| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| EAS 55 | KOR WOMEN'S CINEMA | CHOI, C. | In the past two decades quite a few Korean women directors have attracted international recognition and won prestigious awards with their feature and documentary films. This course will examine some of the representative women's films made in the new millennium following a brief historical survey of women’s film making at the intersection of political turmoil and feminist movement. As such, we will examine issues of gender representation, social and political issues such as women’s migration, physical and sexual abuse, as well as ethics of care in women’s films. We will also pay attention to aesthetics and workings of independent film making collectives. Course materials will include scholarly articles and films made by women directors including Yim Soon-rye, Byun Young-ju, Shin Su-won, Kim Bora and others. |
| EAS 116 | JPN PREMOD WILDLIFE | MEZUR, K. | The course focuses on critical seeing, listening, writing, and reading in relation to premodern Japan as it exists on the internet. It is a multisensory driven class that uses and critiques the screen. We visit and view multiple platforms from e-exhibitions to e-performances, and study the senses of reading privately and out loud in class. Every assignment requires a presence of the body with the media. What if we focus on nonhuman powers in the formation of human cultures and their historiographies? How might we uncover a more inclusive framing of cultural development through an ecological reading of the past? This course weaves together the tales, mythologies, and spiritual practices that thrived in early Japan. We will encounter and examine their sources in Japanese premodern literature, visual sources, performing arts, early records and ritual practices within their religious and social contexts through this focus on nonhuman creatures and things in a world shared with human animals. This shift to learning and experiencing through nonhuman sources opens the contexts of these texts, visuals, and performance sources to the imagined and ecological worlds of premodern Japan. Through interdisciplinary narratives, we will enjoy and critically analyze the intersecting relationships within the lives of nonhuman creatures, things, and human animals. Our readings juxtapose court class literature with tales and ritual practices created by farmers, hunters, and fisherman, whose livelihoods depended on the ecosystems of natural forces, including disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and drought. Further human interactions with insects, boars, bears, foxes, deer, horses, and birds (and more!) were based on this fragile relationship of protection and/or danger to the point of destruction and death, inspiring a variety of religious practices and beliefs. These two social contexts of court and country-sea-side labor produced different worlds of wonder, terror, and pragmatism but they both drew on the "after and beyond life" systems of Buddhism and Shinto, which were woven together across these worlds. To understand those different worlds we will encounter the changing relationships across indigenous and Buddhist systems of belief. Over and over again, we will encounter through visual and textual narratives the interplay, adaptation, and clash of creatures, things, humans, and other beings in their shared eco-cultural systems of survival and creativity. |
| EAS 120 | JP HIST POP CULTRE | GHANBARPOUR, C. | This class is an overview of Japanese popular culture from the Tokugawa era (1600-1868) to the present, with an emphasis on contemporary (post-1945) popular culture. We will study changes in Japanese culture through movies, anime (animated cartoons), comic books, music, and other artifacts, focusing on the experiences of women and men in the production, use, and patronage of specific genres. Topics include the role of mass media, the globalization of Japanese pop culture, and changing ideas of race, gender, and society in Japan. (same as 26130 GlblClt 103B, Lec B; and 26840 History 172G, Lec A) |
| EAS 123 | STRUCT OF JAPANESE | RIGGS, H. | This course is an overview of the linguistic features of modern Japanese. Its main goal is to provide students a systematic introduction to the nature and characteristics of the language, including: Genealogical tree of the Japanese language; Orthography (What are the various writing systems used in modern Japanese?); Phonetics and phonology (How can we describe the sounds of Japanese words?); Morphology (How are Japanese words constructed and organized?); Regeneration of lexicon (How are new words created?); Syntax (How are Japanese sentences structured); Semantics Through this course students will also explore the structure of the Japanese language and its historical development in conjunction with socio-cultural factors. Upon completion of this course, students should understand the idiosyncratic behavior of Japanese as a language. (same as 65440 LSCI 165B, Lec A) |
| EAS 130 | KOREAN SOC & CULTRE | CHOI, C. | This course surveys social, cultural, and political aspects of contemporary Korea. We will examine and interpret some of the key social institutions and culture changes including family and gender relationships, the impact of Korean War and national division, industrialization and its legacies, social movement, labor and marriage migration, and popular culture and culture industry. We will also explore the life and society of North Korea and the issues of North Korean refugees in South Korea. As part of class activities, we will follow closely some of the current events and interpret them considering what we learn in class for the purpose of enhancing the students’ practical skills to analyze Korean society. Course materials include scholarly articles, films, and literature. (same as 26118 GlblClt 103A, Lec B; and 64520 Intl St 179, Lec B) |
| EAS 140 | MODERN KOREAN ART | JUNG, G. | This course introduces students to modern and contemporary art of Korea. The modernization of Korea was violent and volatile. In the twentieth century alone, the nation experienced colonization by Japan, partition by the US and the Soviet Union, a civil war, and dictatorships. Artists devised creative ways to respond not only to the Western modernism—and later postmodernism and other artistic trends—but also to the rapidly changing political, social, economic, and cultural circumstances. Beginning with the definition of modernity and modernism and its various iterations, we examine a wide range of media and genres. Alternative modernity (or modernities) and vernacular modernism, “Koreanness” and its construction, “spectacle” and consumption, the figure of female artist and representations of women, nation building and monuments, state propaganda, citizenship, and art as political activism are some of themes that will be studied. (same as 21100 Art His 150, Lec A) |
| EAS 150 | WMN POETS PREMOD CH | ZHAO, Y. | With a primary focus on the late imperial period (ca. 1600-1900), this course will introduce women’s active literary practice utilizing both shi (ancient-style and regulated poems) and ci (song lyrics) in the classical Chinese poetic tradition. After establishing the historical and theoretical framework of women’s writings in pre-modern China, the class will be a survey of representative women poets and their works from the Han (202BC–220AD) to the late imperial period. These women authors were mainly from the two social groups of gentry ladies and courtesans, and we will examine their female agency in relation to their personal lives and experiences in the dynamic historical context. For some women with dual identities of poet and painter, we will also juxtapose their poems with paintings to elaborate on the text-image interaction. Through investigating the Classical Chinese poetic tradition from a gendered perspective, the course seeks to broaden the perception of women’s engagement in literary and artistic activities in pre-modern China. |
| EAS 150 | CARE&HEAL JPN LIT | LONG, M. | This class introduces classic novels and stories from modern Japan to discuss care and care work. Five big questions shape our reading. First are feminist questions. If we think of care work as taking care of children, the elderly and the sick, is it only ever drudgery? Or does it teach us something? Is care work “healing?” Second are ecological questions. How do we take care of each other amidst climate change, pollution, and the anxiety they generate? Third are neurodiversity questions. Is it a disability to need care to live? What do disability and neurodiversity activists in Japan say? Fourth are labor questions. When capitalist exploitation makes us wretched, do art and storytelling help? Do they heal? Finally, fifth are mythological questions. How eco-friendly are Japan’s origin myths (Kojiki), and how do they compare to those of its colonized indigenous people, the Ainu? In which cosmology is it easier to care for and be cared for by the earth? Assignments include a mid-term and final paper plus six discussion board posts. All readings in English translation. No prior knowledge necessary. |
| EAS 155 | GERMANY & ASIA | BROADBENT, P. | This upper-division course looks at the storied and dynamic relationships driven by Germany with China, Japan, and South Korea over the past 130 years. Starting with the Meiji Restoration, the Boxer Rebellion and the Korean War, German 103/German 160 traces the evolution of Germany’s economic, political and cultural relationships with Asia from the late nineteenth-century to the global present. Students will examine the economic and territorial ambitions of the German empire’s ambitions in Asia and later explore how the embrace of soft power (such as cultural exchanges, partner cities, education programs, and immigration treaties) in the postwar era allowed West Germany to forge significant economic and political ties with China, Japan and South Korea. We will conclude the course by looking at pressing contemporary issues and future trends, discussing how global challenges like climate change and technological advancements might impact these global relationships moving forward. (same as 25740 German 150, Lec A; 26100 GlblClt 103A, Lec A; and 26870 History 183, Lec A) |
| EAS 155 | JPN MILITARY CULTRS | MEZUR, K. | Across time, geographies, and cultures, artists have been driven to reflect on militarization and war. What does war do? How do soldiers, civilians, children, and "nations" become militarized? What role do artists play in militarized cultures? In this course we will examine how the arts are deployed in times of war, in militarized zones, in postwar memorialization, and in future fantasy wars. We will analyze "performance" in diverse militarized cultures through the technologies of animation, film, new media, and theatre. With the course focus on critical reading and analytic writing, we will investigate case studies with theory and contextual readings, which will be our tools for developing an argument, writing analysis, and thinking critically. Through these different media, visual and literary, popular and classic, from several different cultures and nations, we will consider how artists choose to deal with the many conditions of oppression, terrorism, and violence through their medium in their contexts. We will consider how a nation or culture uses "documentary" and "dramatic" and "fantastic" art to re-enact, spectacularize, mediatize, and/or document acts of militarization, protest, oppression, glorification, and censorship. We will pay close attention to gender and race as we question the roles of art and artists who serve the state, who turn their work into direct confrontations to critique the state, and those who romanticize acts of war and military oppression. With which medium can we best approach the acts of militarization and destruction, from terrorism to attack, from invasion through occupation, and finally reconciliation? Can art find a way to illuminate or make transparent the motives, the drives, and the deeper circumstances of war? Can we afford to give war and militarism expression in the arts? |
| EAS 155 | PREMODERN KOREA | KIM, S. | This course is an introduction to the society and culture of premodern Korea covering from the neolithic period to the Choson dynasty (1392-1910). It focuses on the history of visual culture discussing architecture, sculpture, ceramics, metal crafts, painting, printing, and textiles in diverse archaeological and historical contexts. |
| EAS 190 | CHNSE AUTOBIOGRAPHY | HU, Y. | What defines an autobiography? And what lies behind the impulse to tell others about one’s own life? How does cultural tradition affect our understanding of the self and the particular ways that we write about ourselves? How does the act of writing affect our lives? Are modern autobiographies different from ancient ones? Do autobiographies of men and women differ and if so, how? These are some of the questions we ask in this course. We sample a wide array of Chinese self-writing ranging in time from the First Century BCE to the contemporary, and in genres such as essays, poetry, letters, and fiction. To help us understand this rich and fascinating tradition, we also read scholarly treatments of the genre from various theoretical perspectives. Our goals are two-fold: to become familiar with the tradition of self-writing in China and to explore different understandings of the individual over time. We will be honing two vital skills: to read carefully and closely, and to write with clarity and authenticity. |
| EAS 220 | CARE DISABILITY JPN | LONG, M. | This seminar introduces recent works in disability studies and feminist studies to read a mini-canon of Japanese novels and films about giving and receiving care. We also study debates in Japanese studies over whether “care of the self” is a neoliberal imposition, as argued in some schools of Marxism, or an artistic and philosophical style, as argued in some schools of environmental humanities. Reading knowledge of Japanese not required, but those who can are encouraged to read in the original. Film students may opt to watch cinema versions for works that have been made into films. One week, the primary text is a film. (same as 28655 Human 270, Sem A) |