| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| EAS 15C | INTRO CHNS STORIES | HUANG, M. | The genre of short stories has a long history in China. This course will focus on short stories written in vernacular, which began to flourish during the late Ming dynasty (1368-1644 ). 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. Requirements: class discussions and presentations. A student is required to do in-class presentation on assigned topics and to serve as a discussant to comment on the presentations by other classmates (each student is expected to present twice and be a discussant twice for the quarter) There will be mid-term and final exams (both in class). |
| EAS 40 | LOVE IN THE MAY-4TH | HU, Y. | This course focuses on the theme of love in early 20th century Chinese literature. The May-fourth was an age of enlightenment, women's liberation, and national awakening, a time when intellectuals proposed "love" as a symbol of individual freedom, personal autonomy and gender equality. How did the romantic discourse of “free love” begin as a revolt against Confucian patriarchy? What role did the genre of romance play in the construction of the modern individual? How did changing gender relations affect literary productions? These are some of the questions we explore as we read literature by male and female writers. |
| EAS 55 | INTR JPN CLASSICS | LONG, M. | Join Instructor Margherita Long for a class on nine famous Japanese texts, including love novels, travel diaries and puppet plays. Get your creativity flowing with three core assignments featuring 1) manga interpretation 2) literary mimicry and 3) online museum creation. All texts are in English translation; no knowledge of Japanese is required. |
| EAS 110 | SHANGHAI TALES | HU, Y. | The course focuses on two Chinese women writers from Shanghai: Eileen Chang (1920-1995) who wrote her best work in the 1940s, and Wang Anyi (1954ï¼) whose work spans the 20th century to the contemporary. Through close engagement with their essays and fictional works, we experience the historical vicissitudes of the city of Shanghai from World War II to 1990s and examine the representation of urban space, gender, and class. All readings are in English. Grades are based on quizzes and exam questions. |
| EAS 117 | ZEN BUDDHIS THOUGHT | STAFF | |
| EAS 126 | JAPANESE SOCIOLING | RIGGS, H. | This course is an introduction to Japanese sociolinguistics, which is the study of the relationship between a language and society. We will explore variety of language uses in modern Japanese and how such variation is constructed by identity and culture. An exploration of attitudes and ideologies about these varieties will be of importance to understanding this relationship. Its main goal is to provide students a systematic introduction to the nature and characteristics of the language use. The course covers: • Language assimilation and unification of a nation • Speaking a dialect as manifestation of identity • Inside and outside of a social group • Honorific system as the art of socializing in the society • Use of male/female language based on social norms (same as 65475 LSCI 169, Lec B) |
| EAS 140 | BEING AND BELONGING | SUH, S. | This course surveys modern Korean literature with a critical focus on the issue of community. Modern Korean literature often portrays individuals struggling to reconcile themselves with the community to which they happen to belong, whether it is a colonized nation, a country stricken by violent clashes of ideologies, or a society under authoritarian dictatorship as Korea went through Japanese colonial rule, political chaos after liberation, the division of the Korean Peninsula, a fratricidal war, and industrialization and urbanization under the regimes of the authoritarian state. Students will read stories that exemplarily show the ways in which one is striving to make sense of one’s inevitable fate of belongingness. To situate the literary texts in the vicissitudes of modern Korean history and understand critical issues related to the problem of community, students will also read seminal works of critical theory on the subject of community as well as excerpts from a modern Korean history book. All readings are in English. |
| EAS 150 | DESIRE & CHINSE LIT | HUANG, M. | In this class, 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, class presentations, mid-term and final exams. |
| EAS 155 | GENDER & PREMOD JPN | STAFF | This course focuses on the experiences of women and men from roughly the end of the Heian period (794-1185) to the end of the 16th century. How did the roles and positions of women and men change in this time period, what were their problems, and how did they interact with each other and with the institutions and traditions that changed so markedly in the tradition from imperial to warrior rule? We will study women's and men's economic, social, political, and cultural roles, looking particularly at changes in women’s status, the spread of Buddhism and its integration in Japanese society, political movements and upheavals, warfare, entertainment, art, literature, and poetry. (same as 26865 History 172G, Lec A) |
| EAS 190 | KOREAN DOC | KIM, K. | This new course is an interdisciplinary and historical introduction to the Korean documentary filmmaking over the past four decades from the 1980s to the present. The subject matters explored in the documentaries featured in class will range from comfort women and democratization protest movements to ecological disasters and found footage essays of the YouTube era. This course will not only engage with ethical and political issues that arise from formal and aesthetic visual experimentations, which will allow the class to revisit important moments in Korean history through documentary films, but also will examine recent impacts of verité aesthetic forms on entertainment television and streaming content. |