East Asian Languages and Literatures (EALL)
EALL 200a / CHNS 200a / EAST 240a / HUMS 270a, The Chinese Tradition Staff
An introduction to the literature, culture, and thought of premodern China, from the beginnings of the written record to the turn of the twentieth century. Close study of textual and visual primary sources, with attention to their historical and cultural backdrops. Students enrolled in CHNS 200 join a weekly Mandarin-language discussion section. No knowledge of Chinese required for students enrolled in EALL 200. Students enrolled in CHNS 200 must have L5 proficiency in Mandarin or permission of the course instructor. HU Tr 0 Course cr
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* EALL 230b / EAST 242b / HUMS 269b / LITR 238b, Poetry and Ethics Amidst Imperial Collapse Lucas Bender
Du Fu has for the last millennium been considered China’s greatest poet. Close study of nearly one-sixth of his complete works, contextualized by selections from the tradition that defined the art in his age. Exploration of the roles literature plays in interpreting human lives and the ways different traditional forms shape different ethical orientation. Poetry as a vehicle for moral reflection. All readings are in English. WR, HU
M 1:30pm-3:20pm
* EALL 234a / EAST 410a, Japanese Detective Fiction Staff
This class offers an overview of modern Japanese literature with a focus on detective fiction. Through detective fiction we can examine key concepts in literature such as narrative voice, point of view, genre, modernism and postmodernism, and learn about debates in Japanese literature, the distinction between highbrow and popular fiction, and the relation between Japanese literature and translated fiction. Detective fiction also allows for the exploration of key issues in Japanese history and society such as consumerism, colonialism, class, gender, and sexuality. Readings include a wide range of texts by canonical and popular writers, as well as theoretical texts on genre and detective fiction. All texts are available in English and no prior knowledge of Japanese or Japan is needed. HU
MW 11:35am-12:50pm
* EALL 237a / EAST 404a / FILM 399a, Nuclear Disasters and Trauma in Japanese Cinema and Beyond Staff
This course examines the ways nuclear disasters are depicted in contemporary Japanese cinema. More specifically, we look at atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945), and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster (2011), and how the dormant trauma towards nuclear power has influenced Japanese cinema/media. As the artists portraying disasters often face the limits of representation, their works raise the following questions: how can cinema depict disasters that are indescribable in nature? How might cinema cause or resist tendencies towards post-catastrophic nationalism? In what ways can cinema address disaster that other forms of media cannot? What filmic techniques can be used to dramatize disastrous moments? Can cinema “foresee” unfolding or upcoming disasters? While considering these questions, this course also introduces the methodologies to write/discuss about film as an art form by examining different cinematic elements such as visual, sound, narrative, performance, and touch. HU
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm, W 7:30pm-10:30pm
* EALL 253a / MUSI 494a / THST 218a, Remapping Dance Amanda Reid, Ameera Nimjee, and Rosa van Hensbergen
What does it mean to be at home in a body? What does it mean to move freely, and what kinds of bodies are granted that right? How is dance encoded as bodies move between various sites? In this team-taught class, we remap the field of dance through its migratory routes to understand how movement is shaped by the connections and frictions of ever-changing communities. As three dance scholars, bringing specialisms in West Indian dance, South Asian dance, and East Asian dance, we are looking to decenter the ways in which dance is taught, both in what we teach and in the ways we teach. Many of the dancers we follow create art inspired by migration, exile, and displacement (both within and beyond the nation) to write new histories of political belonging. Others trace migratory routes through mediums, ideologies, and technologies. The course is structured around four units designed to invite the remapping of dance through its many spaces of creativity: The Archive, The Studio, The Field, and The Stage. Throughout, we explore how different ideas of virtuosity, risk, precarity, radicalism, community, and solidarity are shaped by space and place. We rethink how local dance economies are governed by world markets and neoliberal funding models and ask how individual bodies can intervene in these global systems. No dance background is required, but students have the opportunity to take part in some accessible movement practice. HU Tr
T 1:30pm-3:20pm
* EALL 265b / EAST 253b / LITR 251b, Japanese Literature after 1970 Rosa van Hensbergen
This course is an introduction to Japanese literature written in the last fifty years, with a focus on women writers. We read poetry and prose featuring mothers, daughters, and lovers, novels that follow convenience and thrift store workers, and poetry about factory girls. Our reading takes us from the daily grind of contemporary Tokyo to dystopian futures, from 1970s suburbia to surreal dreamscapes. We attend carefully to the ways in which different writers craft their works and, in particular, to their representation of feelings and affects. Whether the dull ache of loneliness, the oppression of boredom or the heavy weight of fatigue, it is often something about the mood of a work–rather than its narrative–that leaves a distinct impression. We develop the tools to analyze and discuss this sense of distinctness, as well as discover ways to stage connections and comparisons between the works we read. HU
MW 1pm-2:15pm
* EALL 267a, Japan's Global Modernisms: 1880-1980 Rosa van Hensbergen
This course is an introduction to Japanese literature from the 1880s to 1980s. Our reading is guided by a different “ism” each week, from 19th-century eroticism and exoticism, through mid-century cosmopolitanism and colonialism, to second-wave feminism and existentialism in the wake of World War II. These distinct moments in the development of Japanese modernism (modanizumu) are shaped by encounters with foreign cultures, and by the importing of foreign ideas and vogues. All the same, we question—along with modernist writer Yū Ryūtanji—the “critique that says modanizumu is nothing more than the latest display of imported cosmetics” (1930). We seek to develop a correspondingly nuanced picture of the specific and changing ways in which Japan understood and figured its relationship to the rest of the world through the course of a century. All readings will be in translation, however there will be an opportunity to read short stories in the original language. HU
MW 1pm-2:15pm
* EALL 269a, Topics in Modern Korean Literature Kyunghee Eo
In this course, students read key works of Korean literature in English translation from the early twentieth century to the present day. The specific course topic varies by semester. Primary sources include long-form novels, short stories, poetry, and nonfiction writing by representative authors, as well as literary scholarship on themes and historical context relevant to the materials. The readings in this course are arranged in roughly chronological order, requiring us to examine Korea’s colonial modernization process in the first half of the twentieth century, the authoritarian regimes of South Korea from 1948 to 87, and South Korea’s integration into the neoliberal world order after democratization. Supplementary audio-visual materials such as artwork, video clips and music may be presented to students in class. All class materials are in English translation, and no previous knowledge of Korean language is required. HU
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm
* EALL 281b / FILM 304b, Japanese Cinema and Its Others Aaron Gerow
Critical inquiry into the myth of a homogeneous Japan through analysis of how Japanese film and media historically represents “others” of different races, ethnicities, nationalities, genders, and sexualities, including women, black residents, ethnic Koreans, Okinawans, Ainu, undocumented immigrants, LGBTQ minorities, the disabled, youth, and monstrous others like ghosts. HU
MW 11:35am-12:50pm
* EALL 288a / EAST 316a / LITR 303a / RSEE 316a / RUSS 316a, Socialist '80s: Aesthetics of Reform in China and the Soviet Union Jinyi Chu
This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of the complex cultural and political paradigms of late socialism from a transnational perspective by focusing on the literature, cinema, and popular culture of the Soviet Union and China in 1980s. How were intellectual and everyday life in the Soviet Union and China distinct from and similar to that of the West of the same era? How do we parse “the cultural logic of late socialism?” What can today’s America learn from it? Examining two major socialist cultures together in a global context, this course queries the ethnographic, ideological, and socio-economic constituents of late socialism. Students analyze cultural materials in the context of Soviet and Chinese history. Along the way, we explore themes of identity, nationalism, globalization, capitalism, and the Cold War. Students with knowledge of Russian and Chinese are encouraged to read in original languages. All readings are available in English. WR, HU
M 3:30pm-5:20pm
* EALL 296b / EAST 391b / RLST 121b, Religion and Culture in Korea Hwansoo Kim
Introduction to Shamanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Christianity, and new religions in Korea from ancient times to the present. Examination of religious traditions in close relationships with social, economic, political, and cultural environments in Korean society. Examination of religious tensions, philosophical arguments, and ethical issues that indigenous and foreign religions in Korea have engaged throughout history to maximize their influence in Korean society. HU
M 1:30pm-3:20pm
* EALL 300a / EAST 340a, Sinological Methods Pauline Lin
A research course in Chinese studies, designed for students with background in modern and literary Chinese. Explore and evaluate the wealth of primary sources and research tools available in China and in the West. For native speakers of Chinese, introduction to the secondary literature in English and instruction in writing professionally in English on topics about China. Topics include Chinese bibliographies; bibliophiles’ notes; specialized dictionaries; maps and geographical gazetteers; textual editions, variations and reliability of texts; genealogies and biographical sources; archaeological and visual materials; and major Chinese encyclopedias, compendia, and databases. Prerequisite: CHNS 171 or equivalent. Formerly CHNS 202. HU
F 1:30pm-3:20pm
EALL 308a / PHIL 341a, Sages of the Ancient World Mick Hunter
Comparative survey of ancient discourses about wisdom from China, India, the Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Topics include teaching, scheming, and dying. HU
MW 9am-10:15am
* EALL 470a or b and EALL 471a or b, Independent Tutorial Lucas Bender
For students with advanced Chinese, Japanese, or Korean language skills who wish to engage in concentrated reading and research on literary works in a manner not otherwise offered in courses. The work must be supervised by a specialist and must terminate in a term paper or its equivalent. Ordinarily only one term may be offered toward the major or for credit toward the degree. Permission to enroll requires submission of a detailed project proposal by the end of the first week of classes and its approval by the director of undergraduate studies.
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* EALL 491a or b, Senior Essay Lucas Bender
Preparation of a one-term senior essay under faculty supervision.
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