| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| EAS 15C | INTRO CHNS STORIES | HUANG, M. | In this class we will read selected stories from different historical periods dealing with various social and cultural issues, such as the relationship between individual and society as well as family and gender relationships. We will also examine works from modern China to see how this important narrative genre underwent significant changes in both form and content during the last century and what these changes could tell us about a China in pursuit of modernity. A student is required to do in-class presentations on assigned topics. There will be mid-term and final exams. |
| EAS 15J | RACE&NATION MOD JPN | PITT, J. | This course is designed to help Japanese and other East Asian Studies majors develop the skills they will use in upper division courses in the department. We will examine literature and film spanning nearly 150 years of Japan’s modern history. We will focus on how ideas concerning race and national identity structed Japan's experience of modernity, with special focus on the settler colonialism of Hokkaido and Japan's wartime imperial expansion. All readings will be in English. Through close engagement with these texts, we will focus on the following necessary skills for majors in the department: close reading, library and web-based research, analytical writing, and critical thinking. |
| EAS 55 | KOREAN FAILURES | KIM, K. | This course will focus on both historical and sociological backgrounds that point toward some of the contemporary crisis that Korea is facing. Most reports and research on South Korea have thus far only emphasized the successes it has had over the past several decades; economic development, K-pop’s global success, and transition from military dictatorship to democracy. This course aims, however, to understand the reasons that attribute to some of the ailments that still plague Korean society. The high suicidal rates, world’s lowest infertility rate, over-education, diminishing middle class, place of Korean language in global English, unresolved problem with past historical matters such as comfort women, tension between the two Koreas, and discrimination against non-Koreans, just to name a few, stand out as problems. In order to unpack the deeply-layered social ills of Korea, the course will focus on several topics such as the Qing Invasion of the Joseon in the 17th Century, Annexation of Korea by Japan in the early 20th Century, Korean War in the 1950s, and several of the contemporary disasters that took place in the recent years—including the so-called IMF crisis of the 1997 and the Sewol Ferry. |
| EAS 110 | DESIRE & CHINSE LIT | HUANG, M. | In this course, we first will focus on issues such as how “desire” was conceived of in Chinese cultural history and how it was constantly rethought and reformulated throughout the history of China. Then we will move on to several fictional and dramatic texts produced during the late imperial period to explore how the concept of desire is represented and renegotiated in these literary texts and the emphasis is on close reading. There will be pop quizzes, mid-term and final exams. |
| EAS 140 | SACRIFCE KOREAN LIT | SUH, S. | This course begins with the premise that life is a series of decision-making, and once we make decisions, we’d better stick to them but also need to take their consequences. Decision-making inevitably requires sacrifice because by choosing one option over others, we cannot help but sacrifice those other options our decisions leave out. Our full commitment to our decisions also often takes precedence over other obligations we might have and thus forces us to sacrifice them as well. Furthermore, no matter how much carefully and sincerely we attempt to make the right decisions by taking every single factor into consideration, they produce unintended effects that might hurt others around us. By drawing on literary texts coming from or set in Korea, the course invites students to think about the inevitable sacrifice embedded in making decisions, and question and answer how much responsible we should be held for our decisions. |
| EAS 150 | LIT CHRIST IN S KOR | SUH, S. | This course deals with a cultural moment during which literature, politics, and religion intersected in reaction to the oppressive rule of the South Korean state in the 1970s and 80s. Many literary works in 1970s and 80s South Korea implicitly and explicitly invoked the image of Jesus. Often, they offered thinly veiled social commentary on political and economic inequality and injustice resulting from rapid industrialization and urbanization under authoritarian rule. By paying especial attention to the recurring image of Jesus as rather an impotent and weak figure than the incarnation of omnipotent and omnipresent divinity in 1970s and 80s South Korean literary texts, the course explores what aspects of Christianity resonate with the concerns of writers and poets, and society in general under oppressive rule. |
| EAS 190 | CHNSE AUTOBIOGRAPHY | HU, Y. | This course examines issues in writing and reading autobiography. Half of the course focuses on Chinese autobiographical texts ranging in time from the First Century BCE to the modern times, including essays, poetry, diary, letters, and fiction. The other half of the course introduces secondary scholarship on and theoretical treatment of autobiography. Questions we discuss include the following: How do writers of autobiography decide what to tell about themselves? How do they imagine individual lives in relation to their time and place? Are modern autobiographical practices significantly different from ancient ones? Do autobiographies of men and women differ and if so, how? What about different classes of men and women? What social and cultural functions has autobiography served during different historical periods? |
| EAS 220 | JPN MTN&ALPINE HUM | PITT, J. | Drawing from recent interest in the Blue Humanities, which rethinks the role of the ocean in literature and film, this seminar will consider the possibility of an “Alpine Humanities.” We will engage with works of Japanese literature and cinema (both fictional and documentary) that foreground mountain ecologies alongside theoretical works of environmental philosophy, environmental history, and multispecies ethnography. Topics will include how Japan’s history of mountain forestry speaks to theories of the Plantationocene (as formulated by Anna Tsing and Donna Haraway) and how mountaineering literature is entangled with rise of Japanese nationalism. Through close readings of these primary and secondary texts, we will consider how mountains in Japan are a site from which we can view the intersections of ecology, culture, and spirituality. This seminar coincides with Twelve Mountains: Japan from the Timberline, an international symposium tentatively scheduled for Fall 2021 and organized by Jon Pitt (EAS) and David Fedman (History). English translations of all Japanese texts will be provided. (same as 28650 Human 270, Sem A) |
| EAS 220 | HU YING | This course critically examines issues of feminism in the East Asian framework. Our reading includes a range of Euro-American and East Asian theorists working on gender issues as well as cultural products by both feminist and self-proclaimed non-feminist women writers and artists. Our aim is two-fold: to understand the underlying assumptions, strategies and methodologies of these writings and to develop our own models for academic praxis. |