussion with lectures. Students are required to participate actively in class discussions and in-class activities. Active participation requires completing all assigned readings before coming to class and being prepared to contribute to a lively and informed class discussion. The lectures will assume familiarity with the readings, and all assignments will be drawn from both lectures and readings.

Evaluation Method
Grades will largely be determined by student comprehension of lectures and readings, discussion, and a combination of smaller and in-depth writing assignments.

Course Materials (required)
All assigned readings are accessible through Canvas.

ASIAN LC 240 – The End of the World: South Korean Fiction, Films, and Webtoons of Disaster

Course Overview
What does one talk about when one talks about disasters? Whose world ends in “end of the world” narratives? This course invites students to read and watch South Korean and diasporic narratives centered around disasters, both real and fictional, to engage questions of politics, representation, and inequalities that shape disaster narratives.

Ranging from disasters of the past to more contemporary ones such as pandemics and Sewol ferry, the disasters examined in this course have sparked complex conversations surrounding a more just society and the doomed end of the “normal.”

Engaging scholarship on disasters, speculative fictions, critical race theory, and gender studies, the course introduces students to the varied academic and cultural responses to disasters and the underlying stakes that drive these responses.

Students will be assigned a variety of texts to analyze, such as film, paintings, novels, webtoons, and news, as well as choosing a disaster narrative of their own interest to examine.
No prior knowledge of Korean culture or language are required to take this course.

Students are expected to actively participate in class and work in groups on collaborative projects as well as producing two short papers. Waitlist will be enabled for the course, and all inquiries to the instructor once the course is full should state relevant coursework and why you wish to take the course for permission number considerations.

Learning Objectives
1. Critical Thinking
Develop the skills to build layered and well-reasoned arguments on Korean literature and culture. Engage the arguments of authors without reducing or unquestioningly accepting them as one’s own.

2. Communication
Practice expressing advanced, multi-stage arguments in both writing and verbal presentation. Provide analyses of adequate and well-chosen evidence. Develop clarity and creativity of expression on Korean literature and culture.

3. Analysis
Identify the differences between literary and cultural representation, what is represented, and positionality. Adopt analytical approaches to scenes and texts paying attention to different elements of the material. Offer analysis, not opinion.

Teaching Method
Discussion, Group Work

Evaluation Method
Two short papers, 1 Group Presentation, 1 Group Creative Final Project

Class Materials (required)
1. The Disaster Tourist: A Novel by Yun Ko-eun. ISBN: 1640094164
2. City of Ash and Red: A Novel by Hye-young Pyun.
ISBN: 1628727810
3. “My Daughter is a Zombie” - Lee Yun-chang. Naver Webtoon

ASIAN LC 340* – Feminist, Queer, Crip: South Korea and Its Discontents

Overview of Course
This course examines contemporary discussions on the topics of gender, sexuality, and disability in South Korea. The past decade has seen an explosion of popular interest in feminism in South Korea. Along with this were competing debates on social and economic inequalities and legislations, as well as debates on gender identity, everyday experiences of discrimination, and overlooked sites of intersectional violence.

As the scholar Alison Kafer has poignantly shown, thinking through the entanglements of feminist, queer, and disability concerns is important to rethinking exclusionary claims and their attendant problems. Students will explore how queer and crip frameworks trouble and deepen feminist debates, and situate these frameworks in relation to Korea’s history of militarism, war, and migration. Course materials include scholarship on feminist, queer, and crip theories beyond the Korean context, novel and short stories, TV show, news articles, and films.

No prior knowledge of the Korean language or culture is necessary. Student participation, discussion, and peer collaboration are important aspects of this course, and all students will be encouraged to speak in class.

Learning Objectives
1. Theorizing
Recognize the different feminist theoretical approaches. Interpret the ways Korean cultural and literary texts explore the issues of gender, sexuality, and disability.

2. Communication
Develop the skills to build layered, advanced, and well-reasoned arguments on Korean literature and culture. Engage the arguments of authors without reducing them.

3. Complicating “Korea”
Identify how Korean literature and culture have explored and shaped social issues surrounding gender, sexuality, and disability in South Korea.

Teaching Method
Discussion, Group Work

Evaluation Method
One Final Long Paper
One Individual Presentation
One Group Creative Short Op-Ed Writing

Class Materials (required)
1. The Hole: A Novel by Pyun Hye-young. ISBN: 1628727802
2. Concerning My Daughter by Hye-jin Kim. ISBN: 1632063492

ASIAN LC 340* – The Rise of K-Culture: Korean Media and Cultural Industry Since the 1990s

Overview of Course
This seminar on Korean media culture explores the development of various media technologies, institutions, and practices that have shaped contemporary South Korean popular culture and its global ascendance. Drawing from critical theory, cultural studies, communication studies, and media history, the course equips students with the theoretical tools and concepts necessary for a comprehensive understanding and analysis of this cultural phenomenon. The course especially focuses on the question of national culture, engaging in critical reflections on dichotomies such as national vs. global, East vs. West, and the universal vs. the particular. Throughout the quarter, we will explore a range of questions and topics, including the concept of Korean popular culture as a global phenomenon, the attribution of nationality to culture through a focus on cultural production, and the significance of circulation (distribution) and consumption in our comprehension of cultural phenomena. Moreover, students are encouraged to contextualize the discourse, institutions, and everyday practices of cultural globalization in the 1990s, fostering a deeper understanding of the historical foundations of the contemporary global media landscape.

Teaching Method
Discussion with lectures. Students are required to actively participate in class discussions and activities. Active participation requires completing all assigned readings before coming to class and being prepared to contribute to a lively and informed class discussion.

Evaluation Method
Grades will largely be determined by student comprehension of lectures and readings, discussion, and a combination of smaller and in-depth writing assignments.

Class Materials (required)
All assigned readings are accessible through Canvas.

ASIAN LC 340* – Transforming Seoul: From Imperial Periphery to Global Smart City

Overview of Course
Seoul, once the capital of the Chosun dynasty, has undergone a tumultuous history marked by colonization, modernization, industrialization, and globalization since the late 19th century, dramatically reshaping its boundaries, landscape, residents, and culture. In this transformative process, Korean literature, film, and art have not only served as reflective mediums but also as agents fundamentally altering the way people perceive, experience, and navigate the evolving urban space. Throughout the duration of the course, we will scrutinize various cultural representations of Seoul in literature, film, TV shows, music videos, and YouTube travel logs, emphasizing medium specificity. Ultimately, the course aims to impart a comprehensive understanding of the modern history and landscape of Seoul while encouraging students to contemplate the interplay between cultural representation, media, and the everyday experience of a modern city.

Teaching Method
Discussion with lectures

Evaluation Method
Grades will largely be determined by student comprehension of lectures and readings, discussion, and a combination of smaller and in-depth writing assignments.

Class materials (required)
All required readings can be accessed through Canvas.

ASIAN LC 340* – Transpacific Literature: Saboteurs and Tricksters

Overview of Course
This seminar is organized around two multilingual and experimental literary texts by Native American and Asian American authors on intertwined histories of violence across the Pacific, paired with secondary readings on Korea, Japan, and Native America. The seminar asks: what happens when literary texts approach historical violence with irony and irreverence? How do we engage different scales of violence across the Pacific without reducing them to relics of the past or objects in a museum framed by somber mood? Would doing so cause offense, or reveal something unsaid about how we are often asked to engage such histories? First, you will read the Anishinaabe writer and thinker Gerald Vizenor’s Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57 (2003), followed by the Korean American poet and non-fiction writer Cathy Park Hong’s Dance Dance Revolution (2007). Weaving together stories of the atomic bombing, military occupations, settler colonialism, imperialism, and disablement, these texts serve as a gateway to explore the questions raised in transpacific studies on decolonization. While focusing on Hiroshima, Kwangju, and White Earth reservation as key sites of inquiry, the seminar will bridge relevant readings from Asian Studies, Asian American Studies, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. This seminar will be discussion-centered with several writing assignments. No prior knowledge of the geographic areas or language skills are necessary. Students with prior exposure to at least one literary, cultural studies, or theory course at 200 or 300 level (if you are unsure, email Professor We) are encouraged to enroll, though there are no pre-requisites. The course engages closely with histories of violence, and participation is an essential component of this course. There will be frequent collaborative writing assignments and one final research paper.

Learning Objectives
Interpret the ways Korean cultural and literary texts explore the issues of colonialism, nation building, citizenship, gender, sexuality, disability, and neoliberalization. Develop the skills to build layered, advanced, and well-reasoned arguments on Korean literature and culture. Engage the arguments of authors without reducing or unquestioningly accepting them as one’s own. Practice expressing advanced, multi-stage arguments in both writing and verbal presentation. Provide analyses of adequate and well-chosen evidence. Develop clarity and creativity of expression on Korean literature and culture.

Interpret the ways Korean cultural and literary texts explore the issues of colonialism, nation building, citizenship, gender, sexuality, disability, and neoliberalization. Develop the skills to build layered, advanced, and well-reasoned arguments on Korean literature and culture. Engage the arguments of authors without reducing or unquestioningly accepting them as one’s own. Practice expressing advanced, multi-stage arguments in both writing and verbal presentation. Provide analyses of adequate and well-chosen evidence. Develop clarity and creativity of expression on Korean literature and culture.

Teaching MethodDiscussion

Evaluation Method
Group Writing Assignment, Final Research Paper, Presentation, Participation.

Class Materials (required)
1. Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57. By Gerald Vizenor. ISBN: 978-0-8032-3284-6. 2. Dance Dance Revolution: Poems. By Cathy Park Hong. ISBN: 978-0393333114.

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South Asian Culture

ASIAN LC 260 – Masala: Food and South Asia

Overview of Course
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 India as “the land of spices,” or in nostalgic yearnings for the lost flavors of home, food has profound power over the imagination and the body. Drawing on scholarly work in history, anthropology, and literary and cultural studies, we will examine literature, films, cookbooks, blog and Twitter posts, and other materials to understand the roles that food plays in politics, ritual, art, and everyday life.

Learning Objectives
At the end of this course, students will be able to:
- analyze historical, social, and cultural aspects of food in South Asia and its diaspora;
- make cogent and persuasive arguments, orally and in writing, incorporating careful analysis of primary and secondary materials;
- critically evaluate scholarly work relating to South Asian history and culture;
- work with classmates to produce knowledge collaboratively.

Teaching Method
Lecture

Evaluation Method
papers, presentations, and short assignments

Class Materials (required)
All materials available on Canvas

ASIAN LC 261 – Living Indian Epics - Ramayana

Overview of Course
This course will consider one of two fundamental mythological pillars of Indian society – the great Hindu epic, The Ramayana (Story of Rama). Thought to be composed almost three thousand years ago (give or take a few centuries), this epic tale has been re-told and re-imagined in changing social and cultural contexts ever since. This course is dedicated to understanding the nature of this ancient epic as a modern, “living” text in contemporary Indian society. After we develop, as a group, a basic understanding of the major events and characters of the Ramayana, we will explore it in modern contexts of literature, visual art, film, television, and political rhetoric. We will ask whether the resonance of the epic varies in each of these modern contexts, or if its “meanings” are as immortal as the tale itself. In light of several recent controversies resulting from both scholarly and aesthetic approaches to the Ramayana, we will also consider the difficulty of bridging the fraught divides between religion, literature, history, and art. Therefore this course will provide you with an introduction not only to the fascinating stories of the ancient epic literature itself, but also to major issues of religion, gender, popular culture, and social politics in contemporary India. By the end of the course you will be able to understand and explain how the modern and contemporary cultures of India are constructed, in part, through a constant re-evaluation of the Ramayana among other Hindu epic narratives.

Learning Objectives
You will become very familiar with one of the foundation narratives shaping classical and modern Hindu-Indian society.

You will learn how to understand the intersections of religion, literature, art, and politics.

You will think critically about the ways in which classical religious and literary texts can have significant impacts on modern notions of belonging and exclusion.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
discussion, quizzes, midterm and final, short writing assignments.

Course Materials (required)
RK Narayan, The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Classics, 2006)
ISBN: 978-0-143-03967-9

All other materials will be available on Canvas.

ASIAN LC 261 – The Big B: Amitabh Bachchan and Bollywood Stardom

Overview of Course
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 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;
- make cogent and persuasive arguments, orally and in writing, incorporating careful analysis of primary and secondary materials.

Teaching Method
Seminar

Evaluation Method
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 265 – Kings, Courtesans and Khan Artists

Overview of Course
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 and inclusivity in post-colonial India. 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
seminar/lecture

Evaluation Method
Short Essays

Class Materials (required)
None

ASIAN LC 360* – Inqilab Zindabad: Progressive and Anticolonial Literature

Overview of Course coming soon!

ASIAN LC 360* – Umrao Jan Ada

Overview of Course coming soon!

ASIAN LC 360* – The Classical Urdu Ghazal

Overview of Course coming soon!

ASIAN LC 370* – Talking the Talk: Language in South Asian History

Overview of Course
Why do people say certain languages are “sweet”? Why are some languages written in several different alphabets? Why have people killed and died, not for a nation or a religion, but for a language? Questions like these will drive our exploration of language in South Asia, both past and present. Although languages sometimes seem like facts of nature, they have been shaped in profound ways by both human and nonhuman forces, sometimes deliberately and sometimes entirely by accident. In this course, we will examine these histories from a variety of perspectives. Drawing on approaches from cultural and social history, linguistic anthropology, and sociolinguistics, we will think about how political struggles, cultural expressions, and technological revolutions have remade these essential facets of everyday life.

Learning Objectives
At the end of this course, students will be able to: - analyze historical, social, and cultural aspects of language in South Asia and its diaspora; - make cogent and persuasive arguments, orally and in writing, incorporating careful analysis of primary and secondary materials; - critically evaluate scholarly work relating to South Asian history and culture; - work with classmates to produce knowledge collaboratively.

Teaching Method
Seminar

Evaluation Method
Papers, presentations, participation, and short responses

Class Materials (required)
N/A

ASIAN LC 373* – Commemorating Karbala: Shia Islam in South Asian Literature and Culture

Overview of Course

This course will explore the intersection of Shia religious belief and practice with art and literature in South Asia. Shias constitute about fifteen percent of the Muslim population of India and Pakistan today. Despite this minority status, Shia Islam has had a broad influence on intellectual and ethical thought in South Asia, with a particularly profound impact on Sufism. Royal patronage in in cities like Hyderabad and Lucknow also allowed Shiism to develop a rich visual and literary culture that speaks to the core tenets of Shia devotion. Manifestations of this diverse and syncretistic expression are found in architecture, painting, calligraphy, public performance, and literature, the emotive power of which has influenced Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Pairing scholarly readings with primary source materials, this course will examine the legacy and contemporary relevance of South Asian Shia Islam and its cultural and intellectual heritage. Primary source materials include verse poems written in Hindi and Urdu, which we will read in the original. Copies of all Hindi and Urdu texts will be made available in both the Urdu (Nastaliq) and Hindi (Devanagari) scripts.

Pre-Requisite
Fluency or advanced ability in Hindi or Urdu

Teaching Method
Seminar

Evaluation Method
participation, final project

Class Materials (required)
None

ASIAN LC 373* – Buddhist Literature in Translation

Overview of Course

course information coming soon!

Teaching Method

Evaluation Method

Class Materials (required)

ASIAN LC 375* – Buddhist Cultures and the Rhetoric of Violence in Asia

Overview of Course
Although episodes of religious violence are still met with incomprehension and bafflement, even a cursory reading of world history would remind us that religion’s power to inspire violence is not only not new, but it is pervasive. This course investigates the intersections between religion and violence in the context of Buddhist Asia while also considering why in many religious traditions there seem to be a link between the two. It will be structured in two parts: in the first part students will be encouraged to build expertise in the basic concepts, definitions, and general academic consensus (as well as debates) about categories including “religion,” “violence,” “sacrifice,” “ritual,” “martyrdom,” and also “nationalism,” “politics,” and “terrorism” through reading both primary sources (in English translation) and secondary sources (scholarly writings). We will then move into an analysis of case studies that focus on specific circumstances where Buddhist rhetoric, scriptural authority, and religious practices have played a role in violence including suicide, terrorist-related actions, and self-immolation predominantly in pre- and modern Asia. Some of the provocative questions that this course asks include: Why and how is religion involved in politics? Is Buddhism a pacifist religion? How does religion rationalize violence? How can some Buddhist leaders embrace terror as a political tool? Are the recent practices of self-immolation in Tibet acts of violence? Can non-violence be violent?

Learning Objectives
By engaging the recent academic literature in the field, students will be encouraged to improve their knowledge of these problematic categories and engage critically in the analysis of the specific issues dealt with during the course.

Teaching Method
Lectures and Discussions

Evaluation Method
In-class participation and presentation; term paper

Class Materials (required)
Mark Juergensmeyer and Margo Kitts, Princeton Readings in Religion and Violence, Princeton University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0691129143

Michael Jerryson & Mark Juergensmeyer (eds), Buddhist Warfare. Oxford University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0195394849

ASIAN LC 390* – City and Court in Colonial India

Overview of Course
This seminar unpacks the entangled histories of colonial, imperial, court art, architecture and the marketplace from 18th-early 20th century South Asia. It examines the role of images and spaces as sites of social and cross-cultural encounters, and for negotiating racial difference. The course addresses key shifts within visual culture, urbanism, patronage and collecting practices engaging with a wide of media from drawings, paintings, prints, ivory souvenirs and photographs. Focusing on South Asia’s transition from a court dominated culture to its colonization as a British Indian dominion, the course will address the broader framework of the modernity-tradition bind, the rise of nationalism, and the struggle for independence.

Teaching Method
Lecture, Discussion section, Readings, Class Participation

Evaluation Method
Final paper, Attendance, Class Participation, Readings, Writing assignments, Mid-Term paper.

Class Materials (required)
All materials will be provided on CANVAS.

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