Terms offered: Summer 2018 10 Week Session, Summer 2017 10 Week Session, Summer 2016 10 Week Session
This course is the equivalent of Chinese 1A and Chinese 1B offered in the regular academic year.
Intensive Elementary Chinese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Summer 2020 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2020
The course is designed for students who are of non-Chinese origin and were not raised in a Chinese-speaking environment; or who are of Chinese origin but do not speak Chinese and whose parents do not speak Chinese. The course develops beginning learners’ functional language ability—the ability to use Mandarin Chinese in linguistically and culturally appropriate ways at the beginning level. It helps students acquire communicative competence in Chinese while sensitizing them to the links between language and culture.
Elementary Chinese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2020
The course is designed for students who are of non-Chinese origin and were not raised in a Chinese-speaking environment, or who are of Chinese origin but do not speak Chinese and whose parents do not speak Chinese. The course continues to focus on training students in the four language skills--speaking, listening, reading, and writing with a gradually increasing emphasis on basic cultural readings and developing intercultural competence.
Elementary Chinese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2019
This course is designed specifically for Mandarin heritage students who possess speaking skill but little or no reading and writing skills in Chinese. The course utilizes students’ prior knowledge of listening and speaking skills to advance them to the intermediate Chinese proficiency level in one semester. Close attention is paid to meeting Mandarin heritage students’ literacy needs in meaningful contexts while introducing a functional vocabulary and a systematic review of structures through culturally related topics. The Hanyu Pinyin (a Chinese Romanization system) and traditional/simplified characters are introduced.
Elementary Chinese for Mandarin Speakers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
The course is designed for students who have had exposure to a non-Mandarin Chinese dialect but cannot speak Mandarin and possess little or no reading and writing skills in Chinese. The course helps students gain a fundamental knowledge about Mandarin Chinese and explore their Chinese heritage culture through language. Students learn ways and discourse strategies to express themselves and develop their linguistic and cultural awareness in order to function appropriately in Mandarin-speaking environments.
Elementary Chinese for Dialect Speakers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 1997
Elementary Cantonese 3A is designed for non-heritage learners with no prior knowledge of Cantonese, a regional variety of Chinese, introducing students to its use through oral, written and visual texts related to daily life. Topics include meeting people, shopping, leisure activities, telling the time, discussing daily routines, describing people and family members, and transportation, and students will compose texts in Cantonese that show the relationship between language and culture. Finally, the course develops students’ awareness of socio-culturally situated language use and their ability to compare and negotiate similarities and differences between the target culture and their own culture.
Elementary Cantonese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 1998
Elementary Cantonese 3B is designed for non-heritage learners who have successfully completed 3A or equivalent. The course encourages students to construct meanings in oral, written and visual texts related to daily life topics such as locating things and places, food and clothing, weather, giving advice, telephone conversations, and arranging meetings, and to compose such texts. The course continues to develop students’ ability to understand the relationship between language and culture and to develop students’ awareness as to how social and cultural situations affect language use, encouraging students to explore multiple meanings and better understand the nature of their interpretations based on their attitudes, belief, and experiences.
Elementary Cantonese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020
Elementary Cantonese for Heritage Speakers 3X is designed for native and heritage Mandarin speakers. These students share the knowledge of standard Chinese writing system with Cantonese speakers. They have an interest in speaking Cantonese and learning a Chinese subculture shared among Cantonese speakers. This course will introduce students to its use through oral, written and visual texts related to daily life. Topics include meeting people, shopping, leisure activities, telling the time, discussing daily routines, describing people and family members, transportation, and students will compose texts in Cantonese. Students will focus on vocabulary, linguistic knowledge, culture through expression analysis, and practical use of language.
Elementary Cantonese for Heritage Speakers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2000, Fall 1999, Spring 1999
This course is offered to non-heritage speakers and those who were not raised in a Chinese-speaking environment. The course will provide practice and instruction in speaking and listening with emphasis on pronunciation, tone, rhythm and flow of Chinese. The course will include a review of Chinese 1A/B grammar and cover topics such as hobbies, making appointments, dining, travel and more in-depth discussions and activities through comparisons of Chinese and students’ own cultures. The course will include small and large group discussions, presentations, debates and question and answer sessions. Students will work towards building confidence in expressing themselves and using the grammatical concepts learned in Chinese 1A/B.
Supplementary Chinese Conversation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Summer 2020 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2019
The first in a two-semester sequence, introducing students to Chinese literature in translation. In addition to literary sources, a wide range of philosophical and historical texts will be covered, as well as aspects of visual and material culture. 7A covers early China through late medieval China, up to and including the Yuan Dynasty (14th century); the course will also focus on the development of sound writing.
Introduction to Premodern Chinese Literature and Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2020, Summer 2019 Second 6 Week Session
The second of a two-semester sequence introducing students to Chinese literature in translation. In addition to literary sources, a wide range of philosophical and historical texts will be covered, as well as aspects of visual and material culture. 7B focuses on late imperial, modern, and contemporary China. The course will focus on the development of sound writing skills.
Introduction to Modern Chinese Literature and Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2018 10 Week Session, Summer 2017 10 Week Session, Summer 2016 10 Week Session
This course is equivalent to Chinese 10A and Chinese 10B offered in the regular academic year.
Intensive Intermediate Chinese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Summer 2020 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2020
The course is designed for students who are of non-Chinese origin and were not raised in a Chinese-speaking environment, or who are of Chinese origin but do not speak Chinese and whose parents do not speak Chinese. The course deals with lengthy conversations as well as narrative and descriptive texts in both simplified and traditional characters. It helps students to express themselves in speaking and writing on a range of topics and raises their awareness of the connection between language and culture to foster the development of communicative competence.
Intermediate Chinese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2020
The course further develops students’ linguistic and cultural competence. In dealing with texts, students are guided to interpret, narrate, describe, and discuss topics ranging from real-life experience and personal memoire to historic events. Intercultural competence is promoted through linguistic and cultural awareness and language use in culturally appropriate contexts.
Intermediate Chinese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019
Intermediate Chinese 10RA is designed for non-heritage graduate students and motivated undergraduate students who have completed Elementary Chinese 1B or the equivalent and who wish to develop their technical reading competence but also go on to look for meaning in modern Chinese texts. The course promotes cross-cultural understanding by presenting a series of stories portraying young people from diverse cultural backgrounds in an American academic community, and as students read these stories in Chinese and analyze textual features, they construct meanings from the vocabulary, grammatical patterns, conventions, and culture.
Intermediate Reading in Chinese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020
Intermediate Chinese 10RB is designed for non-heritage graduate students and undergraduate students, who have completed Intermediate Chinese 10RA or equivalent and who wish to continue developing their reading competence. The course enables students to read about the world represented with stories that take place in Chinese society. By interacting with texts that portray a group of young people’s experiences in various Chinese settings, students further establish the relationships among language use, conventions, and cultural knowledge. They examine sophisticated language forms and ways of meaning creation, explore the symbolic dimension of language use, and evaluate various cultural perspectives in China and relate to their own at home.
Intermediate Reading in Chinese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2019
The course continues to develop students’ literacy and communicative competence through vocabulary and structure expansion dealing with topics related to Chinese heritage students’ personal experiences. Students are guided to express themselves on complex issues and to connect their language knowledge with real world experiences.
Intermediate Chinese for Mandarin Speakers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
The course helps students further develop their linguistic and cultural competence in Mandarin Chinese. It trains students to use Mandarin more appropriately and confidently in speaking, reading, and writing. With the expanded repertoire of Chinese language use and the increased awareness of the differences between cultures and subcultures, students are equipped to negotiate their way in an intercultural environment.
Intermediate Chinese for Dialect Speakers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
Going beyond satisfying basic communicative needs, students would learn to use Cantonese to complete more complicated tasks such as elaborating, comparing, analyzing, defending, debating, etc. Students would be frequently exposed to discussions regarding broader societal issues such as housing, food culture, fashion, safety, recreation, education, etc. Assuming basic competence of Cantonese, the course attempts to relate the learners to Chinese subculture through analyzing the link between Cantonese expressions and societal phenomenon in the Cantonese speaking society. Difference between Cantonese and Mandarin expressions and its cultural implications, as well as the social position of Cantonese globally and regionally.
Intermediate Cantonese for Heritage Speakers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2017
This course examines the complex worldviews of China’s Han period, the centuries that follow its unification and the establishment of its empire. The momentous changes of this period shaped traditional and contemporary views of history and society, philosophy, and religion, and as a result are still relevant today. This course will look at Han “thought,” a word chosen for its range, including religion, state ritual, social conventions, moral philosophy, and thinking about the natural world. It covers both elite and popular culture, and pays particular attention to two works of the second century B.C.E.: the Shiji (i.e., Records of the Historian) or the Huainanzi.
Chinese Thought in the Han Dynasty: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2009, Spring 2009, Fall 2008
Small group instruction in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Directed Group Study for Lower Division Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2006, Spring 2004
Independent study in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Independent Study for Lower Division Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
The course takes students to a higher level of competence in Chinese language and culture and develops students’ critical linguistic and cultural awareness. It surveys social issues and values on more abstract topics in a changing China. Through the development of discourse and cultural knowledge in spoken and written Chinese, students learn to interpret subtle textual meanings in texts and contexts as well as reflect on the world and themselves and express themselves using a variety of genres.
Advanced Chinese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
The course continues the development of critical awareness by emphasizing the link between socio-cultural literacy and a higher level of language competence. While continuing to expand their critical literacy skills, students interpret texts related to Chinese popular culture, social change, cultural traditions, politics and history. Through linguistic and cultural comparisons, students understand more about people in the target society and themselves as well as about the power of language in language use to enhance their competence in operating between languages and associated cultures.
Advanced Chinese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
This course advances students’ linguistic and cultural competence through the development of critical literacy skills. It guides students to become more sophisticated language users equipped with linguistic, pragmatic, and textual knowledge in discussions, reading, writing, and translation. Students reflect on the world and themselves through the lens of the target language and culture and become more competent in operating between English and Chinese and between American culture and Chinese culture. Students learn to recognize a second version of Chinese characters.
Advanced Chinese for Mandarin Speakers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
The course continues to develop students’ critical literacy skills in interpreting texts and writing in different genres and styles. It engages students to use their linguistic knowledge and skills to survey portions of Chinese history and society and comprehend Chinese cultural heritage in contemporary and historic economic, social, and political contexts. Students are guided to explore how language constructs subjective realities and contrast their own meanings in language production. The development of critical literacy and an understanding of the power of language in language use enables students to enhance their competence in operating between languages and associated cultures.
Advanced Chinese for Mandarin Speakers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
This course helps Chinese heritage language learners with a dialect background to further develop their Chinese language competence. More sophisticated linguistic forms are used with various socio-cultural topics. Close reading knowledge and skills, formal and informal registers, discourses in speaking and writing, and different genres of Chinese reading and writing are introduced and practiced. Students learn to recognize a second version of Chinese characters.
Advanced Chinese for Dialect Speakers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2017, Spring 2016
This course is for students who have taken Chinese 100YA or an equivalent course. It further develops their Chinese language competence. It guides students to investigate, explain, and reflect on the nature of language used in the texts and on the cultural perspective embedded in the language. Close reading knowledge and skills, formal and informal registers, discourses in speaking and writing, and different genres of Chinese reading and writing are practiced and used by students. They also are required to read texts in two versions of Chinese characters.
Advanced Chinese for Dialect Speakers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
The course is designed to assist students to reach the advanced-mid level on language skills and to enhance their intercultural competence. Students read the works of famous Chinese writers. Movie adaptations of these writings are also used. In addition to reading and seeking out information, students experience readings by interpreting and constructing meanings and evaluate the effect of the language form choice.
Fourth-Year Chinese Readings: Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
The course is designed to further develop students’ advanced-mid level language proficiency and intercultural competence. It uses authentic readings on Chinese social, political, and journalistic issues, supplemented by newspaper articles. To develop students’ self-learning abilities and help them to link the target language to their real world experience, students’ agency in learning is promoted through critical reading and rewriting and through comparing linguistic and cultural differences.
Fourth-Year Chinese Readings: Social Sciences and History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2019 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2018 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2017 Second 6 Week Session
Daily topics of instruction include media Chinese, reading business Chinese, and oral training. This course covers intensive instruction in third-year Chinese with an emphasis on business terminology and introduction to cultural knowledge specific to conducting business in the Chinese environment. Two afternoons per week are devoted to field trips related to the topics of study including visits to banks and businesses, government units, museums, and guided tours of the city.
Business Chinese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2010 10 Week Session
This ten-week course is an introduction to the core vocabulary and basic grammar of literary Chinese and is designed to provide students with the skills necessary for advanced reading in the various genres of literary Chinese. We will focus on reading skills through the introduction of basic grammatical features of the language and through the intensive study of actual texts. This course is the equivalent of Chinese 110A-110B offered in the regular academic year.
Introduction to Literary Chinese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
The first half of a one-year introductory course in literary Chinese, introducing key features of grammar, syntax, and usage, along with the intensive study of a set of readings in the language. Readings are drawn from a variety of pre-Han and Han-Dynasty sources.
Introduction to Literary Chinese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
The second half of a one-year introductory course in literary Chinese, continuing the topics from the first semester, and giving basic coverage of relevant issues in the history of the language and writing system. The use of basic reference sources is introduced.
Introduction to Literary Chinese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
This fast-paced course improves students’ abilities to use advanced language forms to read and discuss a wide range of abstract subjects and issues. This includes literature, philosophy, law, economics, history, cross-Strait relations, geography, and movie criticism. The course also develops students’ ability to read articles that contain both formal and informal and modern and classic Chinese usages. Students learn to identify and explain the classical Chinese allusions used in the articles and compare them to their modern counterparts. Students use the Chinese language in their fields of study and are directed to write a professional paper in their academic field.
Fifth-Year Readings: Reading and Analysis of Advanced Chinese Texts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This fast-paced course is designed to help the student reach an advanced-high competence level in all aspects of modern Chinese. It prepares students for research or employment in a variety of China-related fields. Materials are drawn from native-speaker target publications, including modern Chinese literature, film, intellectual history, and readings on contemporary issues. Texts are selected according to the students’ interests. Under the instructor’s guidance, students conduct their own research projects based on specialized readings in their own fields of study. Research projects are presented both orally and in written form.
Fifth-Year Readings: Chinese for Research and Professional Use: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2018, Spring 2015
This course is an introduction to the history of Buddhism in China from its beginnings in the early centuries CE to the present day. Through engagement with historical scholarship, primary sources in translation, and Chinese Buddhist art, we will explore the intellectual history and cultural impact of Buddhism in China. Students will also be introduced to major issues in the institutional history of Buddhism, the interactions between Buddhism and indigenous Chinese religions, and the relationship between Buddhism and the state. Previous study of Buddhism is helpful but not required.
Buddhism in China: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020
Modern Chinese Buddhism emerged from a variety of reactions to the challenges posed by modernity. The course aims at introducing students to the ways in which Buddhists in China have engaged and continue to engage with a modern society and a globalized world. The course will follow the trends of Chinese Buddhism from the early twentieth century down to the most recent developments in the present. In exploring modern constructions of Buddhism in China, we will distinguish between modernism and modernity, and investigate how Chinese Buddhists introduced reforms and innovations, while also attempting to maintain continuity with traditional ideals and modes of practice.
Buddhism in Modern China: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2012, Fall 2006, Fall 2004
Readings in historical, religious, and philosophical texts of the Zhou, Han, and later periods from both printed and manuscript sources.
Ancient Chinese Prose: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 2014, Fall 2007
Readings from the Shijing (book of Odes), the Chuci (song of Chu), and selections from other early compilations of poetry.
Ancient Chinese Poetry: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Fall 2016, Spring 2015
Readings in printed and manuscript sources that relate to early Chinese popular religion, the Celestial Masters tradition, medieval Daoist revelations (e.g., Shangqing and Lingbao texts), Daoism and the state, interactions with other traditions, liturgy, alchemy, drama, and modern Daoist practices in China and the diaspora.
Topics in Daoism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2016 10 Week Session, Summer 2016 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 2014
Introduction to the forms and subtypes of classical poetry, focusing on both learning to read poems in the original as well as developing the critical and analytical tools to discuss and respond to them in an informed way.
Readings in Classical Chinese Poetry: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2013, Spring 2013
Thematic focus and range of readings will vary. The course will deal with readings from one or more genres of classical Chinese prose, such as essays, epigraphical materials, historical works, classical tales, administrative documents, scholars' notes, geographical treatises, or travel diaries.
Readings in Medieval Prose: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2016, Spring 2014
This course is an introduction to the study of medieval Buddhist literature written in classical Chinese. We will read samples from a variety of genres, including early Chinese translations of Sanskrit and Central Asian Buddhist scriptures, indigenous Chinese commentaries, philosophical treatises, and sectarian works, including Chan (Zen koans). The course will also serve as an introduction to resource materials used in the study of Chinese Buddhist texts, and students will be expected to make use of a variety of reference tools in preparation for class. Readings in Chinese will be supplemented by a range of secondary readings in English on Mahayana doctrine and Chinese Buddhist history.
Readings in Chinese Buddhist Texts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2016, Fall 2014
This course is an intensive introduction to Taiwanese literature and media culture.
Reading Taiwan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2018, Spring 2017
A critical study of pre-modern Chinese fiction.
Readings in Vernacular Chinese Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Fall 2016, Spring 2012
This course will introduce students to selected works of modern Chinese literature produced in the first half of the 20th century, as well as their cultural and historical context. How did writers such as Lu Xun, Shen Congwen, Eileen Chang, and others attempt to make themselves "at home" in a world profoundly dislocated by the forces of colonialism, war, and revolution? We will examine the politics of literary style, questions of nationalism, representations of gender, and the problem of colonial modernity in these texts. All primary texts are presented in the original Chinese, supplemented by critical and biographical articles in English.
Modern Chinese Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2018, Fall 2014
This course explores popular, realist, and avant-garde literature from mainland China and Taiwan since 1949. We will consider how writers have engaged with the cultural dislocations of modernity by exploring questions such as the presentation of cultural and gender identities and the politics of memory and place. Central to our discussion will be the problem of how literature not only reflects but also critically engages with historical and cultural experience through a variety of genres. A crucial aspect of this course will be the development of skills in close, critical, and historically contextualized reading.
Contemporary Chinese Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2015, Spring 2014
Chinese cities are the sites of complicated global/local interconnections as the nation is increasingly incorporated into the world system. Understanding Chinese cities is the key to analyzing the dramatic transformation of Chinese society and culture. This course is designed to teach students to think about Chinese cities in more textured ways. How are urban forms and urban spaces produced through processes of social, political, and ideological conflict? How are cities represented in literary, cinematic, and various popular cultures? How has our imagination of the city been shaped and how are these spatial discourses influencing the making of the cities of tomorrow?
Reading Chinese Cities: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2009, Fall 2005
This course explores one of the most central and potent areas of cultural politics in modern China: the city and its relations to the countryside. We will explore how urban space and native soil became central places of imagination and desire in modernity; how Beijing and Shanghai become mediums of imagining differing meanings of "modernity" and "tradition," "Chinese" and "Western," and cultural authenticity; the repeated reformist and revolutionary desire to return from the city back to the countryside; as well as more recent mass migrations from the countryside during a time of (and as part of) drastic urban destruction and "renewal."
Cities and the Country: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2011, Spring 2010, Spring 2007
Chinese dialects, Mandarin phonology, and Mandarin grammar.
Structure of the Chinese Language: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2009, Spring 2008, Spring 2001
Writing system, early dictionaries, historical phonology, and classical grammar.
History of the Chinese Language: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2017
This course introduces Chinese language cinema since the late 1970s. Depending on the semester, the class will either focus on the distinct new waves in the three regions of Mainland, Taiwan, or Hong Kong, or cover all three regions to examine to what extent these “New Cinemas” share similar concerns on questions of gender, politics, remembrance, and urbanization.
Contemporary Chinese Language Cinema: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2014
Ideals of good governance are a core concern of many brands of traditional Chinese thought. The image of the ruler whose authority is exercised in harmony with the desires and interests of the society at large plays a key role not only in theories of governance but also in thought about ethics and psychology. There is also a fascination with the bad ruler. In addition to serving as negative examples just as good rulers serve as positive examples, bad rulers also provide an imaginative space for thinking about extremes of human will, offering an outlet for fantasy and vicarious gratification of desires that normally remain taboo.
Bad Emperors: Fantasies of Sovereignty and Transgression in the Chinese Tradition: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2015
This course introduces the history of traditional Chinese drama from the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries, covering important works from a wide range of genres (farcical, religious, detective, martial arts, historical, and romantic). We study Chinese theater in the context of pleasure precincts, ad hoc markets, ritual parades, and printed matter. The underlying questions we ask are: how did different kinds of spatial structure historically define performance? And how did these varied spatial configurations orient the relationship of the audience to the performance differently? And what general implications did the theatrical space have for the constitution of the self and for social formation in medieval and early modern China?
Traditional Chinese Drama: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2013
Vernacular fiction in late imperial China emerged at the margins of official historiography, traveled through oral storytelling, and reached sophistication in the hands of literati. Covering the major genres and masterpieces of traditional Chinese novels including military, martial arts, libertine, and romantic stories, this course investigates how shifting boundaries brought about significant transformations of Chinese narrative at the levels of both form and content.
Exploring Premodern Chinese Novels: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2015
This course centers around intensive reading and analysis of Cao Xueqin’s 18th-century masterpiece of Chinese fiction (also known as the Dream of the Red Chamber). Students will be introduced to the literary, cultural, philosophical, and material world from which this work emerged, as well as various approaches to the world within the text.
The Story of the Stone: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
This course examines the development of Confucianism in pre-modern China using a dialogical model that emphasizes its interactions with competing viewpoints. Particular attention will be paid to ritual, conceptions of human nature, ethics, and to the way that varieties of Confucianism were rooted in more general theories of value.
Confucius and His Interpreters: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course is an intensive introduction in English translation to the history, literature, and media culture of Taiwan.
Literature and Media Culture in Taiwan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2011, Spring 2011
This course is an introduction to media culture in 20th-century China, with an emphasis on photography, cinema, and popular music. The course places these productions in historical and cultural context, examining the complex intertwinement of culture, technology, and politics in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan from the turn of the last century to the beginning of the 21st. Students will also be introduced to a number of approaches to thinking about and analyzing popular cultural phenomena.
Popular Media in Modern China: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2010, Fall 2008
What do landscapes "do"? How do landscape images and travel narratives mediate experiences of land, nature, and other peoples? How do landscapes map one's place in the world, shaping both cultural identities and real geographic spaces? Can landscapes travel? This course explores such questions by examining one of the world's longest-running traditions of landscape representation. We will consider such landscape genres as poetry, prose description, fiction, travel narrative, maps, painting, and photography, and consider their work across China's long history of imperial expansion, colonization, and globalization. We will also consider China's places in thinking about landscape and travel in the West.
Chinese Landscapes: Space, Place, and Travel: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
Directed independent study and preparation of senior honors thesis. Limited to senior honors candidates in East Asian Languages (for description of Honors Program, see Index).
Honors Course: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Fall 2015, Fall 2014
Directed independent study and preparation of senior honors thesis. Limited to senior honors candidates in East Asian Languages (for description of Honors Program, see Index).
Honors Course: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Fall 2014, Fall 2013
Small group instruction in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2018, Fall 2015
Independent study in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Independent Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2018, Spring 2013
Readings vary from year to year and are drawn from a wide variety of philosophical and historiographical sources.
Seminar in Philological Analysis of Ancient Chinese Texts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2017, Spring 2014
This course sets out to examine a set of “focus chapters” from the Zhuangzi along several dimensions: 1) in the context of Warring States thought, 2) as independent stories that need to be puzzled through and read critically, and 3) tracing the influence of those chapters on subsequent periods of Chinese thought.
Reading the Zhuangzi: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Spring 2015
An analytical exploration of the central texts of Warring States (453-221 BCE) religion and philosophy.
Early Chinese Thought: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2019
This seminar is an intensive introduction to various genres of Buddhist literature in classical Chinese, including translations of Sanskrit and Central Asian scriptures. Chinese commentaries, philosophical treatises, hagiographies, and sectarian works. It is intended for graduate students who already have some facility in classical Chinese. It will also serve as a tools and methods course, covering the basic reference works and secondary scholarship in the field of East Asian Buddhism. The content of the course will be adjusted from semester to semester to best accommodate the needs and interests of students.
Readings in Chinese Buddhist Texts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Spring 2011, Spring 2008
Readings in major genres and authors of Chinese literature, with attention to relevant "nonliterary" (philosophical, scholarly, historiographical, etc.) sources where useful; period and thematic focus varies from semester to semester.
Seminar in Chinese Literary History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
Course content varies with interests of students.
Texts on the Civilization of Medieval China: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Introduction to the history of Chinese textual production. Detailed close reading of the texts and training in the methodologies of solving problems of lexicon, theme, structure, imagery, and metaphor.
Genre and Method in Traditional Chinese Texts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2008, Spring 2007
This course explores relations of Chinese literature and culture to other parts of Asia, Africa, Latin America, or the West, ranging from specific global transactions to comparative perspectives, and ranging widely across different historical periods. Specific topics vary from year to year.
Chinese Literatures and Cultures in Global Context: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
This course examines the canonical texts of the late-imperial period, placing them in the context of literary culture of the Ming-Qing. The course focuses on a different set of texts each time it is taught; the aim is to introduce students to the primary issues in scholarship of late-imperial fiction and drama over a period of several years.
Late Imperial Fiction and Drama: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2015, Fall 2013
Graduate seminar in modern Chinese literature. Topics vary from year to year.
Modern Chinese Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2016, Fall 2014, Spring 2014
Directed study of modern Chinese literary and media cultures. Course provides both historical coverage and a grounding in various theoretical problems and methodological approaches. Topics include print culture, cinema, popular music, and material culture; emphasis varies from year to year.
Modern Chinese Cultural Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2017
Directed study of modern Chinese film. Emphasis varies from year to year.
Modern Chinese Film Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Special tutorial or seminar on selected topics not covered by available courses or seminars.
Directed Study for Graduate Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015

Thesis Preparation and Related Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Individual study for the comprehensive or language requirements in consultation with the graduate adviser. Units may not be used to meet either unit or residence requirements for a master's degree.
Individual Study for Master's Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Individual study in consultation with the major field adviser, intended to provide an opportunity for qualified students to prepare for various examinations required of candidates for the Ph.D.
Individual Study for Doctoral Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2020 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
The arts of reading a text, summarizing its argument, questioning its suppositions, generating balanced opinions, and expressing those opinions with clarity and effectiveness lie at the center of university life and educated human endeavor. EA Lang R1B is designed to help inculcate those skills, paying particular attention to East Asian humanistic topics. This four-unit course focuses on how to formulate questions and hone observations into well reasoned, coherent, and convincing essays. Attention will be paid to the basic rules of grammar, logical construction, compelling rhetorical approaches, research techniques, library and database skills, and forms of citation.
Reading and Composition on topics in East Asian Humanities: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
The Freshman Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small seminar setting. Freshman seminars are offered in all campus departments and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to fifteen freshmen.
Freshman Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.
Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
This introduction to the study of Buddhism will consider materials drawn from various Buddhist traditions of Asia, from ancient times down to the present day. However, the course is not intended to be a comprehensive or systematic survey; rather than aiming at breadth, the course is designed around key themes such as ritual, image veneration, mysticism, meditation, and death. The overarching emphasis throughout the course will be on the hermeneutic difficulties attendant upon the study of religion in general, and Buddhism in particular.
Introduction to the Study of Buddhism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2018, Fall 2012
Sophomore seminars are small interactive courses offered by faculty members in departments all across the campus. Sophomore seminars offer opportunity for close, regular intellectual contact between faculty members and students in the crucial second year. The topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to 15 sophomores.
Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Summer 2015 10 Week Session, Summer 2015 First 6 Week Session
This course will examine comparative responses to and representations of violent conflict. We will pay attention to how catastrophic events are productive of new forms of expression--oral, written, and visual--as well as destructive of familiar ones. We will examine the ways in which experience and its representation interact during and in the aftermath of extreme violence. Our empirical cases will be drawn from our research on responses to WWII atrocities, and on the post-Cold War civil wars in Africa.
Catastrophe, Memory, and Narrative: Comparative Responses to Atrocity in the Twentieth Century: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Summer 2020 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2019
This course explores representation of romantic love in East Asian cultures in premodern and post-modern contexts. Students develop a better understanding of the similarities and differences in traditional values in three East Asian cultures by comparing how canonical texts of premodern China, Japan and Korea represent romantic relationship. This is followed by the study of several contemporary East Asian films, giving the student the opportunity to explore how traditional values persist, change, or become nexus points of resistance.
Dynamics of Romantic Core Values in East Asian Premodern Literature and Contemporary Film: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2012, Spring 2010
This course will explore how the Chinese and English-language literary traditions (broadly defined) delineate the realm of the ineffable, and how cultural notions of the inexpressible shape the writing and reading of poems, songs, and a selection of prose pieces, from the uses of figurative language and prosody to genre and canon formation. In addition, in order to deepen our understanding of how writing achieves its aims, some attention will be given to nonverbal modes of expression, including calligraphy and painting--and attempts to render them in writing. Over this course of study, students will not only refine their sensitivity to the power of artistic modes of indirection, but will also hone their skills in close reading, analytical writing, and oral expression. All readings will be in English.
Expressing the Ineffable in China and Beyond: The Making of Meaning in Poetic Writing: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2013, Fall 2008
This course will examine war, empire, and the writing and memorialization of history through an eclectic group of literary, graphic, and cinematic texts from China, Japan, Europe, and the U.S.
War, Empire, and Literature in East Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Fall 2006, Spring 2006
This course will explore poetic translation, across languages, across cultures, and across historical ages, not merely from the perspective of the "accuracy" with which a classic text is represented in the translation, but as a window into the nature of poetic tradition and poetic writing itself. Works will be primarily drawn from the Chinese tradition, but in the interest of allowing a comparative discussion of the course's central themes, a significant amount of reading from ancient and modern Greek poetry will be included as well. The goal of the class is not simply to gain familiarity with Chinese poetry and poets, but more fundamentally to gain skill and sophistication in reading, responding to, and thinking about poetry.
Revising the Classics: Chinese and Greek Poetry in Translation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Summer 2016 First 6 Week Session
In this course we compare the cultural traditions of tea in China and Japan. In addition, using tea as the case study, we analyze the mechanics of the flow of culture across both national boundaries and social practices (such as between poetry and the tea ceremony). Understanding the tea culture of these countries informs students of important and enduring aspects of both cultures, provides an opportunity to discuss the role of religion and art in social practice, provides a forum for cultural comparison, and provides as well an example of the relationship between the two countries and Japanese methods of importing and naturalizing another country's social practice. Korean tea traditions are also briefly considered.
History of the Culture of Tea in China and Japan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2017, Spring 2015
This course will explore some of the most difficult bioethical issues confronting the world today from the perspective of traditional values embedded in the cultural history of India, China, and Japan as evidenced in their religions, legal codes, and political history. Possible topics include population control, abortion, sex-selection, euthanasia, suicide, genetic manipulation, brain-death, and organ transplants.
Bio-Ethical Issues in East Asian Thought: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016
This class examines the global dynamics and local distinction of literary writings from contemporary East Asia. Beginning with the colonial connections among Tokyo, Shanghai and Seoul during the 1920s-1940s, and moving on to texts composed since 2000 in Manila, Hong Kong, India and elsewhere, the course considers how literary writers have grappled with an increasingly integrated global marketplace in which culture, ideas and people circulate alongside (and as) capital. Discussions will reflect on the confluence of culture and politics in literary writings that treat race tension, ecological crisis, capitalist catastrophe and other themes. Primary readings will be supplemented by iconic essays of cultural criticism and recent films.
Reading Global Politics in Contemporary East Asian Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2017, Spring 2014
The 1960s were a time of historical transformation and upheaval in East Asia. It saw the overthrow of political regimes, the consolidation of communism, unprecedented capitalist expansion, and the emergence of new technologies that affected aesthetic production and consumption. This course explores the multiple aspects of culture, aesthetics, and politics that defined this moment. It asks how and why we can define the 1960s as a period, while considering the significance of defining East Asia (a term which denotes an imagined space of relations) as a particular region at this time.
The East Asian Sixties: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Fall 2017, Fall 2016
The course will introduce students to narratives about illness, disease and healing written by patients, physicians, caretakers, and others. These narratives report an experience. They reveal the interactions between the unfolding life of the patient and the shifting social meanings attached to illness. We will study the relationships between illness and society through readings of fiction, memoir, films, essays and graphic novels in order to understand how these varied forms of storytelling organize and give meaning to crucial questions about embodiment, disability and emergent forms of sociality enabled by our bodily vulnerabilities.
Illness Narratives, Vulnerable Bodies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017
What does it mean to use the medium of writing to “know” a person, and precisely how does one avail oneself of that medium to make oneself—or someone else— “known”? This course will guide students in writing about one of the most challenging of subjects: people. Students will have the opportunity to (a) read deeply in a selection of writings drawn from a range of genres and cultures, to acquaint themselves with a range of rhetorical tools employed in the portrayal of human lives and character, (b) identify the aims of their own writings, and (c) develop competency in applying what they have learned as readers to their own writing.
Knowing Others, and Being Known: The Art of Writing People: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017
Comparative analysis of modern literature from China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), Korea, and Japan with an emphasis on the short story and the novel. We will think about both the specificities of the literatures of the region as well as shared and interconnected experiences of modernity that broadly connect the cultures of East Asia during the twentieth century. Thematic concerns will include: modernism and modernity; nostalgia and homesickness; empire and its aftermath; and the cultures of globalization.
Modern East Asian Fiction: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018
This course provides a forum for reading and discussing East Asia’s greatest and most iconic modern writers, Lu Xun. We will closely read Lu Xun’s major works , discuss his role in the reinvention of the Chinese language and literary tradition, explore the global literary and intellectual currents with which he was deeply engaged, as well as situating him within the tumultuous era of colonialism, modernization, and revolution. All readings will be available in English translation.
Lu Xun and his Worlds: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2015
This course explores Chinese cultures of sex and gender from antiquity to the seventeenth century. We concentrate on three interconnected issues: women’s status, homoeroticism, and the human body. Our discussion will be informed by cross-cultural comparisons with ancient Greece, Renaissance England, and Contemporary America. In contrast to our modern regime of sexuality, which collapses all the three aforementioned issues into the issues of desire and identity intrinsic to the body, we will see how the early Chinese regime of sexual act evolved into the early modern regime of emotion that concerned less inherent identities than a media culture of life-style performance.
Sex and Gender in Premodern Chinese Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2019
Higher Learning begins with the study of heaven. As the source of orientation in space and time, heaven provides humanity the foundation for its knowledge and political order. To understand what knowledge is or how politics function, we need a basic understanding of the ways of heaven. This course examines the function heaven serves in the founding of order against the void in nature through the formation of conventional systems of time and space and the role heaven has played in the promulgation of governments. From a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary perspective that covers the course of Eurasian history and using primary sources in translation, we will see heaven unfold through the developments that leave us with the world we know today.
The History of Heaven: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2016, Fall 2015, Fall 2014
This course will discuss the social, economic, and cultural aspects of Buddhism as it moved along the ancient Eurasian trading network referred to as the “Silk Road”. Instead of relying solely on textual sources, the course will focus on material culture as it offers evidence concerning the spread of Buddhism. Through an examination of the Buddhist archaeological remains of the Silk Road, the course will address specific topics, such as the symbiotic relationship between Buddhism and commerce; doctrinal divergence; ideological shifts in the iconography of the Buddha; patronage (royal, religious and lay); Buddhism and political power; and art and conversion. All readings will be in English.
Buddhism on the Silk Road: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Fall 2009, Spring 2008
A thematic course on Buddhist perspectives on nature and Buddhist responses to environmental issues. The first half of the course focuses on East Asian Buddhist cosmological and doctrinal perspectives on the place of the human in nature and the relationship between the salvific goals of Buddhism and nature. The second half of the course examines Buddhist ethics, economics, and activism in relation to environmental issues in contemporary Southeast Asia, East Asia, and America.
Buddhism and the Environment: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
A study of the Buddhist tradition as it is found today in Asia. The course will focus on specific living traditions of East, South, and/or Southeast Asia. Themes to be addressed may include contemporary Buddhist ritual practices; funerary and mortuary customs; the relationship between Buddhism and other local religious traditions; the relationship between Buddhist institutions and the state; Buddhist monasticism and its relationship to the laity; Buddhist ethics; Buddhist "modernism," and so on.
Buddhism in Contemporary Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2013, Spring 2010, Summer 2007 Second 6 Week Session
This course will introduce students to the Zen Buddhist traditions of China and Japan, drawing on a variety of disciplinary perspectives (history, anthropology, philosophy, and so on). The course will also explore a range of hermeneutic problems (problems involved in interpretation) entailed in understanding a sophisticated religious tradition that emerged in a time and culture very different from our own.
Zen Buddhism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2017, Fall 2015
This course will discuss the historical development of the Pure Land school of East Asian Buddhism, the largest form of Buddhism practiced today in China and Japan. The curriculum is divided into India, China, and Japan sections, with the second half of the course focusing exclusively on Japan where this form of religious culture blossomed most dramatically, covering the ancient, medieval, and modern periods. The curriculum will begin with a reading of the core scriptures that form the basis of the belief system and then move into areas of cultural expression. The course will follow two basic trajectories over the centuries: doctrine/philosophy and culture/society.
Pure Land Buddhism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020
This course offers a cultural history of encounters between Russia and Asia in literature, film and visual art. The lenses of Orientalism, Eurasianism and Internationalism will be used to analyze Russian interactions with three spaces: the Caucasus, Central Asia, and East Asia. We will discuss works by classic Russian writers and artists (including Tolstoy, Blok and Platonov) that address the question of Russia’s engagement with Asia and consider Russia’s ambiguous spatial identity between Europe and Asia. We will also examine responses to Russian culture and the Russian/Soviet state in the literature and culture of China (Lu Xun, Xiao Hong), Japan (Kurosawa), Central Asia (Aitmatov) and the Caucasus (Sadulaev). All readings in English.
Russia and Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Spring 2013, Spring 2010
The emergence of the tantras in seventh and eighth-century India marked a watershed for religious practice throughout Asia. These esoteric scriptures introduced complex new ritual technologies that transformed the religious traditions of India, from Brahmanism to Jainism and Buddhism, as well as those of Southeast Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, China, Korea, and Japan. This course provides an overview of tantric religion across these regions.
Tantric Traditions of Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
This course studies the purview of astral science under Buddhist dominion. Here it is at once promoted for promulgating Buddhist world order and repudiated for begetting the suffering-inducing physical universe, a warped vessel of ceaselessly turning stars that the Buddhist dharma must transcend. The course begins with the part astral science plays in genesis, the creation of Buddhist world order. It then covers the science’s central aspects, celestial systems, spatial orientation, time reckoning, the making of a calendar, and publication of an almanac. Thereafter, it treats the science’s outgrowth into interrelated forms of Buddhist propaganda manifest as divination, magic, medicine, ritual, scripture, and iconography.

Buddhist Astral Science: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session
This course will investigate how neurotypical and neurodiverse authors depict and discuss neurodiversity. By first seeking to understand what is meant by the term “neurodiversity”, we will pay particular attention to how the autistic community have embraced it. We will give special emphasis to two Japanese authors: Nobel Prize-winner Oe Kenzaburô and Higashida Naoki. To better contextualize the two main Japanese authors, we will read essays on disability and neurodiversity in Japan. Taking a comparative, cross-cultural approach to this topic will bring into relief the different ways in which neurodiversity is understood, depicted and expressed; and the unique difficulties with representation relative to the respective cultures we study.
Neurodiversity in Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2018, Fall 2017
Prehistoric and protohistoric archaeology in China, Japan, and Korea.
Archaeology of East Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Spring 2008
A close analysis of the oeuvre of an East Asian director in its aesthetic, cultural, and political contexts.
East Asian Film: Directors and their Contexts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Summer 2018 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2017 Second 6 Week Session
The study of East Asian films as categorized either by industry-identified genres (westerns, horror films, musicals, film noir, etc.) or broader interpretive modes (melodrama, realism, fantasy, etc).
East Asian Film: Special Topics in Genre: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2018
This course is a capstone experience that centers on the philosophies and religions of East Asia examined from multiple theoretical perspectives. It comprises several thematic units within which a short set of readings about theory are followed by chronologically arranged readings about East Asia. Themes will alternate from year to year but may include: ritual and performance studies; religion and evolution; definitions of religion and theories of its origins; and the role of sacrifice.
Tools and Methods in the Study of East Asian Philosophy and Religion: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018
Directed independent study and preparation of senior honors thesis. Limited to senior honors candidates in the East Asian Religion, Thought, and Culture major (for description of Honors Program, see Index).
Honors Course: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Directed independent study and preparation of senior honors thesis. Limited to senior honors candidates in the East Asian Religion, Thought, and Culture major (for description of Honors Program, see Index).
Honors Course: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2010, Fall 2009, Spring 2009
Small group instruction in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2007, Spring 2007
Independent study in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Independent Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2018, Fall 2016
This course is a pro-seminar required for all entering graduate students in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures no matter their particular areas of interest. Its purpose is to introduce graduate students in the program to the major theoretical concerns, academic issues, and interpretive methodologies relevant to humanistic studies more generally and to the study of East Asian literature, thought, religion, and culture in particular. Supervising faculty change from year to year, as does the focus of the seminar.
Proseminar: Approaches to East Asian Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2009
This course will consider alternative strategies and modes of close reading that can be relevant to the study of East Asia with a focus on China and Japan. As we concentrate on the historical role of philological research, translation studies, interdisciplinary scholarship and ask how "knowledge" about East Asia is produced in our fields, our readings on "close reading" will help us question the common sense of "civilization," culture," and "tradition," and explore new ways of asking questions about text and context, aesthetics and politics, cultural memory, historical narratives, and regimes of knowledge.
Close Reading Area Studies: China and Japan in the World: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
This course provides a place for graduate-level seminars in East Asian Studies that rely primarily on secondary scholarship and texts in translation. Content will vary between semesters but will typically focus on a particular theme. Themes will be chosen according to faculty and student interests, with an eye toward introducing students to the breadth of available western scholarship on that subject, from classics in the field to the latest publications.
Topics in East Asian Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Spring 2019, Fall 2016, Fall 2014
Content varies with student interests. The course will normally focus on classical Buddhist texts that exist in multiple recensions and languages, including Chinese, Sanskrit, and Tibetan.
Seminar in Buddhism and Buddhist Texts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2015
This course is taught in parallel with the EA LANG 191 capstone course on the philosophies and religions of East Asia examined from multiple theoretical perspectives. It comprises several thematic units within which a short set of readings about theory are followed by chronologically arranged readings about East Asia. Themes will alternate from year to year but may include: ritual and performance studies; religion and evolution; definitions of religion and theories of its origins; and the role of sacrifice. Graduate students will additionally attend five “teaching East Asia thought” lectures and also produce an original syllabus in a related area of their interest.
Teaching East Asian Philosophy and Religion: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
This course aims to provide basic pedagogical training for teaching East Asian languages as second/foreign language. It involves critical reading and discussion of major pedagogical principles and issues in teaching Asian languages as second languages, with emphasis on the following topics:
Practical topics such as lesson planning, classroom observation, peer teaching, classroom activities, self- and peer evaluations, best practices in teaching. The focus of this course is on teaching theory, methodology, curriculum and lesson plan design, focusing on the teaching of Chinese, Japanese and Korean as foreign/second languages. Classes include lecture, discussion of readings, activities and feedback on observed language classes.

Methods of Teaching East Asian Languages: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2019 10 Week Session, Summer 2018 10 Week Session, Summer 2017 10 Week Session
This course is the equivalent of Japan 1A and Japan 1B offered in the regular academic year.
Intensive Elementary Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Summer 2020 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2020
Japanese 1A is designed to develop basic Japanese language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Students will learn the Japanese writing system: hiragana, katakana and approximately 150 kanji. At the end of the course, students should be able to greet, invite, compare, and describe persons and things, activities, intensions, ability, experience, purposes, reasons, and wishes. Grades will be determined on the basis of attendance, quiz scores, homework and class participation.
Elementary Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2012, Fall 2011, Fall 2010
Designed to supplement Japan 1A in order to facilitate students' listening proficiency. Japan 1AL will cover a variety of listening strategies.
Supplementary Work in Listening-Elementary: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2012, Fall 2011, Fall 2010
This course designed to be taken concurrently with Japan 1A to help students improve overall kanji performance. The course will make the kanji learning process easier by providing exercises and background information about the relationships between characters and how they function.
Supplementary Work in Kanji: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2020
Japanese 1B is designed to develop basic skills acquired in Japanese 1A further. Students will learn approximately 150 new kanji. At the end of the course students should be able to express regret, positive and negative requirements, chronological order of events, conditions, giving and receiving of objects and favors, and to ask and give advice. Grades will be determined on the basis of attendance, quiz scores, homework and class participation.
Elementary Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2010, Spring 2009, Spring 2008
Designed to supplement Japan 1B in order to facilitate students' listening proficiency. Students will apply the strategies learned in Japan 1AL in listening activities.
Supplementary Work in Listening-Elementary: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2010, Spring 2009, Spring 2008
This course designed to be taken concurrently with Japan 1B to help students improve overall kanji performance. The course will make the kanji learning process easier by providing exercises and background information about the relationships between characters and how they function.
Supplementary Work in Kanji: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Summer 2020 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2019
This course is an overview of Japanese literature and culture, 7th- through 18th-centuries. 7A begins with Japan's early myth-history and its first poetry anthology, which show the transition from a preliterate, communal society to a courtly culture. Noblewomen's diaries, poetry anthologies, and selections from the Tale of Genji offer a window into that culture. We examine how oral culture and high literary art mix in Kamakura period tales and explore representations of heroism in military chronicles and medieval Noh drama. After considering the linked verse of late medieval times, we read vernacular literature from the urban culture of the Edo period. No previous course work in Japanese literature, history, or language is expected.
Introduction to Premodern Japanese Literature and Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2020, Summer 2019 Second 6 Week Session
An introduction to Japanese literature in translation in a two-semester sequence. 7B provides a survey of important works of 19th- and 20th-century Japanese fiction, poetry, and cultural criticism. The course will explore the manner in which writers responded to the challenges of industrialization, internationalization, and war. Topics include the shifting notions of tradition and modernity, the impact of Westernization on the constructions of the self and gender, writers and the wartime state, literature of the atomic bomb, and postmodern fantasies and aesthetics. All readings are in English translation. Techniques of critical reading and writing will be introduced as an integral part of the course.
Introduction to Modern Japanese Literature and Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2019 10 Week Session, Summer 2018 10 Week Session, Summer 2017 10 Week Session
This course is the equivalent of Japan 10A and Japan 10B offered in the regular academic year.
Intensive Intermediate Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Summer 2020 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2020
The goal of this course is for the students to understand the language and culture required to communicate effectively in Japanese. Some of the cultural aspects covered are; geography, speech style, technology, sports, food, and religion. Through the final project, students will learn how to discuss social issues and their potential solutions. In order to achieve these goals, students will learn how to integrate the basic linguistics knowledge they acquired in J1, as well as study new structures and vocabulary. An increasing amount of reading and writing, including approximately 200 new kanji, will also be required.
Intermediate Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2012, Fall 2011, Fall 2010
This supplementary course is designed for students who are concurrently enrolled in Japan 10A to enable their acquisition of a better understanding of Japanese grammar in general and clause linkage in particular.
Supplementary Work in Grammar - Intermediate: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2012, Fall 2011, Fall 2010
This supplementary course is designed for students who are concurrently enrolled in Japan 10A to acquire a better understanding of kanji writing system and to improve overall kanji performance.
Supplementary Work in Kanji - Intermediate: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2020
The goal of this course is for the students to understand the more advanced language and culture required to communicate effectively in Japanese. Some of the cultural aspects covered are; pop-culture, traditional arts, education, convenient stores, haiku, and history. Through the final project, students will learn how to introduce their own cultures and their influences. In order to achieve these goals, students will learn how to integrate the basic structures and vocabulary they acquired in the previous semesters, as well as study new linguistic expressions. An increasing amount of more advanced reading and writing, including approximately 200 new kanji, will also be required.
Intermediate Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2010, Spring 2009, Spring 2008
This supplementary course is designed for students who are concurrently enrolled in Japan 10B to enable their acquisition of a better understanding of Japanese grammar in general and clause linkage in particular.
Supplementary Work in Grammar - Intermediate: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2010, Spring 2009, Spring 2008
This supplementary course is designed for students who are concurrently enrolled in Japan 10B to acquire a better understanding of kanji writing system and to improve overall kanji performance.
Supplementary Work in Kanji-Intermediate: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019
This course is intended to train students who wish to acquire reading
fluency in the Japanese language in a short time period and therefore
dispenses with all components not germane to that goal. Prior
knowledge of fundamental first-year grammar and vocabulary is required
as this course will start at the second-year level and run parallel
with our full-language second-year courses, covering the same reading
materials as used in J10A-B. The course will be conducted in English and
students’ comprehension will be examined and analyzed in terms of
Japanese-to-English translation. By completion of J10RB, students will
be functional readers of Japanese for general purposes.
Intermediate Reading in Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020
This course is intended to train students who wish to acquire reading
fluency in the Japanese language in a short time period and therefore
dispenses with all components not germane to that goal. Prior
knowledge of fundamental first-year grammar and vocabulary is required
as this course will start at the second-year level and run parallel
with our full-language second-year courses, covering the same reading
materials as used in J10A-B. The course will be conducted in English and
students’ comprehension will be examined and analyzed in terms of
Japanese-to-English translation. By completion of J10RB, students will
be functional readers of Japanese for general purposes.
Intermediate Reading in Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2017, Fall 2016
This course is designed specifically for heritage learners who possess high fluency in casual spoken Japanese but little reading and writing abilities. It introduces formal speech styles, reinforces grammatical accuracy, and improves reading and writing competencies through materials derived from various textual genres. Students will acquire the amounts of vocabulary, grammar, and kanji equivalent to those of Japan 10A and Japan 10B.
Intermediate Japanese for Heritage Learners: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2011, Spring 2010, Fall 2008
The Freshman Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small-seminar setting. Freshman seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester.
Freshman Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2020 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2020
Introduction to Japanese culture from its origins to the present: premodern historical, literary, artistic, and religious developments, modern economic growth, and the nature of contemporary society, education, and business. Class conducted in English.
Japanese Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2015
Sophomore seminars are small interactive courses offered by faculty members in departments all across the campus. Sophomore seminars offer opportunity for close, regular intellectual contact between faculty members and students in the crucial second year. The topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to 15 sophomores.
Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2009, Spring 2009, Spring 2008
Small group instruction in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Directed Group Study for Lower Division Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 1997
Independent study in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Independent Study for Lower Division Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2016 10 Week Session, Summer 2015 10 Week Session, Summer 2014 10 Week Session
This course is the equivalent of Japan 100A and Japan 100B offered in the regular academic year.
Intensive Advanced Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
This course will develop further context-specific skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing. It concentrates on students using acquired grammar and vocabulary with more confidence in order to express functional meanings, while increasing overall linguistic competence. Students will learn approximately 200 new Kanji. There will be a group or individual project. Course materials include the textbook supplemented by newspapers, magazine articles, short stories, and video clips which will provide insight into Japanese culture and society.
Advanced Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
This course aims to develop further context-specific skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing. It concentrates on students using acquired grammar and vocabulary with more confidence in order to express functional meanings, while increasing overall linguistic competence. Students will learn approximately 200 new Kanji. There will be a group or individual project. Course materials include the textbook supplemented by newspapers, magazine articles, short stories, essays, and video clips which will provide insight into Japanese culture and society.
Advanced Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2017, Spring 2015
Students will be trained to read, analyze, and translate modern Japanese scholarship on Chinese subjects. A major purpose of the course is to prepare students to take reading examinations in Japanese. The areas of scholarship to be covered are: politics, popular culture, religion, sociology and history as well as areas suggested by students who are actively engaged in research projects. Two readings in selected areas will be assigned, one by the instructor and the second by a student participant.
Japanese for Sinologists: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
This course helps heritage learners of Japanese who have completed 10X to develop further their linguistic and cultural competencies. More sophisticated linguistic forms are introduced and reinforced while dealing with various socio-cultural topics. Close reading knowledge and skills, formal and informal registers, and different genres of Japanese reading and writing are practiced. The materials covered are equivalent to those of 100A-100B.
Advanced Japanese for Heritage Learners: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2017, Fall 2015
Students develop their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills further to think critically, to express their points of view, and to understand Japanese culture and society in depth The readings are mainly articles on current social issues from Japanese newspapers, magazines, and professional books as sources of discussions. Students are required to write short essays on topics related to the reading materials.
Fourth-Year Readings: Social Sciences: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2018, Spring 2016
This course provides students an opportunity to develop their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills in order to express their opinions in argumentative discourse. Students read and discuss a variety of Japanese texts to deepen their understanding of Japanese society and people and to improve their intercultural communicative competence.
Fourth-Year Readings: Japanese Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2018, Fall 2016
This course provides students an opportunity to develop their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills, thereby enabling them to express their points of view and to engage in argumentative discourse. In addition to Japanese literature, readings include academic essays and other texts, which provide a variety of writing styles and serve as sources for classroom discussion. Also, Japanese films are used for various activities in order to broaden students’ cultural awareness and knowledge of Japanese society.
Fourth-Year Readings: Japanese Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
Students develop their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills further while examining Japanese historical figures, events, background, stories, etc. Students read a variety of texts and watch videos related to Japanese history as sources for discussions to deepen their understanding of Japanese society, culture, and people from historical perspectives. Students conduct individual research on a topic in Japanese history, and write a short research paper.
Fourth-Year Readings: Japanese History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019
In this course, students will practice various techniques to read articles in Japanese on current issues in Japan, and they will learn about Japanese conceptions of the world and how Japanese society functions. They may want to compare what they have learned with similar issues in their own countries to deepen their understanding of the issues and develop their critical thinking ability. They will also learn more advanced Japanese grammar and increase their vocabulary.
Fourth-Year Japanese: Current Issues in Japan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Fall 2013, Fall 2012
This course is designed for students who have studied Japanese for at least four years (540 hours). It aims to develop further their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills enabling them to utilize Japanese materials for research and job-related purposes, to present orally the results of their researches, and/or to pursue college-level courses taught in Japanese. Although much of class time will be devoted to reading- and writing-oriented activities, students are expected to participate actively in oral presentations, discussions, and debates in class.
Fifth-Year Readings: Reading and Analysis of Advanced Japanese Texts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2015, Spring 2014, Spring 2013
This course is designed for students who have studied Japanese for at least four years (540 hours). It aims to develop further their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills with special emphasis on essay and research paper writing on topics relevant not only to the student’s interest but also to the student's major or intended career. Part of this written work will become the material on which the student will give an end-of-the-term oral presentation. Students are expected to fully prepare for and dynamically participate in the discussions and debates that occur in class.
Fifth-Year Readings: Japanese for Research and Professional Use: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Spring 2017, Fall 2015
A critical survey of the main themes in the history of Japanese Buddhism as they are treated in modern scholarship. The course covers the transmission of Buddhism from China and Korea to Japan; the subsequent evolution in Japan of the Tendai, Shingon, Pure Land, Nichiren, and Zen schools of Buddhism; the organization and function of Buddhist institutions (monastic and lay) in Japanese society; the interaction between Buddhism and other modes of religious belief and practice prevalent in Japan, notably those that go under the headings of "Shinto" and "folk religion."
Japanese Buddhism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2019, Fall 2017
An introductory look at the culture, values, and history of religious traditions in Japan, covering the Japanese sense of the world physically and culturally, its native religious culture called Shinto, the imported continental traditions of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, the arrival and impact of Christianity in the 16th century and the New Religions of the 19th and 20th centuries. Focus will be on how the internal structure of Buddhist and Confucian values were negotiated with long-established views of mankind and society in Japan, how Japan has been changed by these foreign notions of the individual’s place in the world, particularly Buddhism, and why many see contemporary Japan as a post-religious society.
Introduction to the Religions of Japan: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
An introduction to classical Japanese (bungo), the premodern vernacular, which was used as Japan's literary language until well into the 20th century and remains essential for a thorough grounding in Japanese literature and culture.
Introduction to Classical Japanese: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2016
An introduction to the critical analysis and translation of traditional Japanese poetry, a genre that reaches from early declarative work redolent of an even earlier oral tradition to medieval and Early Modern verses evoking exquisitely differentiated emotional states via complex rhetoric and literary allusion. Topics may include examples of Japan's earliest poetry in Man'yoshu, Heian courtly verse in Kokinshu, lines from Shinkokinshu with its medieval mystery and depth, linked verse (renga), and the haikai of Basho and his circle.
Classical Japanese Poetry: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2015, Spring 2011, Spring 2009
The tradition of Japanese self-reflective literature, composed by both men and women, is long and rich. Topics for this course include highly personal memoirs by court women and poetic travel diaries.
Premodern Japanese Diary (Nikki) Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2010, Spring 2000, Spring 1999
The course focuses on select masterpieces from the Japanese narrative tradition, including Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari) and Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book (Makura no soshi).
Heian Prose: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2018, Spring 2018
This course is an introduction to the study of medieval Buddhist literature written in Classical Japanese in its wabun (aka bungo) and kanbun forms (including kakikudashi). The class will read samples from a variety of genres, including material written in China that are read in an idiosyncratic way in Japan. Reading materials will include Chinese translations of Sanskrit and Central Asian Buddhist scriptures, scriptural commentaries written in China and Korea, Japanese subcommentaries on influential Chinese and Korean commentaries, philosophical treatises, hagiography, apologetics, histories, doctrinal letters, preaching texts, and setsuwa literature. This course is intended for students who already have some facility in literary Japanese.
Introductory Readings in Japanese Buddhist Texts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2013, Spring 2012
Critical reading and translation of important literary texts from the Edo period, including poetic diaries, merchant fiction, and (joruri) drama.
Edo Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Spring 2012, Fall 2009
Writings in the Japanese vernacular constitute only one part of the total premodern Japanese written corpus. Until the 20th century, the preferred medium for most historical texts and male diaries was Sino-Japanese (kanbun). Familiarity with the grammar of this extraordinarily rich tradition is therefore essential for all students of premodern Japanese disciplines
Japanese Historical Documents: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2018, Spring 2018
This course is an introduction to Japanese modernism through the reading and discussion of representative short stories, poetry, and criticism of the Taisho and early Showa periods. We will examine the aesthetic bases of modernist writing and confront the challenge posed by their use of poetic language. The question of literary form and the relationship between poetry and prose in the works will receive special attention.
Modern Japanese Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Spring 2019
This course examines the historical production and reception of key Japanese literary and film texts; how issues of gender, ethnicity, social roles, and national identity specific to each text address changing economic and social conditions in postwar Japan.
Contemporary Japanese Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
This course deals with issues of the structure of the Japanese language and how they have been treated in the field of linguistics. It focuses on phonetics/phonology, morphology, writing systems, dialects, lexicon, and syntax/semantics, historical changes, and genetic origins. Students are required to have intermediate knowledge of Japanese. No previous linguistics training is required.
Introduction to Japanese Linguistics: Grammar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2017
This course deals with issues of the usage of the Japanese language and how they have been treated in the field of linguistics. It concentrates on pragmatics, modality/evidentiality, deixis, speech varieties (politeness, gender, written vs. spoken), conversation management, and rhetorical structure. Students are required to have intermediate knowledge of Japanese. No previous linguistics training is required.
Introduction to Japanese Linguistics: Usage: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
An overview of the concepts of theoretical, contrastive, and practical linguistics which form the basis for work in translation between Japanese and English through hands-on experience. Topics include translatability, various kinds of meaning, analysis of the text, process of translating, translation techniques, and theoretical background.
Translation: Theory and Practice: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Fall 2010, Fall 2008
This course surveys Japanese poetry and/or prose written predominantly in or before the Heian Period (794-1185). Topics will vary.
Classical Japanese Literature in Translation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Spring 2015
This course surveys modern Japanese fiction and poetry in the first half of the 20th century. Topics will vary.
Modern Japanese Literature in Translation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2007
Course explores stereotypical images of traditional Japanese culture and people through archaeological analysis. Particular emphasis will be placed on changing lifeways of past residents of the Japanese islands, including commoners, samurai, and nobles. Consideration will be given to the implications of these archaeological studies for our understanding of Japanese identities.
Archaeology and Japanese Identities: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2018, Fall 2017

Urami (rancor, resentment) has an enduring presence in Japanese literature. Figures overburdened with urami become demons, vengeful ghosts, or other transformed, dangerous, scheming characters. They appear in many different genre and eras. The course's topic enables discussion on concepts important for understanding Japanese literary works such as hyper-attentiveness to shifting social status, the role of groupness in targeting victims, the imperatives of shame, secrets, the circumscribed agency of women, and the reach of Buddhist teachings into behavioral norms. For those interested in comparative literature, the course offers an opportunity to take a measure of what Japanese narratives offer as legitimate causes of rancor and revenge.
Urami: Rancor and Revenge in Japanese Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2018
This course will examine the works of the novelist Murakami Haruki and the animator Miyazaki Hayao within the context of contemporary Japanese aesthetics and history. Both Murakami and Miyazaki debuted in 1979 and their work has very much defined Japan’s cultural experience from the tail end of the Era of High Growth Economics through the Bubble Era, the Lost Decade, and into the twenty-first century. Students will explore the works of these two figures in the context of the history of Japanese literature and film and its relation to larger political, social, and cultural trends of Japan from the 1980s to the present.
Murakami Haruki and Miyazaki Hayao: the Politics of Japanese Culture from the Bubble to the Present: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2013, Fall 2008, Spring 2008
The course examines the complex meanings of the ghost in modern Japanese literature and culture. Tracing the representations of the supernatural in drama, fiction, ethnography, and the visual arts, we explore how ghosts provide the basis for remarkable flights of imaginative speculation and literary experimentation. Topics include: storytelling and the loss of cultural identity, horror and its conversion into aesthetic pleasure, fantasy, and the transformation of the commonplace. We will consider historical, visual, anthropological, and literary approaches to the supernatural and raise cultural and philosophical questions crucial to an understanding of the figure and its role in the greater transformation of modern Japan (18th century to the present).
Ghosts and the Modern Literary Imagination: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2018, Fall 2016
The course considers the different literary, social and ethical formations that arise or are destroyed in disaster. It explores how Japanese literature and media, before and after 3:11, attempt to translate the un-representable, and in so doing, to create a new type of literacy about 1) trauma and the temporality of disaster, 2) precarity, community and the public sphere and 3) sustainability and ecological scale. The course will pay particular attention to a range of works that explicitly or obliquely reframe iconic or popular representations of disasters in cinema, literature and other media, taking into account of the readiness with which certain cultural forms lend themselves to vistas of disaster.
Reframing Disasters: Fukushima, Before and After: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Fall 2015, Spring 2013
This course will offer a survey of Japanese cinema from its earliest days to contemporary anime (animated film). Providing the basic tools for analyzing film language, the course begins by analyzing the interactions between early Japanese film and early Hollywood. We then consider the development of Japanese film, discussing style and structures of connotation, figurative meaning and political critique, the uses of the historical past and ideology, and the roles of youth culture and views of the family. We consider the place of important individual directors. We also discuss current critical debates about broader trends in Japanese film and culture, as they illuminate the construction and ruptures in notions of Japanese identity.
Introduction to Japanese Cinema: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2017, Fall 2011
This course is an introduction to Japanese animation, or anime, from its earliest forms (in relationship to manga) to recent digital culture, art, and games. We will analyze and study mainly animated feature films and read the critical work they inspired. We will address such issues as cultural memory and apocalyptic imagination, robots and the post-human, cities, nature, and the transnational; gender, shojo, and the aesthetics of "cute," as well as consider specific issues in the theoretical understanding of anime within technology and media theory.
Japanese Visual Culture: Introduction to Anime: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2018 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 2013, Spring 2012
Selected topics in the study of Japanese film.
Topics in Japanese Film: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Summer 2018 10 Week Session
Directed independent study and preparation of senior honors thesis. Limited to senior honors candidates in East Asian Languages (for description of Honors Program, see Index).
Honors Course: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Fall 2015, Fall 2014
Directed independent study and preparation of senior honors thesis. Limited to senior honors candidates in East Asian Languages (for description of Honors Program, see Index).
Honors Course: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Fall 2014, Fall 2013
Small group instruction in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Fall 2015, Fall 2014
Independent study in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Independent Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2019, Fall 2017
This seminar serves as an introduction to a broad range of Japanese Buddhist literature belonging to different historical periods and genres, including liturgical texts; monastic records, rules, and ritual manuals; doctrinal treatises; biographies of monks; and histories of Buddhism in Japan. Students are required to do all the readings in the original languages, which are classical Chinese (Kanbun) and classical Japanese. It will also serve as a tools and methods course, covering basic reference works and secondary scholarship in the field of Japanese Buddhism. The content of the course will be adjusted from semester to semester to accommodate the needs and interests of the students.
Readings in Japanese Buddhist Texts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2018, Spring 2018
Topics run from Japan's earliest extant poetic anthologies in Chinese (Kaifuso) or Japanese (Man'yoshu) to medieval linked verse (renga) and Edo haikai.
Seminar in Classical Japanese Poetry: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2015, Spring 2014
Offers an overview of the history and current state of the field in Japanese studies, with faculty presentations, selected readings, and orientation sessions with East Asian Library staff to acquaint participants with relevant resources for research. Requirements will include completion of course readings and preparation of a research prospectus.
Japanese Studies: Past, Present... and Future?: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 2010, Spring 2006
An introduction to research tools for Japanese studies. The course gives primary consideration to literary sources but also presents an overview of basic texts and web sites dealing with bibliographical citation, lexicography, history, religion, fine arts, geography, personal names, biographies, genealogies, and calendrical calculation. Internet access is required.
Japanese Bibliography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2013, Fall 2004
Topics may include examples from the Noh, Kyogen, Joruri, or Kabuki theaters.
Seminar in Classical Japanese Drama: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2017, Fall 2010
Topics may include works of Heian fiction such as The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari) and memoirs such as The Pillow Book (Makura no soshi).
Seminar in Classical Japanese Texts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
Reading and critical evaluation of selected texts in prewar (roughly the 1860s though the 1940s) Japanese literature and literary and cultural criticism. Texts change with each offering of the course.
Seminar in Prewar Japanese Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2015, Fall 2014
Reading and critical evaluation of selected texts in postwar (roughly the 1940s through the present) Japanese literature and literary and cultural criticism. Texts change with each offering of the course.
Seminar in Postwar Japanese Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Summer 2015 10 Week Session
Special tutorial or seminar on selected topics not covered by available courses or seminars.
Directed Study for Graduate Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015

Thesis Preparation and Related Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Individual study for the comprehensive or language requirements in consultation with the graduate adviser. Units may not be used to meet either unit or residence requirements for a master's degree.
Individual Study for Master's Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Individual study in consultation with the major field adviser, intended to provide an opportunity for qualified students to prepare for various examinations required of candidates for the Ph.D.
Individual Study for Doctoral Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2018 10 Week Session, Summer 2017 10 Week Session, Summer 2015 10 Week Session
This is the equivalent of 1A-1B offered in the regular academic year.
Intensive Elementary Korean: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Summer 2020 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2020
This course is designed for students who have little or no prior knowledge of the Korean language. Students will learn the Korean alphabet and basic grammar.
Elementary Korean: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
This course is designed for students who already have elementary comprehension and speaking skills in Korean and have minimum exposure to reading and/or writing in Korean.
Elementary Korean for Heritage Speakers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2020
With an emphasis on speaking, listening, reading and writing, students will learn daily life expressions, common colloquialisms, and speech acts. The course is also intended to introduce certain cultural aspects through media sources and various activities.
Elementary Korean: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
With special emphasis on reading and writing, students will expand common colloquialisms and appropriate speech acts.
Elementary Korean for Heritage Speakers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
A survey of pre-modern Korean literature and culture from the seventh century to the 19th century, focusing on the relation between literary texts and various aspects of performance tradition. Topics include literati culture, gender relations, humor, and material culture. Texts to be examined include ritual songs, sijo, kasa, p'ansori, prose narratives, art, and contemporary media representation of performance traditions. All readings are in English.
Introduction to Premodern Korean Literature and Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
A survey of modern Korean literature and culture in the 20th century, focusing on the development of nationalist aesthetics in both North and South Korea. Topics include "new woman" narratives, urban culture, colonial modernity, war and trauma, and diaspora. Texts to be examined include works of fiction, poetry, art, and film. All readings are in English.
Introduction to Modern Korean Literature and Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2017 10 Week Session, Summer 2016 10 Week Session, Summer 2015 10 Week Session
This course is the equivalent of 10A-10B offered in the regular academic year.
Intensive Intermediate Korean: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2019
With equal attention given to speaking, listening, reading, writing, and cultural aspects of the language, students will further develop their language skills for handling various everyday situations.
Intermediate Korean: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
This is an intermediate course for students whose Korean proficiency level is higher in speaking than in reading or writing due to Korean-heritage background. Students will elaborate their language skills for handling various everyday situations.
Intermediate Korean for Heritage Speakers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
With equal attention given to speaking, listening, reading, writing, and cultural aspects of the language, students will learn vocabulary, expressions, and varieties of speech styles beyond the basic level.
Intermediate Korean: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
This intermediate course will emphasize reading and writing so that students can reach a comparable proficiency with their already high speaking and listening skills.
Intermediate Korean for Heritage Speakers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
The Freshman Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small seminar setting. Freshman seminars are offered in all campus departments and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to fifteen freshmen.
Freshman Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.
Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Sophomore seminars are small interactive courses offered by faculty members in departments all across the campus. Sophomore seminars offer opportunity for close, regular intellectual contact between faculty members and students in the crucial second year. The topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to 15 sophomores.
Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2005, Spring 2005, Fall 2004
Small group instruction in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Directed Group Study for Lower Division Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2004, Fall 1996
Independent study in topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses.
Independent Study for Lower Division Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
This is a third-year course in modern Korean with emphasis on acquisition of advanced vocabulary and grammatical structure. Equal attention will be given to all four language skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing.
Advanced Korean: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
This is a third-year course in modern Korean with emphasis on acquisition of advanced vocabulary and grammatical structure.
Advanced Korean for Heritage Speakers: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
Students will learn more advanced expressions and use them in reading and writing. Small group discussions will enhance speaking and listening skills.
Advanced Korean: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
Students will be introduced to advanced-level Korean by reading authentic texts and writing short compositions, summaries, essays, and critical reviews. Students will be encouraged to speak using advanced vocabulary and expressions.
Advanced Korean for Heritage Speakers: Read More [+]