College of East Asian Studies
The College of East Asian Studies (CEAS) challenges students to understand China, Japan, and Korea through the rigors of language study and the analytical tools of various academic disciplines. This process demands both broad exposure to different subjects and a focused perspective on a particular feature of the East Asian landscape. Japan, China, and Korea are related yet distinctive civilizations. Each has its own traditions and patterns of development. These traditions have played an important role in the development of culture around the globe and remain formative influences today.
Students interested in East Asian studies will be guided by the expectations for liberal learning at Wesleyan and by the CEAS's interdisciplinary approach. Language, premodern history and culture, and the sophomore Proseminar provide the common core of our program. The Proseminar exposes students to a wide variety of intellectual approaches to East Asian studies and thereby provides a foundation for students to focus in more depth in particular areas.
College of East Asian Studies
CEAS155 Fictional Japan: Introduction to Japanese Literature and Culture
This course will explore the evolution of Japanese fictional narrative, from Japan's first encounter with "modern" literary forms in the late 19th century to postmodern digital discourses advanced through anime and gaming. In so doing, we will discuss the ways in which Japanese theories of literature intersect with notions of national identity, modernity, and Westernization. How does the Japanese novel participate in the modern process of nation building, and how is it used to situate Japan's position in East Asia and the world? We will also consider fictional works from marginalized groups in Japan to address how notions of gender and ethnicity serve as an intervention into traditional discourses on Japanese literature. Finally, we will explore new iterations of Japanese fiction in the form of digital media and database narratives. Does advanced technology fundamentally change how we produce and consume narratives and, therefore, view the world around us? How do these new forms impact constructions of national history and identity? Is this phenomenon somehow unique to Japan, or a simple product of globalization?
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS156F Sex, Ghosts, and Cannibalism: The Chinese Short Story FYS
This course takes the passionate, the strange, and the peculiar--sex, ghosts, and cannibalism--as a lens through which to explore big issues in the history of Chinese literature and culture.
Focusing on short stories from the 7th to 21st centuries, we ask what fiction can tell us about the real concerns that shaped the lives of Chinese writers. How do literary depictions of sex and desire relate to social issues surrounding gender, power, and family? What do supernatural characters--hungry ghosts, lofty gods, unruly demons, seductive snakes, and fox spirits--reveal about the human world and belief systems used to make sense of unusual occurrences? What do motifs of cannibalism and related themes linked to bodies, consumption, hunger, and food tell us about the social and political changes China witnessed on its path toward becoming a modern nation-state?
As a First Year Seminar, this course is writing-intensive and is meant to equip you with the writing, reading, research, and presentation skills needed at Wesleyan. You will have numerous opportunities to write and revise your work, share your insights during class discussion, and practice the core skills of effective reading and interpretation.
All texts will be taught in English translation. No prior knowledge of China or Chinese language is required.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: WLIT228F
Prereq: None
CEAS157F Legacies of WWII in Postwar Japan (FYS)
In 1956, The Japanese Economic Planning Agency famously declared that "the 'post-war' is over." Indeed, by that time, the national economy had made a remarkable recovery since the end of WWII. Others place the end of the "post-war" with Emperor Hirohito's death in 1989. Still, was the "post-war" truly over for Japan? This seminar aims to tackle this dilemma of the "post-war" and assess how the war and the American occupation are remembered by the Japanese, as well as Americans and Asian neighbors, and how they continue to reverberate politically and culturally, seventy-odd years after the conflict's ostensible end. The course will begin with some history of WWII and the American occupation. Film, literature, and popular media, along with secondary scholarship, will energize discussions about topics such as the rise of anime and otaku culture, Orientalism, gendered racism in Japanese-American relations, the 1964 and 2020 Tokyo Olympics, American bases in Japan, and North Korea.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS158F Literary Pop Culture: The Tale of Genji and The Story of the Stone (FYS)
This first-year seminar addresses two of the great East Asian novels, "The Tale of Genji" (from Japan) and "The Story of the Stone" (also known as Dream of the Red Chamber) (from China), and their afterlives in modern and premodern popular culture. Topics of discussion include adaptations of both novels as literature and in other media forms (drama, film, TV, etc.); the two novels in painting/prints, games, fan fictions, etc.; shared themes such as family, romance, and power; and social issues including class, gender, and intergenerational conflict. No previous background in East Asian studies required.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS160 Social and Political Changes in Korea
Korea is currently the only divided country in the world, with two different political systems--democracy and dictatorship. This course explores developments on the Korean peninsula in the modern to contemporary period. We will examine social change, demography, culture, politics, and economy, as well as various social and cultural issues facing Korean society today.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS180 Japan Rocks: Music in/as Contemporary Japanese Studies
This course aims to consider topics in modern and contemporary (understood as post-War) Japanese society through the lens of musical expression. By attending to specific instances of musical expression in modern and contemporary Japan, we will strive to understand not only the songs themselves but the contexts within which they were produced. This course aims to take music not merely as an object of study/analysis but as a means by which we might both critique and build upon the discipline of Japanese studies and area studies in general.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS181 Chinese Pop Culture
Popular culture is closely associated with our daily life and ways of thinking, seeing, and connecting with the world. This course will introduce select aspects of modern and contemporary Chinese-language popular culture and its circulation among Chinese-speaking sites, including China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. We will mainly focus on forms that have circulated and continue to circulate from the modern to the contemporary period, including movie musicals, martial arts, Internet culture, and singing contests. We will also study how Chinese pop culture has influenced audiences and (re-)construct their identities, as well as explore how cultural producers in Chinese language have engaged with issues of fandom, gender and sexuality, ethnicity, and material life through a variety of pop cultural forms. Throughout the course, we will discuss theories of pop culture and analyze primary materials to understand the production and circulation of Chinese pop culture. This course is taught in English.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS201 Proseminar
This seminar explores some of the key tenets and methodologies of the academic discipline broadly known as 'area studies,' with the aim of further preparing students to pursue their chosen avenues of research as scholars of East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University. It is required of all CEAS majors in their sophomore year, and is also open to CEAS majors in their junior or senior years who may have been unable to take the seminar previously. The specific topics and concerns addressed by the seminar shift from year to year and according to the instructor, but may include questions of geopolitics, Orientalism, modernization and modernity, and productive approaches to grappling with written, musical, and filmic texts in disparate contexts and historical moments.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS202 Narrating China: Introduction to 20th- and 21st-Century Chinese Literature
This survey course introduces students to major literary movements in 20th- and 21st-century China through selective works by representative authors. It has two major aims: (1) It invites students to explore how individual authors--at different historical moments and in different social positions--have responded to historical changes that radically unsettled their senses of self and nation and also how their literary expressions may reveal the shifting subjectivity of modern China and Chineseness. (2) At the same time, it introduces students to the academic discipline of literary criticism, develops or deepens students' critical close reading and textual analysis, and invites them to discover the joy and reward of plunging into a reading experience and coming out with interpretations of their own making.
While the course does attend to important historical flash points unique to Chinese history, it also explores literary themes that resonate globally, beyond the context of modern China. Varying slightly by semester, these themes could include the relation between politics and literature, revolution and revolutionary arts, alternative modernities, writerly authority and the individual self, gendered authorship, memory and trauma, ethnic governance and resistance, class divisions, ecological damages, labor migration, etc. This course assumes no prior knowledge of China or Chinese language, and all texts will be taught using English translations.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: WLIT223
Prereq: None
CEAS203 Faces of Korea
This course addresses multiple topics that span both traditional and modern Korean culture, ranging from traditional cuisine, dance, music, art, architecture, and the modernization of Korea in the 20th century to Korean films, social issues, religion, and the Korean Wave.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS204 Chinese Media in Chinese: Star, Fandom, and Identity
This course is conducted in Mandarin Chinese and designed to supplement the standard English-language Chinese Pop Culture (CEAS 181) course. The course will have two main foci: (1) introducing students to Chinese-language scholarship on Chinese media, particularly pop culture and its flow within East Asia, and (2) analyzing and discussing Chinese media in-depth in Mandarin Chinese.
Both advanced learners of Chinese (fourth-year level or above) and native speakers are welcome. All the reading materials will be in Mandarin Chinese, and we will have oral presentations in Chinese and some written work in English. Evaluation will be tailored to each student's language background. If you are unsure whether your language background is sufficient for the course, please contact the instructor.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS205 Democracy and Social Movements in East Asia
Despite East Asia's reputation for acquiescent populations and weak civil society, the region has been replete with social movements. This course assesses the state of civil society in East Asia by surveying contemporary social movements in the region. We will examine the rise of civil society and its role in political and social changes in both authoritarian and democratic societies in East Asia.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-CEAS
Identical With: GOVT281
Prereq: None
CEAS206 Korean Politics Through Film
This course explores the contemporary politics of Korea. Through course readings, films, and documentaries, we will examine how the tumultuous history of modern Korea has contributed to present political conditions in South and North Korea. Topics covered include Japanese colonialism, the Korean War, modernization, dictatorships, democratization, globalization, and inter-Korean relations.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-CEAS
Identical With: GOVT295
Prereq: None
CEAS207 Introduction to History: Foundations of East Asian Cultures
This course introduces some of the cultural foundations of East Asia and how they have continued to resonate through history. We will be examining translated primary texts in history, literature, philosophy, and religion, mainly from China, Korea, and Japan. We will also be working with other media such as film and art. The course attempts to equip students with a basic fluency in interpreting ancient and modern materials from East Asia and identifying its cultural contexts.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: HIST197
Prereq: None
CEAS207Z Foundations of East Asian Cultures
This course introduces some of the cultural foundations of East Asia and how they have continued to resonate through history. We will be examining translated primary texts in history, literature, philosophy, and religion, mainly from China, Korea, and Japan. We will also be working with other media such as film and art. The course attempts to equip students with a basic fluency in interpreting ancient and modern materials from East Asia and identifying their cultural contexts. Some themes include the role of government, dilemmas of love, the methods and aims of education, gender roles and family, social inequality, self and society, and the social roles of literature and history. This course does not aim to be exhaustive, but seeks to enlarge narrow conceptions of Asian cultures and to offer tools for future exploration.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS208 Modern Chinese Literature
This course introduces the history of modern Chinese literature from the republican era (early 20th-century) to the contemporary era. By discussing selected literary works, it serves an overview of the styles and features of modern Chinese literature in each time period and also introduces students to major themes from China's tumultuous 20th century. Topics will include the cultural transformations of the May Fourth movement, modernity, war, revolution, root-searching, and body writing. All readings will be in English translation.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS210 Defining Japanese Culture Through Food
This course explores Japanese food traditions as a site in which cultural values are sought, contested, and disseminated for national consumption. Through an examination of various components of Japan's culinary practices such as the tea ceremony, sushi, whaling, and fusion cuisines, we uncover the aesthetics, religious beliefs, politics, environmental issues, and intercultural exchange that characterize Japanese history.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: WLIT225
Prereq: None
CEAS211 Food in Japanese Media (CLAC.50)
This 0.50 CLAC section is conducted in Japanese and will feature Japanese-language media (documentaries, films, TV shows, anime, and some texts such as news articles and manga). It is designed to supplement CEAS 210: From Tea to Connecticut Rolls: Defining Japanese Culture Through Food. All materials and discussion will be in Japanese. There may be some writing assignments depending on ability. The section is open to students with Japanese-language ability, from intermediate level to native speakers. With the instructor's approval, this section may be taken independently of the parent course. Evaluation will be primarily based on participation, effort, and completion of assignments.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: CGST221
Prereq: None
CEAS212 Introduction to Korean Cinema
During the last few decades South Korean cinema has taken center stage in world cinema with the phenomenal success of its film industry and critical acclaim in the global context. However, Korea has boasted a thriving film culture and aesthetics since the "golden age" of the 1950s, of which renowned contemporary directors such as Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook have claimed they are the inheritors. This course introduces Korean cinema from its beginnings in the colonial era to its recent achievements. While learning the concepts and theories of film studies as well as the cultural and political contexts to which Korean film culture has responded, students will explore films by key directors that constitute the crucial "moments" of South Korean cinema. We will examine the main topics in Korean cinema, including colonial production, the liberation and Western influence, nation and nationalism, modernity and women, gender politics, realist and modernist cinema, popular cinema and cultural depression, the Korean New Wave, democratization and political cinema, the Korean blockbuster, the questions of "Koreanness," and the "Korean Wave" in the global film market.
The course also seeks to establish a balance between understanding Korean cinema as both a reservoir of historical memory and as an example of evolving world cinema. Through engagement with methodological issues from film studies in each week's readings, including the question of archives, national cinema discourse, feminist film theory, auteurism, and genre studies, students in this course will learn to analyze Korean filmic texts not only as a way to understand the particularity of Korean cinema but also as a frontier of cinematic language in the broader history of film.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: FILM230
Prereq: None
CEAS213 The Chinese Canon and Its Afterlife
This course is an exploration of canonical works in Chinese literature, religious texts, historical narratives, art, and movies, with an emphasis on their aesthetic and cultural implications. Topics include Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism; folk religions and shamanism; cultural identity and self-cultivation; sexuality, cross-dressing, and gender politics; nature and utopias; emperors, scholars, and musicians; hermits and knights-errant; learned women poets and courtesans; drunken poets and Zen masters; fox spirits and ghosts; portraiture and representations of bodies; and secret societies and avant-garde artists. Several internationally acclaimed poets and translators of Chinese literature such as Eleanor Goodman and Zang Di will join the class discussion as guest speakers. They will discuss their writing process, and answer questions about their work. All readings are in translation. Although some Chinese characters will be introduced in calligraphy, no knowledge of Chinese is required.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS215 The Legacy of World War II in Postwar Japan
In 1956, the Japanese Economic Planning Agency famously declared, "The 'postwar' is over." Indeed, by that time, the national economy had made a remarkable recovery since the end of World War II. Others place the end of the postwar with Emperor Hirohito's death in 1989. The new Reiwa era might be another marker. Still, was the postwar truly over for Japan? This seminar aims to tackle this dilemma of the postwar and assess how the war and the American occupation are remembered by the Japanese, and how they continue to reverberate politically and culturally, nearly 70 years after Japan regained its independence.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: WLIT321
Prereq: None
CEAS216 History of Japanese Cinema
During the last several decades, Japanese cinema has won international acclaim for its artistic achievement in form and content while gaining commercial dominance over the power of Hollywood films in its domestic film market. What have been the driving forces for the development of Japanese cinema as both art and industry? How have Japanese filmmakers contributed to the creation and advancement of new cinematic languages and genres that appealed not only to domestic audiences, but also to global cinephiles? What have been the central issues and themes in Japanese film history?
This course surveys Japanese cinema from its beginnings to the work of contemporary film auteurs. Students will learn the history of Japanese cinema by watching and discussing the canonical pieces by the prestigious directors and the studio genre films produced by the various major and minor local film companies. At the same time, we will examine the main topics and trends of Japanese cinema such as the pure film movement, Shochiku's shoshimin eiga, wartime film culture, melodramas under the U.S. occupation, New Wave films and political cinema, art cinema, the popularity of "series" movies, and the transnational and digital film culture in contemporary Japan. We will explore the world of the masters of classical Japanese cinema, including the films of Ozu Yasujiro, Mizoguchi Kenji, and Kurosawa Akira, and also those by Kurosawa Kiyoshi and Koreeda Hirokazu--the major contemporary Japanese auteurs.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS217 Samurai: Imagining, Performing Japanese Identity
Among conventional images of Japan, the samurai still allures. This course examines the history of samurai and its myths to consider why it remains so popular, and what that says about the values, fantasies, and anxieties not only of Japan past and present, but also of the West. Through historical studies, literature, and film, the course discusses such themes as orientalism, sexuality and gender, nationalism, and samurai as postwar critiques of society.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS217F Who is the Dalai Lama? (FYS)
This First Year Seminar introduces the institution of the Dalai Lama of Tibet and the individuals who have filled that role from a wide range of sources and perspectives. Topics include regional histories of Buddhism; the unique Tibetan tradition of recognized reincarnations (tulkus) and the Buddhist philosophical principles that support it; and a survey of prominent Dalai Lamas from the 15th century to the present day. The seminar examines the activities of the current Dalai Lama in his role as traditional Buddhist teacher, political leader, and international superstar, through the lenses of the PRC government media, Indian exile communities, and the modern West. Later classes will also address issues of Western and Chinese forms of Orientalism and myth-making about Tibet. Readings include the writings of past and current Dalai Lamas as well as supporting secondary literature.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-RELI
Identical With: RELI207F, GSAS207F
Prereq: None
CEAS218 "Other Chinas": Literature from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Sinophone Southeast Asia
How do we study literary and cultural products created in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and those created by Chinese-educated Tibetan, Uyghur, Manchurian, or Mongolian authors and artists? Are they Chinese? Or not? How might their places of production bring about literary and cultural subjectivities that are distinct from those from mainland and Han-dominated China (i.e., the conventional domain of Chinese humanities studies)? How do writers and artists deliberately record, or even create, their own unique and place-based senses of identity? How do they struggle with the ideas of exile, diaspora, colonization, decolonization, autonomy, assimilation, resistance--both in relation to China and within global geopolitics--while also striking out on their own to depict the joys and sorrows of human everydayness?
This discussion-heavy course introduces students to a representative set of 20th-and 21st-century literary and cultural texts from some of these locales under the umbrella concept of the Sinophone. As Shu-mei Shih defines it, Sinophone aims to describe "Sinitic-language cultures and communities on the margin of China and Chineseness" where these cultures and communities engage in their own place-based cultural productions. It alerts us to the heterogeneity in the "Chinese-speaking world" and the relations of power that effected such heterogeneity. Students will read literary texts alongside relevant theoretical and historical writings, and parts of the course may include film and other cultural products as objects of critical examination. The course will be conducted in English, and all reading materials will be in English translation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS219 K-Wave: Korean Popular Culture and Literature
This course explores the dynamic landscape of Korean popular narrative within the context of the thriving media and popular culture scene known as the Korean Wave or Hallyu. Through a comprehensive analysis of scholarly approaches, this course provides a broad understanding of the Korean Wave, while connecting the literary texts and scholarly works to their historical and sociocultural significance in shaping modern Korean popular culture and global narrative trends. We will also examine historical and theoretical approaches to Korean sociocultural issues about modernity, the formation of Korean popular culture, and class, economic, gender, sexuality, migration, and political relations. Additionally, students will engage with a diverse range of media including literature, films, broadcasting, webtoons, and online games, delving into their content and analyzing their impact. Readings for this course will be available in English or in English translation. No previous knowledge of Korean history, literature, or culture is required. There are no prerequisites for this course.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS220 Nature and the Human Realm in Chinese Literature
This course introduces students to a wide range of ways in which Chinese writers and poets define the ever-changing relationship between the human realm and nature in imaginative literature. Topics include Daoism and Yin-Yang; shamanism and prose poetry; martial arts and alchemy; the Peach Blossom Spring; travel and landscape literature; folk religions and magics; ghost stories and strange tales; rebellions and migrations, etc. All readings are in translation. No knowledge of Chinese is required.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS221 Introduction to Premodern Chinese Literature
This course is an introduction to premodern Chinese literature that focuses on the role Chinese literary texts have played in defining selfhood, creating self-image, and articulating the place of the individual in relation to community and state. The arrangement of the course is primarily chronological, from the first millennium BC to the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, though texts that cut across history are also juxtaposed to show differences and continuities from a larger perspective. The course contains canonical pieces of the Chinese literary tradition that address similar issues or respond to each other. Besides literary texts, painting, music, and material culture are also incorporated to help students visualize the tradition. Students are encouraged to think about the close relationship between Chinese literati's creation of self-image and political trauma they experienced during dynastic changes.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS222 China as Scientific Powerhouse
Science, technology, and medicine played an integral role in the China's transition to modernity and inspired dramatic economic, social, and political transformations. As scholars of modern China developed a keen interest in transnational histories and comparative methodologies, they have paid closer attention to the histories of science, technology, and medicine. This course introduces students to this emerging field of study. It examines broad philosophical questions that motivate the research in history of those areas. We will learn to explore science, technology, and medicine in China on "its own terms" by understanding how the unique political and social challenges of modern China shaped Chinese science.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST386, STS285
Prereq: None
CEAS223 Chinese Eco-Civilization: History, Experience, and Myths
The course traces the historical roots of the ideas of eco-civilization, a policy platform that appeared in the twenty-first century by examining how Chinese agrarian civilizations and their nomadic neighbors transformed the bio-physical environment over the course of 3,000 years of history.
We will draw on translations of Chinese literary texts including poetry, classical prose, and novels to explore the relationship between power and social inequities as we explore the everyday politics of agrarian civilizations through China's transformation from feudal ages to the modern period. How did Confucian, Legalist, Buddhist, and Daoist teachings alter the dynamics of production and consumption? To what extent did traditional Chinese philosophies promote the ethos of ecojustice? Did competing regimes/dynasties create a sustainable political and economic system? Did bureaucrats improve the well-being of the population and maintain the balance of the ecosystem? Or did they deplete natural resources to meet their short-term needs?
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST223, ENVS223, STS284
Prereq: None
CEAS224 Modern China: States, Transnations, Individuals, and Worlds
This course examines China's turbulent transition to modernity. It covers the Ming-Qing transition, Manchu conquest of central Eurasia, China's conflict and engagement with the West, birth of China's first republic, and the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and his successors.
The dramatic transformation of China spanning the late 19th century to the present day is the focus of this course. The Chinese people today continue to deal with the legacy of these reforms, wars, and revolutions, as China's leaders and people dealt with unprecedented challenges. The three central themes of this course are (1) the reconstitution of (a somewhat) unified China after decades of political upheaval, (2) China's vulnerabilities in the face of domestic troubles and threats from abroad, and (3) the challenges of maintaining a high-growth economy with scarce resources.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST224
Prereq: None
CEAS225 Introduction to Chinese Poetry
This course explores various styles of traditional and modern Chinese poetry from the archaic period to the 21st century, with an emphasis on the range of ways in which poetry has been implicated, to a degree unknown in the West, in the political, spiritual, and aesthetic movements in China over the last three millennia. Topics include "The Book of Songs," "Nineteen Ancient Poems," the "Music Bureau" ballads, Six Dynasties poetry, the great Tang masters, the Song lyrics, women poets, and religious poets. Although some Chinese characters will be introduced in the unit on calligraphy, no knowledge of Chinese is required; all readings will be in English translation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS228 Zen Buddhism Across East Asia: Teaching and Practice
In this course, we will examine Zen/Chan Buddhism in history and in its contemporary practice. We will trace how Zen Buddhism sprouted from Chinese religious traditions in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), flourished in the Song Dynasty (906-1279), and then spread to other East Asian countries such as Japan and Korea. Then, we will pay attention to the ways in which Zen Buddhism found its way to modern Western society, through figures such as D. T. Suzuki and Okakura Kakuzo since the 19th century.
Course readings consist of primary sources of Zen Buddhism, which are available in English translation. A wide range of texts will be read closely, from early manuscripts discovered in Dunhuang to contemporary works inspired by Zen Buddhism, supplemented by secondary scholarship. We also investigate how Zen Buddhism has been expressed in garden designing, poetry, tea ceremony, and as a way of life in contemporary Western society. A field trip to a Zen meditation center will be organized during the course.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-RELI
Identical With: RELI224
Prereq: None
CEAS229 Performing Indonesia
This course will examine the theater, dance, and puppetry of Indonesia in the context of its cultural significance in Indonesia and in the West. Students will read a variety of texts related to Indonesian history, myth, and religion. Students will also read books and essays by anthropologists Hildred Geertz, Clifford Geertz, and Margaret Mead to understand how the arts are integrated into the overall life of the island archipelago. Artifacts of physical culture will also be examined, including the palm-leaf manuscripts that are quoted in many performances; the paintings that depict the relationship between humans, nature, and the spirit world that are the subject of many plays; and the masks and puppets that often serve as a medium for contacting the invisible world of the gods and ancestors. Translations of Indonesian texts will be analyzed and adapted for performance. The direct and indirect influence of Indonesian performance and history on the West will be discussed by examining the work of theater artists such as Robert Wilson, Arianne Mnouchkine, Lee Breur, and Julie Taymour, who have all collaborated with Balinese performers.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-THEA
Identical With: THEA220, DANC220
Prereq: None
CEAS232 Introduction to Chinese Film
This course introduces contemporary Chinese cinema in both national and international senses. We will learn the basics of film history in the PRC, Taiwan, and Hong Kong through four major genres: family melodrama, martial arts, action, and musical. Our engagement with these selected films will provide insights into fundamental issues such as family, history, nationalism, transnationalism, identity, gender, and sexuality. The goal of this course is to demonstrate how Chinese cinema has developed in the PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and transnationally and to refine students' abilities to analyze and write about film critically.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-FILM
Prereq: None
CEAS233 Transnational China: Writing and Screening Chinese Immigration
Migration is a crucial issue for centuries, and people move around the world involuntarily or voluntarily due to political force, economy, technology, and globalization. Chinese immigration to the world has its long history, and the dispersion of Chinese populations has contributed to the formation of Chinese-speaking sites globally and brought about the construction of Sinophone culture in various geographical locales.
This course will introduce the discourse of the Sinophone, a linguistic-oriented term that defines cultural productions with Sinitic languages in Chinese-speaking sites around the world and its relation to Chinese immigration, transnationalism, and heterogeneity. The critical questions we will explore in this course include (1) What is the relationship between the Sinophone (roughly, Chinese language users) and China, Chineseness, Chinese diaspora, and overseas Chinese studies? (2) What is China in the lens of Chinese immigrants? (3) How do cultural producers represent Chinese immigrants' lived experiences? We will read novels/novellas and watch films from writers and filmmakers who have experienced diverse migratory trajectories to get a picture of how they represent Chinese immigrants' identity formation and negotiation with local societies, as well as their roots of origin/homeland. Through reading scholarship on Sinophone and primary texts, students will understand the relationship between physical migration and cultural production and become acquainted with various forms of place-based cultural productions in three Sinophone spheres, including the United States, Taiwan, and Malaysia.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS234 Modern Korea in Film and Fiction
How have writers and film directors responded to the rapid transformation of Korean society? In what ways have their works shaped the experience of Koreans and constructed Koreans' notion about the nation and the self? This course examines how Korean literature and film have acknowledged and represented the diverse political, social, and cultural changes that have occurred on the Korean Peninsula in the modern era. It also aims to build an understanding of the ways in which Korea has built the close historical, political, and cultural relationships with other East Asian countries.
Through selected literary and cinematic texts by prominent masters, students will investigate the critical moments of modern history that have deeply affected and altered social practices and the actual lives of twentieth-century Koreans. While observing the flow of change in Korean society, students will examine how gender, class, ethnicity, and generation profoundly impact one's sense of the nation and the self. The class consists of occasional in-class film screenings, lectures, student presentations, and discussions.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS236A Curatorial Workshop: Images of the Floating World
This course will provide students with practical training in the design and development of a gallery installation in the Davison Art Center (DAC). The theme for this semester is Japanese woodblock prints. We will carry out the many and diverse components involved in creating a gallery installation, from conception to execution, including concept development, catalog and label entries, accessibility, layout, and design. The course will culminate with an installation at the DAC. Images of the floating world, or ukiyo-e, refers to a genre of Japanese art that emerged in the 17th century to depict the pleasures of life of that period--beautiful women, famous kabuki actors, views of famous places, and erotic pictures, among other subject matter. In most cases, these are woodblock prints, images produced by craftsmen from woodcuts based on originals painted by artists. Because they could be produced quickly, cheaply, and in large numbers, woodblock prints were exceptionally well-suited for the representation of the latest fashions or politics. Ukiyo-e prints made their way to Europe in the 19th century and remain the most popular form of East Asian art in the West. The Davison Art Center has around 600 Japanese woodblock prints in its collection, ranging in date from the 17th to 20th centuries and including works from all the major artists of the Edo period (1615-1868).
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA263A
Prereq: None
CEAS237 Representations of Gender and Sexuality in China
This course explores the multifarious representations of men, women, and gender in literature, visual arts, philosophical texts, and historical narratives. It aims to provide an interdisciplinary reflection on conceptions of men, women, and gender: how they were created and transformed in history, how they reflect the power relations between men and women, and how they have further influenced the performance of gender in daily life.
Works discussed in this course include the Book of Songs, "Rhapsody on the Gaotang Shrine," "The Prose Poem of the Beautiful Woman," the Palace Style Poetry, "The Story of Yingying," The Peony Pavilion, Feng Menglong's collection of erotic poetry, "Sinking," Madame Mao and the Revolutionary Model plays, and Eat Drink Man Woman.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS238 Wartime Film Culture in the Japanese Empire
Just as in many other countries, cinema, within a short time of its emergence, became the most popular entertainment in modern Japan. Mindful of this, the Japanese government tried to turn the country's film industry into an arm of its propaganda machine to support its imperial program, especially the military component. This began with Japan's invasion of the Chinese continent in 1931 and lasted through the end of World War II in 1945. How did Japan's private film studios respond to such governmental efforts? How did wartime Japanese cinema manage to strike a balance between being entertainment and political texts? What are the characteristics of Imperial Japan's wartime film culture, and how are they different from the counterparts in other countries? Was the campaign to support war via movie productions in Japan successful, in terms of providing seamless propagandistic messages? What kind of legacy has the wartime film culture left in contemporary Japan and East Asia?
In order to answer these questions, this course explores film culture of Imperial Japan and its territories during the wartime era, spanning roughly from the early 1930s through 1945. We will watch wartime films, and at the same time examine the ways in which the film culture coexisted along with other forms of visual propaganda practice and political discourses. While probing how the films reflect the "virtues" of wartime conservatism, patriotism, perseverance, and self-control, this course will explore topics that include the propaganda culture of wartime Japan as a whole, Nazi propaganda and Japan, cultural films, monumental cinema, films featuring Japan-China or Japan-Taiwan romances, children-centered films, "kokumin eiga," films of volunteers and Japanese Spiritism, "Military Mothers" and gender, and the defeatist aesthetics and cracks in Imperial Japanese cinema. While we will for the most part watch and discuss films directed by the Japanese of mainland Japan, including such prominent directors as Mizoguchi Kenji and Kurosawa Akira, the films produced in the Japanese colonies of Korea, Taiwan, and Manchuria--whether independent productions or collaborative efforts--will also be examined. Film production in colonial Korea, in particular, was quite vibrant, relative to the cinematic output of Taiwan and Manchuria. We will observe how the films made in Japan's colonies joined the empire-wide filmic war-mobilization campaign, presenting their own justifications for war cooperation. Ultimately, this course will ask what kind of relationship Japanese cinema has had with the state and Japanese nationalism during the mid-century of Japan's tumultuous modern history.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: FILM231
Prereq: None
CEAS239 Gender and Genre in Korean Cinema
This course welcomes students who are interested in the world of Korean cinema, where we will dive deep into the dynamic intersections of gender and genre from the late 1950s to the present. Students will sharpen their analytical skills and gain a profound understanding of film while critically examining a selection of Korean films. Through engaging guided analysis and discussions, we will explore various perspectives, including auteurism, national cinema, cultural studies, and global genres, to enrich our cinematic experience. Along with these perspectives, we will challenge conventional perceptions of femininity and masculinity while questioning how the Korean nation-state and its ever-evolving sociopolitical landscape have impacted gender and sexuality in cinematic narratives. All films will have English subtitles, all readings will be available in English; no prior knowledge of Korean film, history, or culture required to embark on this exciting cinematic journey.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: WLIT230, FGSS230
Prereq: None
CEAS240 Gender and Power in Chinese Literature
This course explores the intersections of gender, power, and performance in Chinese society. Drawing on literary and historical sources, theories of gender and sexuality, and with reference to media forms such as theater and film, we assess the significance of gender as an analytical framework for studying Chinese literature, culture, and society. What power dynamics drive conceptions of gender and gender ideology in Chinese literature and history? And how do discussions around gender roles and sexuality change in the modern and contemporary periods? Course topics include: Chinese feminism; depictions of women in classical literature; gender roles, family, and marriage; conceptions of the body; constructing identities; women writers; the "new woman"; themes of cross-dressing; classical romance narratives; gender performance in Chinese theater; queer narratives; and more.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: WLIT229, FGSS247
Prereq: None
CEAS241 Visualizing Japanese-ness: Transnational Cinema in Modern Japan
This course is designed to interrogate evolving notions of transnationalism in Japanese cinema, from the prewar avant-garde to the postcolonial present. We will use the assigned films and supplementary readings as a means to explore concepts of Japanese nationalism and uniqueness (nihonjinron), colonial memory, hybridity, multiculturalism, neoliberalism, and creolization, among others. We will then use this theoretical foundation to analyze representations of Japanese minority groups (such as zainichi Koreans) to inquire into the possibility of obtaining a transnational or hybrid identity in the global era. How do these films "visualize" Japanese and/or transnational identity, and are these visions seen as compatible? In what ways and to what extent are these films engaged in a dialogue with theoretical concepts of postcoloniality and ethnicity?
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS242 Introduction to Buddhist Thought and Practice
This course will introduce significant aspects of Buddhist thought and practice, primarily as it manifested through the literature of India, South Asia, and East Asia. It begins with an overview of the historical Buddha's life and the development of early Buddhist ideas and practices. The course then introduces the Mahayana or Great Vehicle tradition that began to emerge around the first century BCE, as well as later forms of esoteric Buddhism known as Tantra. The course concludes with the development of modern Buddhism in Asia and its manifestation in the West. Readings consist mainly of primary Buddhist texts in translation, which are supplemented as necessary by works of secondary scholarship. The course broadly examines the topics of Buddhist philosophy and ethics, monastic and ascetic life, meditation and ritual practices, and the material culture of Buddhist societies, including artistic traditions, architecture, and book culture.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RELI
Identical With: RELI242, GSAS242
Prereq: None
CEAS243 Chinese Theater and Drama
This seminar examines Chinese theater and drama from their beginnings to the late 20th-century. We engage dramatic texts as well as performance practices; thus, the course draws on material from theater history, performance and acting conventions, and the literary history of drama. Readings and discussions span major genres of dramatic writing and their different modes of performance, including the dramatic genres of zaju, chuanqi, and modern/contemporary spoken drama, and performance styles of Beijing opera, Kun opera (Kunqu), and huaju (spoken drama). Play topics range from ghost stories to romances, historical/political dramas to comedy. We explore the legacies of specific actors, including the famous Mei Lanfang; consider experiments in modern Chinese drama; and compare Chinese and "Western" ideas of theater (such as those put forth by Stanislavsky and Brecht). To the greatest extent possible, we will engage materially and physically with Chinese theater and drama history through archive visits and performance workshops.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: THEA243, WLIT222
Prereq: None
CEAS244 Delicious Movement: Time Is Not Even, Space Is Not Empty
This course contemplates massive violence and bodily experiences of time and space through interdisciplinary discourse. Taught by NYC-based movement artist Eiko Otake, students will examine how being or becoming a mover reflects and alters each person's relationships with the environment, history, and other beings. Topics of study and discussion include war, atomic bomb literature, postwar Japan, and environmental violence such as the Fukushima nuclear explosions. A key concept of study will be metaphorical nakedness and how distance is malleable. Please note that homework load is heavy with weekly assignments and journals. Seeking collective learning, the course will culminate with a final project sharing. The class is fiercely non-competitive and non-technical. No previous dance training is necessary, but willingness to move with and in front of others is important. Please visit eikootake.org to learn about this instructor. Write to eikootake@gmail.com with questions.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: DANC244
Prereq: None
CEAS246 Eccentricity, Gender, and Occidentalism in Edo-Period Art (1615-1868)
The course will explore the history and artistic production of Japan's Edo period (1615-1868). This was a time of unprecedented peace, a time of social, economic, and political change that brought new modes and manners of visual expression and a sharpened focus on the individual artist. New trends in artistic identity emerged during this period, particularly those related to eccentricity, gender, and Sinophilia (love of Chinese culture). We will study the major artists and artistic movements of the Edo period, considering how these new trends found expression in the works of art produced during this time. Formal examination of the material and expressive qualities of works of art will be followed by a consideration of how other factors such as location, social background, education, and the religious faith of the artist are visible in the works they produced. The interplay between historical and artistic movements will be examined through discussion of issues such as materiality and medium, patronage and individuality, and traditionalism and poetic expression. Students will become familiar with the various media employed by Japanese artists, the techniques of painting and printing, and the sources and theories that inspired the innovative objects under investigation. More broadly, this course aims to teach students how to "read" Japanese art, how to look at a work of Japanese art and understand what it is they are seeing.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA276
Prereq: None
CEAS248 South Korean Cinema: Re/imagining Modern History on Screen
From its first productions during the colonial period to contemporary mainstream hits, South Korean cinema has been a contested sphere of the popular imagination regarding gender politics, modern Korean history, and political change. This course explores the films by the main directors of Korea to interrogate key problematic subjects in South Korean cinema, which include the discourse of modernity, the representation of historical and political trauma, the problems surrounding gender roles, and practices of film culture and industry. The film texts examined in this course include not only the breakthough masterpieces of prominent film auteurs but also popular genre films that enjoyed box-office success. Through these examples, students will examine how the most influential popular art form in South Korea has recognized, interpreted, and represented the Korean societal issues on screen.
This course also seeks to establish a balance between understanding South Korean cinema as both a reservoir of historical memory and as an example of evolving East Asian films and world cinema. Through engagement with methodological issues from film studies in each week's readings, including the question of archives, national cinema discourse, feminist film theory, auteurism, and genre studies, students will learn how to analyze Korean filmic texts not only as a way to understand the particularity of South Korean cinema and history but also as a frontier of cinematic language in the broader history of film. In addition, students in this class will be encouraged to perform the comparative studies with other East Asian cinema in their short papers or the final projects.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS251 Japanese Economy
This course will use modern macroeconomics and economic history of Japan to shed some light on important questions in macroeconomics. Students will read empirical macroeconomics research not only on the Japanese economy but also on the United States and other countries to develop a sense of empirical research in macroeconomics. The course will also emphasize the major developments of macroeconomic policy in Japan since the Meiji Restoration to appreciate the role of history in understanding contemporary macroeconomic policy debates.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-ECON
Identical With: ECON362
Prereq: ECON301 OR ECON302
CEAS252 Global Philosophy
Philosophy is not now, nor has it ever been, narrowly confined to one culture, tradition, or civilization. As European and then American power reached around the world in recent centuries, so too have Euro-American philosophical traditions acquired a global audience, but other philosophical traditions did not disappear. These other ways of approaching philosophy have been re-emerging or reconstituting themselves--sometimes drawing on and sometimes contesting assumptions from the Euro-American traditions--in what can loosely be called our post-colonial world. This course asks what "philosophy" means in these different contexts and explores how philosophy was and is done within various traditions. In addition, we probe and assess distinct approaches to making philosophy more global, which at the very least must mean more cognizant of the presence of multiple ways of doing philosophy.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-PHIL
Identical With: PHIL222
Prereq: None
CEAS253 Living a Good Life
For many philosophers, Eastern and Western, philosophy has been more than an effort to answer fundamental theoretical questions. It has been an activity aimed at changing one's orientation to the world and, thus, how one lives one's life. We will explore Chinese, Greco-Roman, and contemporary versions of the idea that philosophy should be seen as a way of living a good life. How does philosophical reasoning interact with lived practice? How do views about metaphysics or psychology lead to ethical commitments? Despite their differences, Confucians, Daoists, Aristotelians, and Stoics all agreed that philosophy should aim at making us better people. Can such an idea still get traction in today's world?
This course will typically have a large-group lecture each Monday, smaller breakout sections with the instructors on Wednesdays in which the texts and ideas will be discussed, supplemented by smaller weekly student-led dialogue sessions on Fridays. For details about the structure of the course and a syllabus of class meetings, along with the locations of plenary lecture sessions, breakout sessions, and dialogue sessions, please see this year's course website and past versions of the course at the following link: https://livingagoodlife.com.
Students who would like to explore the ancient Chinese and Greek texts on which the course draws are encouraged to enroll in either of two, optional 0.50-credit classes that are associated with our course: PHIL151 Living a Good Life: Chinese Lab; and PHIL152 Living a Good Life: Greek Lab. These courses will expose students with no prior background to the Classical Chinese and Greek languages. See their separate entries in WesMaps for more information.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-PHIL
Identical With: PHIL210, COL210
Prereq: None
CEAS254 Breaking the Waves: The Japanese and French New Wave Cinemas and Their Legacy
While the French and Japanese New Wave(s) existed as largely contemporaneous cinematic movements, rarely are they discussed together, instilling the impression of two parallel streams, never to converge or intersect. This course hopes to serve as an intervention into this perceived divide through close readings of these groundbreaking cinematic works and an examination of their revolutionary content in the interest of articulating shared philosophical concerns. In many cases, New Wave filmmakers worked as writers and critics before producing films themselves, a fact that speaks to the intensely theoretical nature of their cinema. This course will therefore examine critical writings published in the space of Cahiers du Cinema, Film Art, and other journals as a means of better understanding the thought process that underlies these films. How do these films figure as a response to that of the previous generation and how did they hope to revolutionize cinematic praxis? What was their relationship to political activism and the events of 1968? Finally, we will consider the legacy of these cinemas: What is the prevailing influence of the New Wave on Hollywood and global cinema? What aspects of the movement have been retained and what has been lost along the way?
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: RL&L254
Prereq: None
CEAS255 Irreducible Distance: Japan-Korea Relations through Literature and Visual Media
Despite physical proximity and shared cultural origins, the specter of imperialism and constant influence of economic competition has seemingly resigned Japan and South Korea as two nations that remain forever "close and yet so far." Beginning with the colonial period (1910--1945) and ending with the current day, this course examines works of literature and visual media from both the Japan and Korea sides that address issues of intercultural relations and communication. What position does Japan for Korea and Korea for Japan occupy in the cultural imagination and how has this image shifted since the end of the colonial period? What role does Japan have in the formation of the North Korean state and articulation of ideology? How do political developments and ongoing issues of war responsibility (e.g., comfort women) continue to dictate the state of Korea-Japan relations? This course will also examine the influence of peripheral spaces (such as Jeju Island) and marginalized groups (such as the Korean minority in Japan) have in mediating discourse between these nations. Finally, recent cinematic works such as Assassination (2015) and Spirits' Homecoming (2016) have witnessed a rekindled interest in the colonial period. We will thus discuss how these films constitute an effort to reexamine and reconstruct these historical events and how they view them as relevant to an understanding of the present day.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS256 Neo-Confucian Philosophy
This course presents critical discussion of issues central to Neo-Confucian (11th--19th centuries CE) philosophers that in many cases are still central in East Asian thought today. Topics will include the relation between knowledge and action, Neo-Confucian conceptions of idealism and materialism, and the connection between Neo-Confucian philosophy and spirituality. While our primary focus is on China, we will also look at distinctive Neo-Confucianism issues in Korea and Japan.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-PHIL
Identical With: PHIL259, RELI206
Prereq: None
CEAS257 Japanese Philosophy
This course traces the development of lines of thought from the Heian Period (794-1185) to the 21st century. Students will consider Japanese forms of Buddhism (including Zen) and Confucianism, as well as Japan's native tradition of Shinto. Students will also gain familiarity with the confluence of these traditions in the samurai (Bushido), and later incorporations of Western thought by the Kyoto School. The final section of the course, focused on Japanese aesthetics, invites students to engage in Japanese philosophy as a way of life.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-PHIL
Identical With: PHIL264
Prereq: None
CEAS259 C-Pop in the Shadow of a Rising China
Explore the emotional aspect of a rising China and understand the inner feelings of contemporary Chinese youth through C-pop. How did "red songs" from the Cultural Revolution become popular songs in the 21st century? How did an "extremely soft and feminine" voice threaten the Chinese Communist Party? Why do songs from the "jazz capital of the Orient" trigger nostalgia? How do underground rock and punk bands negotiate their existence? How is rap in China different from that of the US or anywhere else? How do Chinese artists deal with LGBTQ issues and ethnic minority issues in popular music? Why do TV variety shows matter? What future is there for China's burgeoning "internet songs"? Popular music in a rising China presents complex issues of state-sponsored popular culture intersecting with bottom-up popular taste and desire, the repressive collective "we" intersecting with the resilient individual "I" in artistic expressions, the imagined "ancient China" intersecting with contemporary sound and technology, and the intensifying nationalistic sentiment intersecting with China's expanding global ambition. This course offers students opportunities to explore aesthetic, political, and cultural meanings expressed in China's popular music from the 1980s to the present. Chinese language knowledge is not necessary.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: MUSC127
Prereq: None
CEAS261 Classical Chinese Philosophy
Topics in this critical examination of issues debated by the early Confucian, Daoist, and Mohist philosophers will include the nature of normative authority and value, the importance of ritual, and the relation between personal and social goods.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-PHIL
Identical With: PHIL205, RELI228
Prereq: None
CEAS262 Human Rights Across Cultures
Are human rights universal? Do cultural differences matter to judgments about human rights? We will look at the current international human rights institutional framework and at theoretical perspectives from Europe and America, China, and the Islamic world. We will look primarily at philosophical materials but will also pay some attention to the premises of international legal documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to the assumptions behind activist organizations such as Amnesty International.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-PHIL
Identical With: PHIL272
Prereq: None
CEAS263 China's Economic Transformation
China is a country that is both transitioning to a market-oriented economy and developing rapidly into a global economic power. As such, it has characteristics of both an emerging market economy and a developing country. China is large enough to create its own institutional infrastructure to support a third way between capitalism and socialism. This course examines in detail China's great economic transformation beginning in 1978 in what is often described as a "gradualist" transition to market economy. In the past three decades, the speed of China's development and its growth rates of GDP are without precedent in history. The course concludes by addressing the incompleteness of China's transition to a mature, developed market economy and by probing the issue of what is left to be done to create a harmonious society.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-ECON
Identical With: ECON263
Prereq: ECON110 OR ECON101
CEAS264 Modern Chinese Philosophy
We will critically examine Chinese philosophical discourse from the late 19th century to the present, including liberalism, Marxism, and New Confucianism. Topics will include interaction with the West, human rights, the roles of traditions and traditional values, and the modern relevance of the ideal of sagehood.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-PHIL
Identical With: PHIL263
Prereq: None
CEAS265 Japan Since 1868: Society and Culture in Modern Japanese History
This course examines the history of Japan from roughly 1800 to the present. With a broad-ranging observation covering politics, economy, society, culture, and foreign relations, we will look at a variety of historical events that the Japanese people experienced. Our goal is not only to understand what happened when, but also to be concerned with how people at different historical stages saw the world around them. Major historical events, trends, ideas, and people will constitute the vital part of the course; however, we will also inquire into everyday life of ordinary people, whose names do not remain in historical records. We will use a wide range of materials including written sources available in the English language, films, literature, and comics.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST207
Prereq: None
CEAS266 Modern Korean Women's Literature and Film
What are the salient issues addressed in Korean literature and film by female writers and directors? In what ways have Korean women intellectuals constructed their own identities in their literary and cinematic representations? How do female-authored works present women's problems in a light that differs from the predominant perspectives of their male counterparts? This course explores the female voice in novels, short stories, poetry, documentaries, and fiction films by Korean women from the 1910s to the present. Through selected works, we examine the struggles of early modern Korean feminists, women's lives in postwar society, and the female experience of displacement and belonging in contemporary Korea. In addition, the class occasionally questions how the Korean women's cinema and literature show the similarity with and/or difference from Chinese and Japanese counterparts in order to better contextualize the Korean cases within the East Asian and even broader world history and culture.
In this class, students will gain an understanding of the ways in which women come to a recognition of the problems they face and articulate these specific issues via their unique ways of representation. Through what are largely self-reflective narratives, students will explore how Korean women dealing with an oppressive political and cultural environment that had a variety of manifestations--such as colonialism, dictatorship, national division, and traditional patriarchy--strived to make heard and seen women's voice and vision and present their gendered experience as a critique of the male-centered society. The class consists of occasional film screenings, lectures, presentations, and discussions.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS267 Human Nature in Chinese Thought
This is a course on theories and practices regarding human nature in the history of Chinese traditions, such as Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism, Buddhism, and Neo-Confucianism. What does it mean to be a human? Do all humans have something in common? How should we conduct our lives with respect to those common characteristics? Thinkers from both Western and Eastern traditions have offered their own distinctive and thought-provoking answers to those questions.
In the West we are more familiar with the concept of "rational animal" which remains the classical understanding of human nature since the time of Plato and Aristotle. In the history of the Chinese tradition, however, very different approaches towards human nature were adopted, such as the concepts of sympathy, effortless action, no-self, and original enlightenment. Together they can offer us some new insights into the concept of human nature beyond just rationality.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-PHIL
Identical With: PHIL257
Prereq: None
CEAS268 Music and Modernity in China, Japan, and Korea
This course examines the relationships between music and modernity in China, Japan, and Korea and the interactions between the impact of Western music and nationalism and contemporary cultural identities. In particular, it explores the historical significance of the Meiji restoration on Japanese music tradition; the Japanese influence on Chinese school songs; the origins of contemporary music in China, Japan, and Korea; the adaptation and preservation of traditional music genres; and the rise of popular music and the music industry. We will focus on the cultural conflicts encountered by East Asian musicians and composers and their musical explorations and experiments in searching for national and individual identities in the processes of nation-building and modernization. The course aims to provide knowledge on East Asian music genres, insight on the issues of global/local cultural contacts, and a better understanding of music's central role in political and social movements in 20th-century East Asia.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: MUSC261
Prereq: None
CEAS269 Chinese Cities
More than half of China's population now resides in cities. Within the next few years, China plans to accelerate the rate of urbanization by building sprawling cities and relocating more people into urban areas.
This course explores the history of Chinese cities from the imperial to modern age. Cities were centers of commerce, intellectual activity, and, in the words of historian and political scientist David Strand, "storehouses of political technique, strategy, and sentiment open to anyone with the understanding and the will to inventory to exploit them." We will study how cities supported massive populations with limited resources, inspired new forms of social organization, and transformed the political and social order of China.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST117
Prereq: None
CEAS270 Confucian Ethics
Is human nature fundamentally good or fundamentally bad? How do we live a good life? Is there a universally correct priority in value conflicts? This course focuses on various ethical topics that are explored within the Confucian tradition. The course will combine lecture with discussion of primary and secondary sources, as well as group and individual presentations.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-PHIL
Identical With: PHIL266, RELI266
Prereq: None
CEAS271 Political Economy of Developing Countries
This course explores the political economy of development, with a special focus on poverty reduction. We discuss the meaning of development, compare Latin American to East Asian development strategies (focusing on Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan), examine poverty-reduction initiatives in individual countries (including Bangladesh, Chile, and Tanzania), and evaluate approaches to famine prevention and relief. Throughout the course, we pay close attention to the role of procedural democracy, gender relations, market forces, and public action in promoting or inhibiting development.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-GOVT
Identical With: GOVT271, LAST271
Prereq: None
CEAS273 Environmental Politics in East Asia
This is an upper-division course on the environmental politics of East Asia. It will focus on the major environmental issues of our time (pollution, conservation, energy, waste, environmental justice, etc.), and how East Asian countries are coping with them from both policy and politics perspectives. It will cover both transnational and international efforts, as well as national and local initiatives. The course will require that students "do" environmental politics as well as study environmental politics through a civic engagement component.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-GOVT
Identical With: GOVT273, ENVS273
Prereq: None
CEAS274 Pirates, Traders, and Colonial Settlers in Maritime East Asia
Why is Maritime East Asia so contentious? Why is it emerging as the next global flashpoint? This course examines the historical roots of political tensions in Maritime East Asia by exploring the history of Taiwan. As early as the sixteenth century, merchant-pirates who dominated coastal China and Japan recognized Taiwan's strategic importance. For centuries, Dutch, British, American, and imperial powers used Taiwan as a springboard to gain a foothold in the Asia-Pacific region. Migrants from coastal China, who settled in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, worked with these imperial powers to colonize new frontiers and displace the indigenous population. The territorial disputes, economic rivalry, and business empires that shape our global economic order arise from the centuries-long struggle for dominance over Maritime East Asia. These historical legacies served as the driving force for political change. Maritime East Asia and particularly Taiwan not only transformed into an economic powerhouse but also stand at the forefront in the struggle against authoritarianism.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST225
Prereq: None
CEAS278 Gender and Sexuality in Chinese Narrative
This course pays particular attention to gender relations and representations of sexuality in Chinese narrative. This course will require close readings of translated Chinese novels, short stories and movies. We will explore themes and motifs such as gender roles in Confucianism, female chastity, same sex desire, cross-dressing, masculinity and femininity, manhood and misogyny, eroticism, the cult of qing (passion), the New Woman, socialist and post-socialist desires, and writing bodies in the era of globalization. In addition to providing a platform for appreciation of the aesthetic beauty of Chinese narrative, the course encourages students to think about how representations of gender and sexuality incorporate or confront the mainstream moral values and social principles in China.
All readings are in English, no prior knowledge of Chinese language or culture is required. No text book requirement.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: FGSS288
Prereq: None
CEAS279 The Making of Modern Japan, 1500 to Present
In a global context, Japan emerged as a major player on the world stage after 1500. While in the midst of what later was called the Warring States Period (sometimes dated 1468--1600), Japanese traders and others maintained a broad network of commerce that included not only Korea and China but spread to Southeast Asia. Europeans first reached Japan in 1543, and it was soon obvious that no European state had the military might to colonize Japan. These are the roots from which a modern Japan appeared that in the 19th and early 20th centuries militarized and set upon an imperial project until defeated at war in 1945. Since then, Japan has emerged as a postmodern, highly technological, pop culture-oriented, and aging country. One theme that will be examined across the semester is environmental change over the long term.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST279
Prereq: None
CEAS280 Losers of World War II
This course explores the experiences of Germany and Japan in the postwar era. These countries faced the dual challenge of making political transitions to democratic government and recovering from the economic ruin of World War II. Japan and Germany both were occupied and rebuilt by the United States, and both were blamed for the devastation of the war. How did Japan and Germany respond to being cast as worldwide villains? How strong were the democracies that developed? This course explores these questions by comparing the culture, history, and institutions of these two countries.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-GOVT
Identical With: GOVT285, GRST267
Prereq: None
CEAS281 Modern Japanese Art
This class is an introduction to the history of Japanese art from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. In this chronological study we will encounter a range of forms--woodblock prints, painting, photography, sculpture, performance, and new media--and we will consider how Japanese artists responded to major societal, political, and economic changes over the last two centuries, including industrialization and modernization, major natural disasters, war, questions of cultural/national identity, and debates centering on what "tradition" meant to artistic practice in the modern and contemporary eras. Using visual analysis as our core skillset, this course will also rely on readings from secondary scholarship, as well as those by Japanese artists and art critics from each time period to help us better understand the historical contexts surrounding each artist, artwork, or art movement.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA281
Prereq: None
CEAS282 Place and Space in Literary Hangzhou
The city of Hangzhou is unique in the Chinese cultural imagination. As a former dynastic capital, Hangzhou is saturated with the intrigues of China's turbulent political and social history. But the city is also famous as a literary and cultural center--a prime leisure location along the Grand Canal; the site of the famous West Lake (just as famously compared to the mythically beautiful Xi Shi); and the setting for numerous poems, short stories, and dramas.
This seminar explores the literary culture situated in and around Hangzhou, considering topics such as food, folklore, and tourism, in addition to the city's depiction in poems, short stories, and dramas. Our aim is to explore how the Chinese cultural imagination about Hangzhou--part of a broader imagining of the southern region of Jiangnan ("South of the Long River")--is built through these many layers of texts, histories, and spaces. With Hangzhou as our geographical focus, we consider materials from a range of genres (poems, short stories, dramas, folktales, historical anecdotes) and time periods (Song to late Qing, with reference to the present as well). We consider how the image of Hangzhou is built up throughout time, and how the literary culture in and of Hangzhou is interwoven with the "real" experience of the city as a space/place.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: WLIT221
Prereq: None
CEAS284 Buddhist Art and Architecture
Visual imagery plays a central role in the Buddhist faith. As the religion developed and spread throughout Asia it took many forms. This class will first examine the appearance of the earliest aniconic traditions in ancient India, the development of the Buddha image, and early monastic centers. It will then trace the dissemination and transformation of Buddhist art as the religion moved north and then east through Central Asia, China, Korea, and Japan. In each region indigenous cultural practices and artistic traditions influenced Buddhist art. The class will address topics including the nature of the Buddha image, the expansion of the Buddhist pantheon, the function and reception of Buddhist images, the political uses of Buddhist art, and the importance of pilgrimage, both in the past and the present. Over the course of our study, we will consider four important movements in Buddhist practice: Mahayana, Pure Land, Esoteric, and Zen.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA284
Prereq: None
CEAS285 Pop Music Revolutionaries in Modern Japan
How do musicians, fans, industry stakeholders, and holders of political power use music to tell stories of everyday life? How does music become a means through which different visions for social, cultural, and political life are imagined and articulated, especially in moments of crisis and upheaval? This course introduces the work of influential musical figures in modern and contemporary Japan-from rock stars to folk singers, enka crooners to "idols"-and considers trends and topics in modern Japanese society through the lens of different forms of musical expression. By considering the work of these figures in their own historical contexts and in light of relevant scholarship, the course provides an opportunity to learn not only about songs and artists not often encountered outside of Japan, but also about the everyday historical, social, and political contexts within which they are embedded-and to which, often, they aim to speak back.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS290 Unearthing Early China: Art and Archaeology
This course introduces early China by examining major archaeological discoveries from prehistory through the second century CE. We will analyze the formal and material features of early Chinese artifacts from important archaeological excavations at sites such as Liangzhu, Anyang, Zhouyuan, and Mancheng. We will discuss the ways in which these artifacts and archaeological sites demonstrate early Chinese cosmological beliefs and ritual practices, especially notions related to heaven, afterlife, and the transition from ancestor worship to the pursuit of personal welfare in immortality. In addition, we will study the iconography and symbolism of objects found in these archaeological discoveries, which would serve as a foundation for the inception of visual arts in the later periods of Chinese history.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: ARCP290
Prereq: None
CEAS291 East Asian Archaeology
This course will introduce students to remarkable archaeological discoveries from East Asia, focusing on the archaeology of ancient China, but also including finds from Japan, Korea, and Mongolia. Beginning with "Peking Man" and Asia's earliest hominin inhabitants, we will explore the lives of Paleolithic hunter gatherers, the origins of domestic rice and pigs, the emergence of early villages and cities, the origins of writing, ancient ritual systems, long-distance interactions through land and maritime Silk Roads, and the archaeology of Chinese diaspora populations living in the 19th-century United States. We will also consider the current state of archaeological research in East Asia, focusing on site preservation, cultural heritage management, and the political roles of archaeology.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-ARCP
Identical With: ARCP291, ANTH291, ENVS291, IDEA291
Prereq: None
CEAS292 Global Film Melodrama
Often patronizingly dismissed as 'women's weepies', this course will examine the proliferation and transformation of melodrama film within various national, subnational, postcolonial, queer, and global contexts. The course will focus on the specific language ad conventions of melodrama. We will watch a wide range of films from India, China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iran, Egypt, Kenya, Spain, Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina, and Mexico among various global film contexts. Importantly, this course will ask, what are the stakes and implications of 'Global' in "Global Film Melodrama"? Moving away from an additive model that often present global film histories as an addendum to the "mainstream" cinemas, the focus will instead be on the emergence and significance of melodrama, and its specific idioms within transnational contexts. The course is open to all sophomores including non-film minors and non-film majors at Wesleyan. No previous experience in Film is required.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-FILM
Identical With: FILM290, FGSS290
Prereq: None
CEAS295 In Search of the Good Life in Premodern Japan
This course presents works of literature from premodern Japan to consider how people conceptualized and struggled to attain the good life. How did people's evocations of their ideals and desires reflect and engage with the historical reality? How did their social status (such as a Buddhist monk, samurai, or a lady-in-waiting), occupation, and gender contribute to their aspirations as well as struggles? What were their strategies for not just survival but for fulfillment in periods of warfare or disasters? Works will encompass diary literature, essays, fiction, and poems from a variety of authors across most of Japanese premodern history. Practices such as the tea ceremony and works of art will also be discussed to fill out the cultural context.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: WLIT226
Prereq: None
CEAS296 Japanese Politics
This introductory course in Japanese politics begins with an overview of the Japanese political system: its historical origins, institutional structures, and main actors. The course then moves on to explore specific policy areas such as industrial and financial policy, labor and social policy, and foreign policy. The course culminates in student research projects presented in an academic conference format of themed panels.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-GOVT
Identical With: GOVT296
Prereq: None
CEAS297 Chinese Politics
This introductory course in Chinese politics begins with an overview of the Chinese political system: its historical origins, institutional structures, and main actors. The course then moves on to explore specific policy areas such as industrial and financial policy, labor and social policy, and foreign policy. The course culminates in student research projects presented in an academic conference format of themed panels.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-GOVT
Identical With: GOVT297
Prereq: None
CEAS298 The Problem of Language in Chinese Philosophy
The class examines the criticisms of language in various schools of Chinese thought, exploring themes such as the ineffability of the absolute, the rejection of logic, naturalistic criticism of language as a vehicle of propositional knowledge, the "heart that precedes words" in apophatic practice, words as generator of duality, and more. Special emphasis will be given to the paradox of "saying the unsayable" in Daoism and Chan Buddhism, and on the various literary techniques by which the early thinkers have tried to avoid this conflict.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: PHIL297
Prereq: None
CEAS300 Storytelling in Japan's Empire (and its Aftermaths)
This course introduces different forms of storytelling in the Japanese Empire (1868-1945), and considers how the ghosts of Empire continue to haunt storytelling in the postwar era (1945 ~ ), as well. By considering texts (in English translation) produced by different individuals navigating everyday life in disparate locations across the Empire (including Korea, Taiwan, and the "home islands" of Japan itself), the course aims to move beyond historical timelines of "big events" and introduce the material realities and struggles, the complexities and contradictions of everyday life under Empire. Although it certainly takes up literary "texts" in the traditional sense of short stories, novels, and poetry, the course understands storytelling as occurring through a range of mediums, including film, music, and manga/graphic novels. By considering a disparate selection of literary, musical, and filmic stories from this period, it strives to attend to some of the contested and competing desires of individuals and entities seeking to navigate conditions of empire, colonialism, and war.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: WLIT333
Prereq: None
CEAS301 Modern China and the World Since 1945
This class will tackle key international problems in modern China's history over the past 70 years, beginning with the civil war; the Korean war; the Great Leap Forward; the Cultural Revolution; Deng Xiaoping's economic reform; Tiananmen 1989; Hong Kong's reversion to the PRC; democratization movements in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan; and cross-strait relations over the years. We will explore China's recent assertiveness on territorial issues, as well as the reaction over time to Chinese foreign policy by the United States, Russia, Japan, India, and other key players.
In addition to lectures and discussion, we will engage in some role-playing, with students taking various national and bureaucratic positions in mock negotiations and international exchanges. The goal will be to gain a better understanding both of Chinese options and the role of international players during key moments in modern China's history.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS302 Minority Voices in Japanese Film and Literature
Although there is no such thing as a "homogeneous nation" in the world, Japan often has been falsely regarded as a country of a singular ethnicity and civilization. Is Japan a nation-state of one race and unified culture? Who are the voices in Japan defying this kind of Japanese myth? How do they claim their rights and agencies as members of Japanese society? What peoples have been discriminated against by other communities, despite their indigenous Japanese roots? What kind of relationship do these internal "others" have with the Japanese state?
This course explores Japan's domestic minorities as depicted in Japanese literature and film, whose stories and images have been largely untold and invisible in the mainstream culture. Among the various minority groups in Japan, we will pay special attention to four groups: (1) the country's culturally defined minority group since the feudal era, burakumin (the untouchables); (2) the country's oldest and biggest foreign ethnic group, Koreans ("zainichi"), and other Asians; (3) the people of Japan's internal colony, Okinawa; and (4) Japan's medical outcasts, the victims of atomic disasters in Hiroshima and Fukushima. Students will deal with materials about the specified groups produced by prominent figures in Japanese literary and cinema history. At the same time, students will examine materials created by the otherized subjects themselves to probe how marginalized beings represent themselves in ways that are different from the dominant media portrayals.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: FILM232
Prereq: None
CEAS305 East Asian Culture Through Chinese Pop Music (CLAC .50)
Even after the meteoric rise of K-Pop in recent years, Mandarin Chinese Language pop music, also known as Mandopop, remains a highly popular musical genre that influences East Asian popular culture. This course introduces students to the literary history and cultural forces that shaped Chinese popular music. The songs featured in the syllabus serve as a soundtrack to the "Introduction to History: Foundations of East Asian Cultures," as the themes largely mirror the contents of the parent course.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: CHIN305, CGST253
Prereq: CHIN205
CEAS306 Cinema and Moviegoing in American Chinatowns: Digital Tools and Storytelling
In the latter decades of the twentieth century, movie theaters dedicated to the screening of Chinese-language cinema dotted Chinatowns and Chinese ethnoburbs across the United States. What historical and economic forces explain the development of these unique exhibition sites, and how can we understand their social and cultural impacts? This seminar explores the production, distribution, and exhibition of Chinese-language films for overseas audiences and the moviegoing cultures that emerged around cinemas in Chinatowns and Chinese ethnoburbs. Units will explore Chinese immigration to North America, the establishment of Chinatowns, and early cinema spaces; Chinese immigrant and American-born Chinese filmmaking pioneers, the growth of "Chinese Hollywood," and challenges to Hollywood's dominant representations of Chinese characters and communities; the significance of diaspora audiences for Hong Kong movie studios and the creation of affiliated film distribution chains in the US; the expansion of Chinese-language cinemas in the 1960s and 1970s; the Mandarin and Cantonese films seen by overseas audiences and their range of appeals; and the social and cultural functions served by Chinese-language movie theaters. Students will learn qualitative and quantitative digital tools for film history research and use them to analyze original data sets, visualize research results, and create interactive GIS maps, storymaps, digital timelines, databases, web pages, oral histories, and other digital work related to cinema and moviegoing in American Chinatowns.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: FILM316, WLIT324
Prereq: None
CEAS308 Comparative Urban Policy
Cities are home to more than half of the world's population, generate more than 80% of world GDP, and are responsible for 75% of global CO2 emissions. Once viewed as minor political players with parochial concerns, they are now--individually and collectively--major players on the global stage. This course will examine how cities are coping with the major policy issues governing our lives--from waste management and public safety to energy and housing policy. We will be examining how policies differ between big cities and small cities, what cities in the global north are learning from the cities in the global south, and how cities are bypassing toxic partisan politics in their nations' capitals to form global networks promoting positive change. The class will involve local field trips and participant observation to see how some of these urban issues are playing out in the city of Middletown.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-GOVT
Identical With: GOVT308, ENVS308, IDEA308
Prereq: None
CEAS309 Scoundrels, Sinners, and Saints: Approaches to Buddhist Life Writing
This seminar will examine a variety of religious biographies and autobiographies in order to evaluate the significance of life writing in the Buddhist traditions of Asia. Materials will cover a broad range of historical periods, from early medieval to modern, and geographic regions, including South Asia, East Asia, the Himalayas, and Tibet. Topics include the structure, function, style, production, and reception of biographies and autobiographies, as well as more thematic questions of religious transmission, soteriology and praxis, formations of self-identity, gender, and the relationships of biographical literature to art and pilgrimage. Readings include primary Buddhist texts in translation supplemented by secondary scholarship on hagiography and sainthood, literary theory, narrative constructions of the self, and Buddhist history.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-RELI
Identical With: RELI309, GSAS309
Prereq: None
CEAS310 CEAS Senior Seminar
This CEAS senior seminar is limited to CEAS majors. It is intended to be the other half of their proseminar experience, allowing majors to reconnect with their CEAS cohort, reflect on how their study abroad experience has influenced their understanding of East Asia, and facilitate the process of planning their capstone projects.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS311 The History of the Samurai
This course examines the history of Japanese warriors, known among other things as samurai and bushi, from their origins in ancient Japan to the dismantling of the samurai class after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Through a combination of primary and secondary sources, we will trace the development of warrior power and identity, the rise of warrior power in medieval Japan, the domestication and bureaucratization of warriors during the Edo Period (1600--1868), and warrior discontent with socioeconomic change as one of the driving forces behind the Meiji Restoration. Other themes include the relationship between warrior government and adjudication, the use of Buddhism for legitimation, and male-male intimacy and sexual relations.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST
Identical With: HIST311
Prereq: None
CEAS320 Literature and Media in China: From Inscriptions to Print Culture to New Media
What is the relationship between literary texts and "books"? How did people read before the advent of print, and in what forms/contexts did this reading take place? How does the format of a text shape the "message" that text conveys? How have new forms of media, such as digital technologies and the internet, changed how literature is understood and consumed? And how did all of these questions play out in the history of Chinese literature, specifically?
This course takes these questions as a starting point to examine the relationship between Chinese literary writing and the media forms in which this writing has circulated over time. The course is divided into three chronological units, based around the following core topics: (I) the material cultures of writing and reading in premodern China; (II) the advent of print and early modern Chinese textual cultures; and (III) forms of new media in modern Chinese literature. We begin each unit by studying some key methodological approaches to Chinese literature and its media forms. We then take up specific texts, examples, and case studies that explore the range of Chinese literary media. For the purposes of this course, the terms "literature," "media," and "text" are all broadly defined. Indeed, a primary goal of this course is to work toward a concept of Chinese literature that takes issues of media, such as materiality, circulation, reading habits, and the process of writing into account.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS325 Challenges to Democracy in East Asia
This upper-level seminar course examines the contemporary challenges to democracy in East Asia. The main questions we will address through the course readings and class discussions are: Is there a crisis of East Asian democracy? What are the challenges to democracy in East Asia? Are these challenges unique to East Asian democracies?
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-CEAS
Identical With: GOVT305
Prereq: None
CEAS327 Progressive Confucianism and Its Critics
Contemporary "Confucianism" designates a diverse set of philosophical, social, political, and religious approaches that are rooted in traditional East Asia and are playing significant--and increasing--roles in the modern world. "Progressive Confucianism" designates a subset of these approaches, emphasizing the ways that the Confucian tradition has developed throughout the centuries and arguing both that modern Confucianism must continue to develop, and that a properly developed Confucianism has much to contribute to contemporary philosophy and to modern societies. This seminar will explore the background out of which progressive Confucianism has emerged; its distinctive approach and key contributions to Confucianism and to global philosophy more generally; and central criticisms that it has faced, with sources ranging from more conservative (or even fundamentalist) Confucians to liberals and progressives.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-PHIL
Identical With: PHIL327
Prereq: None
CEAS334 Native Matters: Materiality in Indigenous Literatures Across the Pacific
This seminar contemplates the function and representation of materiality in contemporary indigenous literatures. It highlights the centrality of embodied practices in indigenous cultural lives. The primary texts for the course will be literary texts (novels, short stories, essays, and poems) from different indigenous communities, including from North America, East Asia, Austrasia, and Oceania. We may also deal with non-textual materials such as artifacts, maps, clothes, video games, etc. Readings will also include theoretical or philosophical works from indigenous and non-indigenous thinkers on the subject of materials and materiality.
The course will thematize materiality in two ways: the first is to understand materiality as a way for indigenous authors to represent or construct various understandings of indigeneity, either in traditional lifeways, modern indigenous realities, or indigenous futurisms, both within and between specific indigenous communities. The second is to engage with thing theory and materiality as a method of literary analysis.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CHUM
Identical With: CHUM334, WLIT325
Prereq: None
CEAS340 Reading Theories
In this survey of theories that have shaped the reading of literature and the analysis of culture, emphasis is on key concepts--language, identity, subjectivity, gender, power, and knowledge--and on key figures and schools such as Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Saussure, Barthes, Gramsci, Benjamin, Althusser, Foucault, Lacan, Deleuze, Jameson, Berlant, Moten, postmodernism, and U.S. feminism.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ENGL
Identical With: COL339, CLST393, RL&L290, GRST231, RUSS340, RULE340, REES340, ENGL295
Prereq: None
CEAS343 Tibetan Religion
This course serves as an introduction to major themes of Buddhist thought and practice within the cultural and historical framework of Tibet and the wider Himalayan world. In doing so, it examines various approaches to the study of religion and questions traditional definitions of categories such as "religion" and "Buddhism" themselves. Beginning with a close study of Patrul Rinpoche's classic 19th-century guide to Tibetan Buddhism, the early part of the course focuses on the doctrinal foundations of the tradition. This is followed by a historical and more critical examination of Tibetan religious history, proceeding from Buddhism's Indian antecedents and its initial arrival in Tibet during the seventh century through the present day. The course will explore a wide range of Tibetan religious cultures and practices including Buddhist ethics, systems of monastic and ascetic life, ritual activities, sacred geography and pilgrimage, lay religion, as well as the status of Tibetan Buddhism under Chinese occupation and in the West. It will also examine the lesser-known communities of Tibetan Muslims and Christians inside Tibet and in exile. The majority of readings will consist of primary texts in translation, and will concentrate on Tibet's rich narrative literary tradition. These will be supplemented by secondary literature on the study of religion and Tibetan Buddhism.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-RELI
Identical With: RELI229, WLIT273, GSAS229
Prereq: None
CEAS346 Contemporary East Asian Cinema
This is a seminar on comparative narrative and stylistic analysis that focuses on contemporary films from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, South Korea, and Japan, regions that have produced some of the most exciting commercial and art cinema in the last thirty years. We will begin by examining the basic narrative and stylistic principles at work in the films, then broaden the scope of our inquiry to compare the aesthetics of individual directors. Our goals are to analyze the narrative and stylistic tendencies of filmmakers while considering their work in a historical, cultural, and industrial context, and to develop our film analysis skills via formal comparison. Films from Bong Joon-ho, Fei Mu, Hong Sang-soo, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Kitano Takeshi, Kore-eda Hirokazu, Jia Zhangke, Jeong Jae-eun, Kon Satoshi, Lee Chang-dong, Mizoguchi Kenji, Ozu Yasujiro, Suo Masayuki, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Johnnie To, Tsai Ming-liang, Tsui Hark, Wai Ka-fai, Wang Xiaoshuai, Wong Kar-wai, Yim Soon-rye, Yoon Ga-eun, Yuen Kuei, and others will be featured.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-FILM
Identical With: FILM346, WLIT326
Prereq: FILM304 OR FILM307
CEAS355 Between Asia and Asian America
In this seminar, we will critically examine the relationship between East Asia and Asian America, and explore the disjunction and connection between the two as geopolitical entities, historical concepts, academic fields, and sites of cultural expressions and political identity. Inquiring into key issues such as colonization, diaspora, race and ethnicity, Pacific and the transpacific, etc., this seminar seeks productive engagement between the disciplines without erasing their differences.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: AMST355
Prereq: None
CEAS362 Sumi-e Painting II
Sumi-e Painting II is an advanced class for which Introduction to Sumi-e Painting (ARST 260) is a prerequisite. In this course, foundation techniques will be expanded upon. We will re-examine traditional techniques and composition, and there will be exploration of new contemporary techniques. There will also be experimentation with tools beyond the brush. This course will introduce a concept based approach to narrative and content. Students will be encouraged to develop a personal style and method.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARST362
Prereq: ARST260
CEAS363 Microfoundations of Growth in China
The rise of China is one of the most remarkable, if not miraculous, economic events in recent history. The course seeks to present a comprehensive overview of the transition challenges China faces as it continues to move from a centrally planned economy to adopting a greater reliance on market-based mechanisms. By reviewing the microeconomic literature on China's recent economic and institutional transformation, the class hopes to provide a general analytical framework for understanding the economic implications of the process.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-ECON
Identical With: ECON363
Prereq: None
CEAS372 Hong Kong Cinema
This course offers an introduction to the dynamic history of Hong Kong cinema from 1960 to the present day. The course will acquaint students with Hong Kong's major films, genres, directors, and industrial trends; explore the factors that enabled the Hong Kong film industry to become a regional and global powerhouse; and consider the reasons behind the contraction of the industry since the mid-1990s and the outlook for Hong Kong cinema's future. Screenings will feature the films of Fruit Chan, Jackie Chan, Peter Chan, Chang Cheh, Mabel Cheung, Tony Ching Siu-tung, Chor Yuen, Stephen Chow, King Hu, Ann Hui, Michael Hui, Stanley Kwan, Andrew Lau & Alan Mak, Li Han-hsiang, Lo Wei, Johnnie To, Cecille Tong, Tsui Hark, Wang Tian-lin, Wong Kar-wai, John Woo, Corey Yeun Kwai, Toe Yuen Kin-to, and others. This class includes a mandatory 10-day trip to Hong Kong over Spring Break (March 10-21).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-FILM
Identical With: FILM372, WLIT327
Prereq: None
CEAS379 Visionary Journeys through Sacred Landscapes: Japanese Art of Pilgrimage
This course examines the ways in which religious paintings were used and viewed in medieval Japan. Emphasis will be laid on images of sacred landscapes and the visionary journeys they inspired. Though primarily conceived as fundraising tools and advertisements aimed at inspiring viewers to undertake a physical journey to the illustrated site, these images became sacred in their own right and were approached by worshipers as one would approach the enshrined deity of the represented site. They also allowed spiritual travel through the images, providing virtual pilgrims with the karmic benefits of actual pilgrimage without the hardships of travel.
Each week we will immerse ourselves in a sacred site, reading about its history, deities, religious practices, and unique benefits. We will then look at how these were given visual form and the artistic language developed to endow these visual representations with the power to inspire and move contemporary audiences.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA379, MDST378
Prereq: None
CEAS381 Relic and Image: The Archaeology and Social History of Indian Buddhism
This course investigates the social history and material culture of Indian Buddhism from the fifth century BCE through the period of the Kushan empire (first to third century CE). The course begins with the examination of the basic teachings of Buddhism as presented in canonical texts, then turns to consideration of the organization and functioning of the early Buddhist community, or sangha. The focus then shifts to the popular practice of Buddhism in early India and the varied forms of interaction between lay and monastic populations. Although canonical texts will be examined, primary emphasis in this segment of the course is given to the archaeology and material culture of Buddhist sites and their associated historical inscriptions. Specific topics to be covered include the cult of the Buddha's relics, the rise and spread of image worship, and the Buddhist appropriation and reinterpretation of folk religious practices. Key archaeological sites to be studied include the monastic complex at Sanchi, the pilgrimage center at Bodh Gaya (site of the Buddha's enlightenment), the city of Taxila (capital of the Indo-Greek kings and a major educational center), and the rock-cut cave monasteries along the trade routes of western India.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARHA381, ARCP380, RELI375, GSAS381, ARHA381, ARCP380, RELI375
Prereq: None
CEAS385 Legacies of Authoritarian Politics
This course explores the challenges and legacies faced by new democracies due to their authoritarian pasts. To examine legacies of authoritarian politics, we will first study the key features of authoritarian vs. democratic states. The second part will look at "life after dictatorship" including authoritarian successor parties, political participation, civic engagement, and policing in the post-authoritarian era.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-CEAS
Identical With: GOVT391
Prereq: None
CEAS388 Global Film Auteurs
This course offers a comparative introduction to film auteurs from around the world spanning the 1930s to the present day. Our aim is threefold: to analyze the narrative and stylistic tendencies of each filmmaker while considering their work in a historical and industrial context; to develop our film analysis skills via formal comparison; and to consider the formation, redefinition, and influence of film canons. Emphasis will be placed on describing and analyzing the functions of narrative and stylistic elements and their effects on the viewing experience. Each week will include two film screenings, a lecture, and a discussion. Screenings will include films directed by Andrea Arnold, Julie Dash, Fernando Eimbcke, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Akira Kurosawa, Jafar Panahi, Satyajit Ray, Ousmane Sembène, Céline Sciamma, Wong Kar-wai, Agnès Varda, Yim Soon-rye, and Zhang Yimou, among others.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-FILM
Identical With: FILM388, WLIT301
Prereq: None
CEAS390 Politics and Society in Japanese Women's Writing
How have some of modern Japan's most celebrated and insightful authors responded to key events and social conditions in contemporary Japan? What sorts of perspectives have these authors brought to issues of industrial pollution, or to youth crime and social change under capitalism, or to ongoing crises in Okinawa and Fukushima? This course seeks to hear the voices of these authors--and the social actors with whom they engage--by grappling with key modern Japanese literary texts in English translation.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: FGSS390, WLIT322
Prereq: None
CEAS395 A Wesleyan Student's Guide to Fascism: The Case of Modern Japan
"Fascism" is a term that is frequently encountered in social and political discourse. But what does this term actually mean? How can we conceive productively of different fascisms across different historical moments and (geo)political contexts--including our own? This course will consider fascism in modern Japan, and address the economic, (geo)political, social, and cultural circumstances that incited what we will call "fascist desire" in Japan's imperial moment and beyond. But while the specific experiences and characteristics of historical fascisms are informed by the unique contexts within which they unfold, including Japan's, fascism as phenomenon can never be reduced to national or cultural particularities, or confined to isolated historical moments. As one possible reaction to the experiences of modernity, that is, the specter of fascism is always with us, everywhere. By engaging with primary and secondary texts--scholarship, music, literature, film--that variously analyzed, challenged, bolstered, and critiqued fascism in the context of modern Japan, students will learn to recognize the specter of fascism in their own lived, everyday contexts, and grow in their ability to confront and counter the conditions and desires that help nourish it.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: WLIT395
Prereq: None
CEAS397 Cinema and City in Asia
This course will look at the representation of the city in Asian cinema. It will explore links between urban and cinematic space across a range of thematic, historical, and cultural concerns. We will watch a wide range of films from China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Philippines, and Singapore--and learn to critically examine the ways in which cinema becomes an innovative and powerful archive of urban life as it engages with the events and experiences that shape the cultural, social, and political realities of the past, present, and future in Asia.
The course is open to all sophomores including non-film minors and non-film majors at Wesleyan. No previous experience in Film is required. Among other assignments like videographic criticism, students will also have an opportunity to make short city films using their phone-cameras and readily available editing software as an option for their final class projects.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-FILM
Identical With: FILM397
Prereq: None
CEAS401 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CEAS402 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CEAS403 Department/Program Project or Essay
Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
CEAS404 Department/Program Project or Essay
Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
CEAS405 Curatorial Practice and Exhibition Creation
This course in curatorial studies culminates in the curation of an exhibition to be featured in the Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS) Gallery the following semester. Through weekly or biweekly seminars, students will be introduced to curatorial thinking and strategies to develop the academic and practical skills in this practice. Students will learn, consider, and critique the different approaches to the display and interpretation of objects (how they are telling a story and why). Professional experience in the visual arts field will be gained through the planning, research, and realization of a project in the gallery. The course will be co-advised by the Associate Director of Visual Arts, the Exhibitions Manager, and a relevant member of the CEAS faculty, who will consult on the exhibition. The application will be selected by the chair of CEAS who will select one student or group (consisting of at most two students) whose previous experience, coursework, interests, and vision are most suitable. The approach can vary, but it must have an East Asian component. This seminar is an opportunity for students to work with Wesleyan arts professionals and faculty to curate an exhibition in this space. Artists may apply to curate their own work, or a student can curate the work of colleagues. The CEAS Art and Archival Collection (an educational resource collection that includes works of art in various media mostly relating to China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) could also be a resource from which to curate an exhibition, which would involve working with the Archeology Collections Manager. Other possibilities include historical explorations of a given topic or didactic approaches that dovetail with the CEAS Outreach program.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS406 Senior Thesis Seminar
This course will guide and support senior thesis writers in CEAS (College of East Asian Studies) to draft, revise, and complete their thesis projects. This course supplements students' one-on-one tutorials with their thesis advisors by offering a dedicated space to develop and discuss their projects in a supportive environment of peers. Over the course of the semester, students will utilize library resources, conduct empirical research, revise drafts of existing work, reflect on their own research and writing processes, and share their findings with classmates. Course materials will be drawn primarily from students' own thesis work.
Course topics include sessions on assessing sources, making strong arguments, formatting and bibliographies, understanding the "state of the field," writing and revising drafts, and sharing research findings. There will be numerous opportunities for giving and receiving feedback on work in progress.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CEAS407 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)
Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
CEAS408 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)
Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
CEAS409 Senior Thesis Tutorial
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CEAS410 Senior Thesis Tutorial
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CEAS411 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CEAS412 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CEAS413 Korean Drumming and Creative Music Ensemble
This course is an experiential, hands-on percussion ensemble with the predominant instrument in Korean music, the two-headed janggo drum. Students will learn to play a range of percussion instruments including janggo, barrel drum (buk), hand gong (kwenggari), and suspended gong (jing).
Through the janggo, drumming students gain first-hand experience with the role music plays in meditation and the benefits it offers to develop a calm, focused group experience. In the end they integrate their focused mind, physical body energy, and breathing through a stream of repetitive rhythmic cycles.
The students will be introduced to traditional folk and court styles of janggu drumming. The ensemble plays pieces derived from tradition and new ideas, and creates new works exploring imaginative sounds on their instruments. If there is an opportunity during the semester, the students will have a creative collaboration with a dancer(s) or musician(s) from other cultures. The ensemble will experience a deep respect for the diverse cultural backgrounds of the students developed from the efforts of teamwork and creating music together through Korean drumming. The semester will end with a live performance for the public.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: MUSC413
Prereq: None
CEAS414 Korean Drumming and Creative Music Ensemble Advanced
This class offers more advanced techniques for those students who have taken the beginner course or who have some basic experiences in Korean drumming or who have long-term drumming experiences of any other cultures including Western drum set. Attendance and additional practice time are mandatory. In comparison to the beginner class, the advanced class will play rapid, vigorous, and seamless rhythmic patterns on janggu, buk, and kwenggari. Students are expected to be creative in utilizing materials given during the semester.
Each student will focus on a lengthy solo work on any of these instruments, as well as ensemble playing. Students will explore both traditional and new emerging styles of Korean drumming. In the end, they will integrate their solos in the ensemble piece and create a new piece. The ensemble will experience a deeper level of drumming from contributing solo work to the ensemble and the efforts of teamwork. They will learn about group activity in music-making through sharing ideas and assisting each other. The semester will end with a live performance(s) for the public.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: MUSC414
Prereq: MUSC413
CEAS416 Beginning Taiko--Japanese Drumming Ensemble
This course introduces students to Japanese taiko drumming. The overarching goal of this class is to gain a broad understanding of Japanese culture by studying the theory, performance practices, and history of various genres of classical, folk, and contemporary music traditions. Students will gain a better understanding of the spirit behind the matsuri (festival) and Japanese performance arts through learning basic taiko technique and one or two pieces on the Japanese taiko drum. Students should wear clothes appropriate for demanding physical activity (i.e., stretching, squatting, various large arm movements). Students with a musical background might find MUSC 417 Intermediate Taiko to be a suitable alternative, as it covers the same theoretical and historical content but at an accelerated pace and includes additional repertoire.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: MUSC416
Prereq: None
CEAS418 Taiko II: Japanese Drumming Ensemble
This is course is for students who have taken Beginning Taiko. Acceptance to this class is at the discretion of the instructor. Students will learn more advanced techniques in taiko drumming by learning pieces from the Matsuri and kumi daiko performance repertoires.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: MUSC418
Prereq: None
CEAS419 Student Forum
Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
CEAS420 Student Forum
Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
CEAS423 Advanced Research Seminar, Undergraduate
Advanced research tutorial; project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CEAS424 Advanced Research Seminar, Undergraduate
Advanced research tutorial; project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CEAS428 Chinese Music Ensemble
The Wesleyan Chinese Music Ensemble is a performance group dedicated to exploring the modern Chinese ensemble and a variety of Chinese music styles. It is made up of a number of traditional Chinese instruments, including plucked lutes and zithers, hammered dulcimer, bowered fiddles, bamboo and reed flutes, and percussion. The course is designed to be hands-on and experiential, encouraging students to explore the basic ideas of Chinese music and culture through weekly rehearsals, practices, and performances.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: MUSC428
Prereq: None
CEAS460 Introduction to Sumi-e Painting
We will learn basic technique and composition of traditional Japanese sumi-e painting. Sumi-e is a style of black-and-white calligraphic ink painting that originated in China and was introduced into Japan by Zen monks around 1333. We will concentrate on the four basic compositions of sumi-e: bamboo, chrysanthemum, orchid, and plum blossom. We will also study the works of the more famous schools, such as Kano. Students will create a portfolio of class exercises and their own creative pieces.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARST260
Prereq: None
CEAS461 Alternative Printmaking: Beginning Japanese Woodblock Technique
Students are taught traditional Japanese techniques for conceptualizing a design in terms of woodcut, carving the blocks, and printing them, first in trial proofs and editions. After understanding how both of these methods were originally used and then seeing how contemporary artists have adapted them to their own purposes, both for themselves and in collaboration with printers, students will use them to fulfill their own artistic vision. Considerable use is made of the Davison Art Center collection of traditional and contemporary Japanese prints as well as many European and American woodcuts.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-ART
Identical With: ARST261
Prereq: ARST131
CEAS467 Independent Study, Undergraduate
Credit may be earned for an independent study during a summer or authorized leave of absence provided that (1) plans have been approved in advance, and (2) all specified requirements have been satisfied.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None
CEAS469 Education in the Field, Undergraduate
Students must consult with the department and class dean in advance of undertaking education in the field for approval of the nature of the responsibilities and method of evaluation.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None
CEAS491 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial
The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CEAS492 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial
The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Chinese
CHIN101 Chinese Character Writing
This course is the lab course for Elementary Chinese I (CHIN 103) and focuses on the writing of Chinese characters. It is not a course in Chinese calligraphy but in basic writing. Strict stroke order will be introduced. About 600 Chinese characters will be covered. This is required for students who will be taking CHIN 103.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CHIN102 Chinese Character Writing
This course supplements Elementary Chinese I (CHIN103) and focuses on the writing of Chinese characters. It is not a course in Chinese calligraphy but in basic writing. Strict stroke order will be introduced. About 600 Chinese characters will be covered.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CHIN103 Elementary Chinese I
Elementary Chinese is an introduction to modern Chinese (Mandarin), both spoken and written. This course is designed for beginners and students who have some Chinese learning experience and would like to consolidate their foundation in Chinese. Students with significant experience speaking Chinese (any dialect) at home should enroll in CHIN105 instead of CHIN103. Students should enroll in a continuation of the course in the Spring or trailing semester to receive the full 3 course credits. Those students who do not enroll in the Spring semester will be given 1.5 credits and the grade earned at the conclusion of the Fall or initial course sequence semester. Please contact the instructor with any questions.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CHIN104 Elementary Chinese II
Continuation of CHIN103, an introduction to modern Chinese, both spoken and written.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: CHIN103
CHIN105 Elementary Chinese for Heritage Learners
This course is for students who have family backgrounds in Chinese language. It is appropriate for students who are already familiar with basic speaking and have excellent listening comprehension of any dialect of Chinese but cannot read or write. The course focuses on teaching students how to read and write Chinese characters. After this course, most students should be able to continue in second-semester Intermediate Chinese II (CHIN206) or Third-Year Chinese (CHIN218).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CHIN151 Living a Good Life: Chinese Lab (CLAC.50)
This optional "lab" class is intended for students (1) who have taken or are currently taking PHIL 210: Living a Good Life; and (2) who have little or no exposure to classical Chinese. Each weekly session will introduce students to aspects of the classical Chinese language--the written language of pre-20th-century China. Students will be able to read (in Chinese) and discuss (in English) key passages from the Confucian classics on which the Living a Good Life courses is partly based. No previous knowledge of Chinese (classical or modern) is necessary.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: SBS-PHIL
Identical With: PHIL151, CGST224
Prereq: None
CHIN205 Intermediate Chinese I
This course continues an intense and engaging level of practice in listening, speaking, reading, and writing Chinese from CHIN103 and 104. We will conduct classes according to an interactive approach: between the reproductive and the performative, between role-playing and creative participation, and between oral sessions and written texts. Emphasis will be placed increasingly on expressive speaking and writing.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: CHIN104
CHIN206 Intermediate Chinese II
This course continues all-round practice in listening, speaking, and writing Chinese from CHIN205. We will conduct classes according to an interactive approach: between the reproductive and the performative, between role-playing and creative participation, and between oral sessions and written texts. Emphasis will be placed increasingly on expressive speaking and writing.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: CHIN205
CHIN217 Third-Year Chinese I
Third-year Chinese is designed for advanced beginners who have a firm grasp of the Chinese language but a limited opportunity to expand vocabulary and fluency. The fall semester will cover a number of topics, including: smog, soft power, corruption in China, the craze of studying abroad in China, etc.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: CHIN206
CHIN218 Third-Year Chinese II
A continuation of CHIN 217, this spring semester course will cover a number of topics, including Chinese festivals, cyberbullying and freedom of speech, left-behind children in China, privacy and security, the labor force in China, politics and identity in Taiwan, etc.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: CHIN217
CHIN221 Fourth-Year Chinese I
This course is aimed at students who have completed six regular college semesters of Chinese courses or the equivalent. Its goal is to elevate students' language proficiency to the true advanced level. The course may use language textbooks, newspaper articles, literary texts, professional writing, academic papers, other authentic texts, television programs, and other media materials. The course will be conducted entirely in Chinese.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: CHIN218
CHIN222 Fourth-Year Chinese II
This course is aimed at students who have completed seven regular college semesters of Chinese courses or the equivalent. Its goal is to continue elevating students' language proficiency to the true advanced level. The course may use language textbooks, newspaper articles, literary texts, professional writing, academic papers, other authentic texts, television programs, and media materials. The course will be conducted in Chinese.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: CHIN221
CHIN223 Creative Writing in Chinese
The class will offer students a chance to use the Chinese language both communicatively and creatively in various literary genres including poetry, song lyrics, short stories, travelogues, memoir, plays, film scripts, and so on. The class is divided into three main sections. First, we will engage in close readings of some of the most interesting writings of contemporary Chinese literature that are both well-crafted and culturally significant. Second, using the class readings as reference points, the students will write their own pieces about their daily lives and dreams, oversea experiences as cultural observers, science fiction that portrays a future utopia, adaptations of Chinese ghost stories, and their imaginary lives as nonhuman animals. Third, the students will engage in dynamic class discussions and workshop each other¿s writings.
The class is not a standard advanced Chinese class. Bearing in mind that some of the most memorable Chinese poems and stories are written in simple language, participants in the class will focus on how to use the words and expressions they already know in fresh and innovative ways while expanding the horizon of their understanding of Chinese and global cultures. Native Chinese speakers, heritage speakers, and students who have taken Third Year Chinese and above can take the class and learn from each other in groups. No previous experience of creative writing is required.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CHIN230 Contemporary Society in China
This is an advanced language course in which students learn by reading and discussing the articles online on various current topics. Topics include culture, academic subjects, and controversial issues. Students will learn specific vocabulary of these topics to further understand the culture and social development of China. By the end of the course, students will have improved their oral and writing proficiency in professional use of the Chinese language.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CHIN301 A Glance at Chinese Literature and Culture
This is a general introduction to classical, modern, and contemporary Chinese literature. Students will read literary works valued greatly in Chinese history which will help frame an examination of Chinese language, literature, and culture. The values of Chinese culture that emerge in and from these texts will be discussed and contextualized.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
CHIN302 Narrating China: Chinese Lab (CLAC.50)
This 0.5 credit course is conducted in Chinese and designed to supplement the standard English-language Narrating China: Introduction to Modern Chinese Literature (CEAS 202) course. It allows students to encounter a selection of modern and contemporary Chinese literary texts in their original Chinese. As the parent course guides students through major literary movements and themes from 20th-century China, students in the CLAC tutorial will read poems, short stories, or excerpts of longer texts from the same periods in the original Chinese. In weekly meetings, students will discuss the readings in Chinese, to delve deeper into their stylistic and linguistic characteristics unobservable in translations.
Both advanced learners of Chinese (fourth-year level or above) and native speakers are welcome. Evaluation is based on students' preparedness, participation, and formal oral presentations, and will be tailored to students' language background. If you are unsure about whether your language background is sufficient for the course, please contact the instructor.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: CGST302
Prereq: None
CHIN303 Chinese Calligraphy (CLAC.25)
This 0.25 CLAC course will provide students with a brief understanding of the art of Chinese calligraphy through calligraphy practice. They will learn about the characteristics of Chinese calligraphy from the "Four Treasures of the Study," as the tools of calligraphy (writing brush, ink stick, ink stone, and paper). They will understand the development history of Chinese calligraphy from five basic scripts of Seal (zhuanshu), Clerical (lishu), Standard (kaishu), Semi-cursive (xingshu), and Cursive (caoshu). The course focuses on imitation and practice of the Standard script kaishu. Prerequisite: Current or future Chinese class students are preferred.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.25
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: CGST252
Prereq: None
CHIN305 East Asian Culture Through Chinese Pop Music (CLAC .50)
Even after the meteoric rise of K-Pop in recent years, Mandarin Chinese Language pop music, also known as Mandopop, remains a highly popular musical genre that influences East Asian popular culture. This course introduces students to the literary history and cultural forces that shaped Chinese popular music. The songs featured in the syllabus serve as a soundtrack to the "Introduction to History: Foundations of East Asian Cultures," as the themes largely mirror the contents of the parent course.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: CGST253, CEAS305
Prereq: CHIN205
CHIN351 Classical Chinese Philosophy: Chinese Lab (CLAC.50)
This 0.5 credit course is conducted in Chinese and designed to supplement the standard English-language Classical Chinese Philosophy (PHIL205) course. Students must have taken PHIL205 in the past or be enrolled in it simultaneously. The course will have two main foci: introducing students to modern and contemporary Chinese-language debates about Chinese philosophy and exploring in greater depth the meaning of key passages from the classical works students are reading in translation in PHIL205.
Both advanced learners of Chinese (fourth-year level or above) and native speakers are welcome. Familiarity with classical Chinese is desirable but not required. Assignments will include presentations in Chinese and some written work in English; evaluation will be tailored to each student's language background. If you are unsure whether your language background is sufficient for the course, please contact the instructor.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: PHIL251, CGST251
Prereq: None
CHIN401 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CHIN402 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CHIN407 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)
Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
CHIN408 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)
Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
CHIN409 Senior Thesis Tutorial
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CHIN410 Senior Thesis Tutorial
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CHIN411 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CHIN412 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CHIN419 Student Forum
Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
CHIN420 Student Forum
Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
CHIN465 Education in the Field, Undergraduate
Students must consult with the department and class dean in advance of undertaking education in the field for approval of the nature of the responsibilities and method of evaluation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CHIN466 Education in the Field, Undergraduate
Students must consult with the department and class dean in advance of undertaking education in the field for approval of the nature of the responsibilities and method of evaluation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CHIN491 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial
The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CHIN492 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial
The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CHIN501 Individual Tutorial, Graduate
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
CHIN502 Individual Tutorial for Graduate Students
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Japanese
JAPN103 Elementary Japanese I
This course is designed for those who have no previous experience studying Japanese. The objective of this course is for students to acquire communicative and functional skills in Japanese. You will learn the basics of speaking, listening, reading, writing, orthography, and sociolinguistics (when to say what and why) of modern Japanese. Textbook Genki Lesson 1 - Lesson 8 will be covered. Each of the 8 lessons covered in this course includes new vocabulary items and expression patterns related to topics such as time, shopping, daily activities, travel, family, and expressing opinion. In addition, students will learn to read and write 46 basic hiragana and katakana syllables and approximately 86 Kanji (Chinese characters). Class meets daily, five hours per week, and includes weekly TA sessions.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
JAPN104 Elementary Japanese II
This course is a continuation of JAPN103, and will approach elementary-level Japanese from two angles: form (grammar) and context (social usage). Students will continue to enhance their fundamental skills in Japanese, with a focus on describing thought and action, expressing intent, and developing intercultural and interpersonal communicative abilities (apologizing, giving/receiving advice, making requests, etc.). The course will continue to emphasize reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills, and will familiarize students with various aspects of Japanese culture through the textbook and other media and study materials. Textbook Genki Lesson 9 - Lesson 16 will be covered and 123 additional kanji will be introduced.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: JAPN103
JAPN205 Intermediate Japanese I
This course will approach intermediate-level Japanese from two angles: form (grammar) and context (social usage). Students will learn complex expressions, such as communicating regret, respect (honorifics/humbling), passive experiences, and causative forms. The course will emphasize reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills, and will familiarize students with various aspects of Japanese culture through the textbook and other media and study materials. Textbook Genki Lesson 17 - Lesson 23 will be covered and 107 additional kanji will be introduced.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: JAPN104
JAPN206 Intermediate Japanese II
This course aims to develop the four language skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) by addressing a variety of topics, including the geography, speech styles, technology, sports, and food of Japan. Students will also learn various strategies in conversation: asking questions, apologizing, asking for favors and expressing gratitude, asking for advice and getting information, and expressing one's thoughts. Lesson 1- Lesson 5 from the textbook Tobira will be covered and 176 additional kanji will be introduced.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: JAPN205
JAPN217 Third-Year Japanese I
The primary goal of this course is to enable students to acquire Japanese language proficiency through integrating four skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Lesson 6 - Lesson 9 from the textbook Tobira cover different topics, including religion, pop culture, traditional performing arts, and education in Japan. The class meets three hours per week.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: JAPN206
JAPN218 Third-Year Japanese II
This course aims to develop the four language skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) by addressing a variety of topics, including convenient things, history, traditional crafts, and nature of Japan. Students will also learn various strategies in conversation: conveying information, talking about past events, explaining how things are made, and extending one's dialogue. Lesson 10-Lesson 13 from the textbook "Tobira" will be covered and 141 additional kanji will be introduced.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: JAPN217
JAPN219 Fourth-Year Japanese: Conceptualizations of Identity in Contemporary Japan
Enrolled students and faculty will determine the twice-weekly, 80-minute class meeting times together.
This course involves close readings of modern literary texts, attention to current events reported in the media, and examinations of visual materials and critical discussions in Japanese. Placing Japan in a global perspective, the course addresses the following three main themes surrounding Japan in comparison to the world.
(1) Issues pertaining to the modern Japanese family (declining birthrate, aging society, women's social advancement)
(2) Bioethics (regenerative medicine, cloning, reproductive choices, life-extending and end-of-life care)
(3) Identity (questions of "Japanese-ness," as well as issues faced by so-called "gaijin," immigrants, refugees, biracial/bicultural individuals, and resident Koreans or "zainichi")
*These themes are subject to change.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: JAPN218
JAPN220 Fourth-Year Japanese: Advanced Japanese through Contemporary Fiction, Essays, and News Reports
In this course, taught completely in Japanese, students will read original works of short fiction, essays in Japanese by well-known contemporary authors, and newspaper and magazine pieces. We will also include several movies and/or television dramas. We will explore various genres and popular themes in Japanese literature and consider style and voice. Through the works we look at, students will also be introduced to advanced Japanese grammar, expressions, patterns, kanji, and vocabulary.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: JAPN219
JAPN229 Debating Japan and the World in Japanese
Tied to courses being offered in the CEAS, students in this course read related literature, scholarly articles and blogs, watch videos and films, and debate in Japanese about current events and issues surrounding Japan, Asia, and the world. Guest Japanese speakers may visit the class. Some possible themes are foodways, educational systems, Japanese relations with other Asian countries, identity and stereotypes, and cultural appropriation. However, an overarching focus will be on the history and current dynamics of Japanese-American relations. All materials, reading and writing assignments, and discussion will be in Japanese, with some comparative materials in English, and some translation by students into English. Native speakers of Japanese are strongly encouraged to participate.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
JAPN230 Contemporary Japanese Politics in Japanese
This seminar is a discussion-based class designed for advanced language learners and native speakers of Japanese. We will discuss a wide range of contemporary topics in Japanese society and politics. All texts, discussions, and assignments will be in Japanese. Diverse texts will be used--for example, newspaper, magazine, and academic journal articles as well as video broadcasts and web resources.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
JAPN285 Translating Modern Japanese Song Lyrics (CLAC.50)
This course offers students the opportunity to build skills and experience as translators of cultural texts by producing Japanese-to-English translations of the lyrics to select modern Japanese popular songs. Students will formulate their own individual translations of the assigned song each week, and then work together in class sessions to amend and further develop those translations, learning from each other's choices and strategies in order to arrive at the most effective rendering possible. Successful completion of JAPN 218 required; heritage learners, native speakers of Japanese, and others with advanced Japanese language skills (both spoken and written) are welcome in the course, with advance permission from the instructor.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: CGST222
Prereq: JAPN218
JAPN401 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
JAPN402 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
JAPN407 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)
Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
JAPN408 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)
Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
JAPN409 Senior Thesis Tutorial
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
JAPN410 Senior Thesis Tutorial
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
JAPN411 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
JAPN412 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
JAPN419 Student Forum
Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
JAPN420 Student Forum
Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
JAPN465 Education in the Field, Undergraduate
Students must consult with the department and class dean in advance of undertaking education in the field for approval of the nature of the responsibilities and method of evaluation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
JAPN466 Education in the Field, Undergraduate
Students must consult with the department and class dean in advance of undertaking education in the field for approval of the nature of the responsibilities and method of evaluation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
JAPN491 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial
The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
JAPN492 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial
The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Korean
KREA153 Elementary Korean I
Elementary Korean will introduce students to written and spoken Korean. Taught by a native-speaker instructor, the course is useful to students who may have spoken Korean at home as well as to those students who have no previous experience with the language.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
KREA154 Elementary Korean II
Elementary Korean II is the second part of the elementary course in Korean. Students will develop communicative skills in speaking and listening, but increased attention will be given to reading and writing.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: [KREA153 or LANG153 or ALIT153 or EAST153]
KREA205 Intermediate Korean I
Intermediate Korean I is the first part of the intermediate course in spoken and written Korean. Various functions of more complex grammar patterns will be introduced in a variety of sociocultural contexts. Upon the completion of this course, students will be able to demonstrate higher levels of balanced communicative skills in speaking, reading, writing, and listening.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
KREA206 Intermediate Korean II
Intermediate Korean II is the second half of the intermediate course in spoken and written Korean. Various functions of more complex grammar patterns will be introduced in a variety of sociocultural contexts. Upon the completion of this course, students will be able to demonstrate higher levels of balanced communicative skills in speaking, reading, writing, and listening.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: KREA205
KREA217 Advanced Korean I
Advanced Korean I is the first half of the advanced course in spoken and written Korean. Various functions of more complex grammar patterns and vocabulary than those learned in previous levels will be introduced in a variety of sociocultural contexts. Upon the completion of this course, students will be able to demonstrate an advanced level of balanced communicative skills in speaking, reading, writing, and listening.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: None
KREA218 Advanced Korean II
Advanced Korean II is the second half of the advanced course in spoken and written Korean. In addition to the textbook, selected readings from news articles and short stories from modern Korean literature will be introduced to help students develop their writing skills and a higher level of reading comprehension. Upon the completion of this course, students will be able to demonstrate an advanced level of balanced communicative skills in speaking, reading, writing, and listening.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Prereq: KREA217
KREA255 Modern History and Culture of Korea: From Imperialism to Two Koreas (CLAC.50)
This course will serve as an introduction to the more recent history and culture of Korea; South Korea's rebirth from the remnants of a devastating war into a globalized country whose cultural influence has grown drastically since the 2000s. We will be discussing politics and diplomacy, economic development and industrialization, the growth of mass culture, and social changes concerning Korean women and family. Key topics will include the colonial period, the Korean War and national division, the struggle for democracy, and Korean pop culture. Course material will include films, dramas, and literature on these topics.
This course will be conducted in Korean. Students who have either completed three years of Korean or meet the language fluency equivalent are encouraged to take this course. Native speakers of Korean are also welcome.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: CGST255
Prereq: None
KREA256 Exploring Korea Through a Multifaceted Cultural Lens (CLAC .50)
This course will address a variety of aspects of traditional and modern Korean culture, ranging from traditional cuisine, music/art, religion, and the modernization of Korea in the 20th century to the Korean Wave, films, education, and the history of Korean pop music. Video clips, movies, and other multimedia materials will be utilized to better facilitate students' learning of Korean culture and heritage.
This course will be conducted mostly in Korean. Students who have either completed one or two years of Korean or meet the language fluency equivalent are encouraged to take this course. Native speakers of Korean and heritage speakers are also welcome.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-CEAS
Identical With: CGST256
Prereq: None
KREA262 Korean Music from Shamanism to Television (CLAC.50)
This course is open to intermediate learners, advanced learners, and native speakers. The discussion topics will be broadly approached, utilizing various music video examples as vehicles to deeper social, religious, and cultural understanding. These various music examples are from ancient to current Korean music practices. Historically, Korean music was integrated with dance, literature, art, song, and ceremony. Therefore, music (sound) was not separated from other elements but was essential to daily life, community activities, religious practice, artistic collaboration, costumes, food, and the very soul of the Korean people. Traditional Korean music is imbued with the history of court ritual, folk village stories, and myths, in addition to religious rituals of Confucianism, shamanism, and Buddhism. The music is central to a broad range of cultural, social, and humanitarian aspects of Korean life.
Korean traditional music has been evolving for over 2,000 years, and it is now rapidly moving in many directions with contemporary life and influence from Western culture. Historically, music was created as a group activity by village people oftentimes working with a spiritual leader shaman. Currently, the most acceptable music is created and performed by individual performers as a repertoire for TV programs. In the 21st century, as society changes, Korean music is changing also, with differing values of popular culture brought in through recordings, film, and of course the internet. Young musicians go beyond traditional music and are developing a new repertoire that mixes Western instruments or electronics with various traditional instruments. This is a new Korean identity. Newly created Korean ensembles and bands such as K-pop are successfully beginning to dominate the international music scene. In contrast to the formerly inner-looking "Hermit Kingdom," Korea has now entered into instant global communications with the production of more individual music in various styles.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: MUSC262, CGST262
Prereq: None
KREA401 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
KREA402 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
KREA412 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate
Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
KREA491 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial
The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
KREA492 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial
The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT