What and where is Asia? Maps have constructed the borders of and within 'Asia' as much as they have reflected their realities on the ground. In questioning the objectivity of maps, this seminar examines how various conceptions of space and cartographic practices have legitimized colonial, national, and imperial claims in the region from the seventeenth century to the present. Topics include the Mercator projection, Jesuit Atlas of China, Great Trigonometric Survey of India, aerial photography in Japan and Vietnam, postcolonial partition in India and Korea, and the global positioning system (GPS). Multiple sessions involve working with original specimens in the College’s Department of Special Collections. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: Colonial Worlds, East Asia, and South Asia. It fulfills the non-Euro/US requirement for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 1003)

Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester

How do pictures of places incite pride, wonder, desire, or fear? How can they be mobilized to promote national unity or invite social disintegration? From images of the urban pleasure quarters to scenes of sacred mountains, Japanese artists during the Edo period (1603–1868) produced landscapes, cityscapes, and seascapes to enable people to see and consume the country in new ways. This course focuses on Japanese woodblock prints to unpack how artists invested pictures—such as the renowned Great Wave—with the power to shape attitudes towards nature, belonging, and Japan’s place in the world. This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ARTH 1006)

Focuses on contemporary anglophone fantasy fiction of Asian-inspired worlds by writers of East and Southeast Asian descent. Examines how authors draw on diverse Asian genres such as the Chinese martial arts and magic cultivation epic, Hong Kong triad and gangster film, Korean fox and tiger myth, Singaporean and Malaysian ghost tale, and broadly Asian imperial court drama to address issues of gender and sexual identity, racial and class politics, empire and geopolitics, nationhood and state power, and historiography and literary representation. Authors may include Kat Cho, Zen Cho, Rebecca Kuang, Fonda Lee, Russell Lee, Yoon Lee, Ken Liu, Shelley Parker-Chan, Nghi Vo, Neon Yang, and Xiran Jay Zhao This course originates in English and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ENGL 1017)

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester

Animation is a dominant cultural force in Japan and perhaps its most important cultural export. Examines the ways Japanese animation represents Japan's history and society and the diverse ways in which it is consumed abroad. How does animation showcase Japanese views of childhood, sexuality, national identity, and gender roles? How does its mode of story-telling build upon traditional pictorial forms in Japan? Focuses on the aesthetic, thematic, social, and historical characteristics of Japanese animation films; provides a broad survey of the place of animation in twentieth-century Japan. Films include “Grave of Fireflies,” “Spirited Away,” “Ghost in the Shell,” “Akira,” and “Princess Kaguya.” This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Cinema Studies. (Same as: CINE 1020)

Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

What kinds of meanings and histories are held within objects? Uses the lens of four objects in the Indian subcontinent—rice, textiles, yoga, and photography—to trace histories of knowledge and skill, of commodification and global circulation, of power relations, and of personal attachments that these objects have generated. Central is thinking through the creative but also power-laden processes of making, using, and interpreting objects. This approach to the creative potential of analysis infuses class writing, revision, and discussion. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: South Asia. It fulfills the non Euro/US requirement for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 1039)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Examines the genre of crime, mystery, and detective fiction in East Asian literature and cinema. Asks how did writers and filmmakers from China, Japan, and Korea imagine and represent criminality as both a moral and aesthetic problem? How did their works reflect and shape social concerns around crime and punishment; deviance and norms; objective and subjective truth, knowledge and power; and the value of popular entertainment? And how did these attitudes and forms evolve over time, under the pressures of tradition, modernity, and globalization? Possible texts by: Chen Xiaoqing, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Edogawa Rampo, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, Murakami Haruki, Kim Un-su, Jeong You-jeong, and Bong Joon-ho. All works read in English. Does not presume any knowledge of East Asia.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester

Our socioeconomic class shapes who we are. At the same time, class is a powerful form of inequality. We use three ethnographic case studies of class (in China, India, and in the U.S.), along with fiction, poetry, and film, to explore the following questions: How is class 'performed' and interpreted in different cultures? How do class identities feed back into systems of inequality? How does class intersect with other forms of identity and inequality, such as gender, race, and caste? Key theorists are also brought into play. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ANTH 1029)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester

Ensemble members will learn, creatively collaborate on, and perform repertoire from South Asian classical and folk music and dance traditions. Rehearsals will: (a) build a working knowledge of North Indian music and improvisation techniques through traditional, aural methods, and (b) apply this knowledge to explore other regional traditions, culminating in a themed semesterly concert. No previous musical experience is required: the ensemble welcomes beginners, students with experience in any musical style/instrument/voice, and practitioners of different South Asian dance and music traditions. Please note: will not count in the Asian Studies major/minor. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: MUS 2707)

Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Ensemble members will learn, creatively collaborate on, and perform repertoire from South Asian classical and folk music and dance traditions. Rehearsals will: (a) build a working knowledge of North Indian music and improvisation techniques through traditional, aural methods, and (b) apply this knowledge to explore other regional traditions, culminating in a themed semesterly concert. No previous musical experience is required: the ensemble welcomes beginners, students with experience in any musical style/instrument/voice, and practitioners of different South Asian dance and music traditions. Please note: will not count in the Asian Studies major/minor. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: MUS 2708)

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Studies the intersection of art, politics, and nationalism. Focuses on the formation of modern art in China during the first half of the twentieth century and its role in imagining new futures for the country. Explores the political stakes of cultural production and introduces students to different ways of looking at and writing about art. Not open to students who have taken ARTH/ASNS 2200. This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ARTH 1610)

Goddesses, murderesses, virtuosi, warrior queens: portrayals and performances of women-identifying characters in South Asian epics resonate across centuries and continents, shaping everyday embodied experience in South Asia and its diasporas. This course examines how epic women’s narratives shape aesthetic, domestic, and sociopolitical texts and contexts, from palm leaf manuscripts to pop culture and cinema to sexuality. Texts will be read in translation from a variety of South Asian epic traditions, including Buddhacharita, Mahabharata, Shahnameh. Oral-aural epic traditions from Dalit, Adivasi, and other South Asian ethnic groups will be examined in the course as well. An interdisciplinary approach draws on performance studies, gender and postcolonial theory, diaspora studies, literary study, and embodied practice. The class will collaboratively and critically respond to course texts and themes by developing a multimodal artistic work, culminating in an end-of-semester performance. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; Classics; Theater. (Same as: MUS 1272, CLAS 1272, THTR 1307)

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester

Introductory exploration of the history of the Indian subcontinent and its connections to the broader world in an era shaped by the vibrant movement of people, goods, and ideas across the Indian Ocean, Europe, and Central Asia. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: South Asia. It also fulfills the non Euro/US and pre-modern requirements for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 1440)

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester

Introduces students to the classic Indian epics that form a core literary and cultural tradition within South and Southeast Asia: the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Examines how the epics were adapted across different kingships and polities in South and Southeast Asia, becoming part of the traditional culture of almost every part of this vast region. Since the royal patrons and the heroes of these epics were often linked, the manner in which the epics were told reveals the priorities of the different regions. Drawing on film, graphic novels, and multiple performance genres, explores the continuous reworking of these epics for both conservative and radical ends, from ancient India to the present day. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Religion. (Same as: REL 1188)

The Pacific Ocean demands our attention. Over two billion humans live on its shores and islands, and countless more organisms live under its waters. Yet much of history remains rooted in a terrestrial view of the world, despite the importance of the sea. Treating the Pacific as more than vast, empty space between continents invites new questions: How has the Pacific both opened up and closed off the movement of life, commodities, and capital? How does an oceanic perspective change how we define national, regional, or other scalar frames? How does thinking with, about, and against the sea alter how we understand history? This course brings together disparate narratives from Oceania, Asia, and the Americas to consider the Pacific as a whole from 1500 to the present. By taking the ocean as its framework of analysis, it explores how maritime trade, free and forced migration, imperial expansion, and industrial capitalism transformed and were transformed by the Pacific’s ecology. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; Environmental Studies. (Same as: HIST 1510, ENVS 1850)

Explores theories, pictures, and practices of the human body in art. Studies depictions of the human form as well as arts that activate the body, including calligraphy, spatial design, performance, and ritual. Focuses primarily on East Asia, ranging from early traditions to modern examples. Deliberately sets out to challenge a Western-centric understanding of art and art history by developing ideas about the body that don't make a recourse back to the idealized nude. Examines how art implicates the body in topics such as individuality, divinity, social order, interconnectedness, and pleasure. Examples of art to be studied include: shrines, handscrolls, landscapes, tea objects, and woodblock prints. This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ARTH 1605)

Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester

Seminar. Addresses Chinese thought from the time of Confucius, ca. sixth century B.C.E., up to the beginning of the Common Era. The first half of the time period nurtured many renowned thinkers who devoted themselves to the task of defining and disseminating ideas. The latter half witnessed the canonization of a number of significant traditions, including Confucianism. Major problems that preoccupied the thinkers include order and chaos, human nature, the relationship between man and nature, among others. Students instructed to treat philosophical ideas as historically conditioned constructs and to interrogate them in contexts. Note: This course is part of the following filed(s) of study: East Asia. It fulfills the pre-modern and non Euro/US requirements for history majors and minors. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: History. (Same as: HIST 2780)

Surveys the early history of China from the rise of complex society and state-level polity in the third millennium BCE to the fall of the Tang Empire in the tenth century CE. Focuses on the relationship between state and society and delineates the historical processes of their coevolution. Examines the formative era of political experimentation and social formation, the emergence of the bureaucratic state and agrarian society, and the development of imperial rule and multiethnic cultures. Also introduces major political and social institutions, economic systems, technological innovations, law, cosmology, philosophy, and religion, as well as arts and literature that became foundational to the Chinese state and Chinese society. Students will critically engage with a variety of source materials: archaeological data, historical writing, literary works, and visual culture. Note: This course fulfills the pre-modern and non-Euro/US requirements for history majors and minors. (Same as Asian Studies 2013.) This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 2285)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Seminar. Explores three interrelated aspects of mortality—death, burial, and the afterlife—in ancient China. Questions include: How was death conceptualized in magico-medical literature and philosophical treatises? What were the differences between ghosts and ancestors and why they matter? What can burials tell us about how the dead were treated physically and ritually? What do changes in tomb designs and funerary artifacts tell us about the development of material world and religious traditions in ancient China? How did the imaginations and representations of the afterlife evolve along with the changes in the discourses of death and burial practices over time? Textual, visual, and archaeological sources will be used. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: East Asia. It also fulfills the non-Euro/US and pre-modern requirements for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 2745)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

From China's earliest dynasties, art has been used to activate ways of seeing and being in the world. From tombs that reach into the afterlife to images of Buddhist Pure Lands, Chinese art offers multiple ways of understanding connections between different orders of existence within realms of the universe. Covers formats such as architectural designs, tomb art, pilgrimage murals, landscape painting, and scholars’ gardens. Emphasis is placed on distinct conceptions of nature and natural elements under varying belief systems, shifts in imperial patronage, and literati ideals. Readings include primary sources such as ritual texts, Buddhist doctrines, and Chinese painting treatises. Primarily focused on pre-modern Chinese art with some contemporary examples to demonstrate continued relevance today. This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ARTH 2600)

This course follows Asian and Asian American feminist thinkers and artists in their interdisciplinary social, cultural, and political interventions. In this moment of seeming “Cold War returns,” the course historically contextualizes the development of social movements in which Asian and Asian American women were involved contemporaneous and co-constitutive with the global imperial “hot” wars that shaped many of their lives through the works of scholars and artists such as Rey Chow, Larissa Lai, Lisa Lowe, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Chandra Mohanty, and Mitsuye Yamada. Framed around the idea of telling the history of the world through the lives and concerns of Asian and Asian American women and femmes, the class thus asks after the resources of Asian/American feminist visions of history, power, and liberation in/for our struggles in the present. This course originates in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; English.  (Same as: GSWS 2020, ENGL 2761)

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester

Surveys the history from the Middle Period to the end of Imperial China (1000-1911). Focuses on the emergence of a distinct consciousness of Chinese-ness and its changing relations with an ever-expanding known world. Examines issues surrounding ethnicity, cultural identity, territorial borders, foreign relations, diplomacy, and war, as well as local societies, commercial revolution, and technological innovations that made China one of the earliest nations stepping into modernity. Students will critically interrogate a variety of sources: historical writing and literary works, as well as material and visual culture. Students are expected to learn to think historically and globally, analyze primary sources and critique secondary scholarship, and craft compelling historical narratives that grapple with significant historical questions. [Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: East Asia. It fulfills the pre-modern and non-Euro/US requirements for history majors and minors]. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 2297)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester

The telling of a nation’s history is often the concern not only of historical writings but also literary ones. Examines contemporary diaspora literature on three shaping moments of twentieth-century China: the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement and massacre. Focuses on authors born and raised in China but since dispersed into various Western locales, particularly the United States, England, and France. Critical issues include the role of the Chinese diaspora in the historiography of World War II, particularly the Nanjing Massacre; the functions and hazards of Chinese exilic literature, such as the genre of Cultural Revolution memoirs, in Western markets today; and more generally, the relationship between history, literature, and the cultural politics of diasporic representations of origin. Authors may include Shan Sa, Dai Sijie, Hong Ying, Yan Geling, Zheng Yi, Yiyun Li, Gao Xingjian, Ha Jin, Annie Wang, and Ma Jian. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: English. (Same as: ENGL 2752)

Seminar. Explores the indispensable role of Chinese archaeology in the nation-building and national history in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Considers critical development in theory and practice in the discipline alongside discoveries of national and global significance, and examines debates and controversies related to the origin of Chinese civilization, national history, and cultural identity. Through the lens of Chinese archaeology, students critically engage modern China from the perspectives of how its past have been unearthed, reconstructed, and narrated. This course is part of the following field(s) of study: East Asia. It fulfills the pre-modern and non-Euro/US requirements for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 2893)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester

Surveys the history of China from the end of the imperial rule to the rise of Xi Jinping. Focuses on the different paths taken by the republican, nationalist, and communist governments to modernize China and their impacts on the development of China as a nation-state in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At the core of a historical understanding of the past hundred-years of China is to situate it both in the longue durée of Chinese history and in the broader world history. To do so, this course examines the interplay between enduring institutions such as sovereignty, government, bureaucracy, fiscal regimes, and education that grow out of China’s imperial past and their continuous transformations as the basis of national recovery and means of adaptation to engage the modern world. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: East Asia. It also fulfills the non-Euro/US requirement for history majors and minors. This course fulfills the non-Euro/US requirement for history majors and minors. It also fulfills the Modern China course for Asian Studies majors and minors concentrating on China. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 2450)

Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

Examines the history and politics of China in the context of a prolonged revolution. Begins by examining the end of imperial rule, the development of Modern China, socialist transformations and the establishment of the PRC. After a survey of the political system as established in the 1950s and patterns of politics emerging from it, the analytic focus turns to political change in the reform era (since 1979) and the forces driving it. The adaptation by the Communist Party to these changes and the prospects of democratization are also examined. Topics include political participation and civil society, urban and rural China, gender in China, and the effects of post-Mao economic reform. This course originates in Government and Legal Studies and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: GOV 2440)

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

Examines the development of United States relations with China. Begins with a brief historical examination of the Opium War, then examines United States policy towards the Nationalists and the Communists during the Chinese Civil War. In the aftermath of the civil war and subsequent revolution, the role of China in the Cold War will be discussed. Then focuses on more contemporary issues in United States-China relations, drawing links between the domestic politics of both countries and how they influence the formulation of foreign policy. Contemporary issues addressed include human rights, trade, the Taiwanese independence movement, nationalism, and China’s growing economic influence in the world. This course originates in Government and Legal Studies and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: GOV 2540)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester

Explores visual cultural trends in modern China with socialist and post-socialist conditions as the contextual setting and visual cultural studies the theoretical framework. Discussion topics include but not limited to the following: architecture, from the Imperial Palace to the Bird’s Nest stadium; art, from socialist realism to post-socialist experiment; advertising, from Shanghai modern to global consumerism; and digital media, from the Internet to bloggers. Questions central to the course ask how visual cultural trends reflect and react to China’s social-economic transitions, and how the state apparatus and the people participate in cultural production and consumption. This is a research-oriented course. Students gain knowledge about contemporary Chinese culture as well as skills in the critical analysis of cultural artifacts and trends. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: URBS 2071)

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester

Examines China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) through the lens of cinema. Viewed as one of the most destructive mass movements in China’s modern history, the CR dramatically shaped national politics and deeply affected the life of ordinary people. With film productions made during and after the CR as primary materials, the course seeks to explain the nature of the Cultural Revolution as well as how motion pictures (re)construct CR rhetoric and why the CR remains a source of trauma that haunts the memories of those who experienced it. Popular film titles such as 'The White Haired Girl', 'To Live', 'Farewell My Concubine', and others will lead students on a journey through history via the cinemas of socialist model operas, post-socialist retrospections, and alternative re-constructions. The course aims to be intellectually thought-provoking and cinematically engaging. It fulfills the minor in Cinema Studies and Chinese as well as the major in Asian Studies. Neither a prerequisite nor knowledge of the Chinese language is required. Note: Fulfills the non-US cinema requirement for cinema studies minors. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Cinema Studies. (Same as: CINE 2254)

Approaches the subject of women and writing in twentieth- and early twenty-first-century China from perspectives of gender studies, literary analysis, and visual representations. Considers women writers, filmmakers, and their works in the context of China’s social-political history, as well as its literary and visual traditions. Focuses on how women writers and directors negotiate gender identity against social-cultural norms. Also constructs a dialogue between Chinese women’s works and Western feminist assumptions. Note: Fulfills the non-US cinema requirement for cinema studies minors. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Cinema Studies; Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: CINE 2266, GSWS 2267)

Introduces students to an emerging subject that has yet to receive much attention from art critics or from scholars. Taking the body, especially the female body, as a discursive subject and visual medium, examines how women artists, through their artistic innovations and visual representations, search for forms of self-expression characterized by female aesthetics and perspectives. Included among topics covered are personal experience and history, sexuality and the gaze, pain and memory, and landscape aesthetics and the body. Examines how different visual media—such as painting, photography, installation, performance art, and video work—play a role in the development of women’s art in contemporary China. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: GSWS 2605)

Examines how China’s economic development has caused massive destruction to the natural world and how environmental degradation affects the lives of ordinary people. An ecological and environmental catastrophe unfolds through the camera lens in feature films and documentaries. Central topics include the interactions between urbanization and migration, humans and animals, eco-aesthetics and manufactured landscapes, local communities and globalization. Considers how cinema, as mass media and visual medium, provides ecocritical perspectives that influence ways of seeing the built environment. The connections between cinema and environmental studies enable students to explore across disciplinary as well as national boundaries. Note: Fulfills the non-US cinema requirement and the film theory requirement for cinema studies minors. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Cinema Studies; Environmental Studies. (Same as: CINE 2075, ENVS 2475)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Examines how the dress women wear and the fashion consumers pursuit reflect social-cultural identities and generate gender politics. Readings and discussions span historical periods, geographical locations, social-cultural groups, and identity categories. From bound feet to the Mao suit, and from qipao to wedding gowns, fashion styles and consumer trends inform a critical understanding of the nation, gender, body, class, and transnational flows. Topics include the intersections between foot-binding and femininity, qipao and the modern woman, the Mao suit and the invisible body, beauty and sexuality, oriental chic and re-oriental spectacle. With visual materials as primary source, and fashion theory the secondary, offers an opportunity to gain knowledge of visual literacy and to enhance analytical skills. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: GSWS 2076)

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

The onset of COVID-19 has led to anxiety and fear in our daily lives. The spread of this infectious disease and its destructive power prompts us to look to the film screen for ways we might comprehend the urgent subject confronting us. In considering how cinema has treated pandemics, the course will exam a number of thematic categories through cinematic articulations. The topics include but are not limited to: pandemics in history, the politics of pandemics, the fantasy or horror of pandemics, pandemics in Asia, and pandemics and animals. A carefully chosen roster of films include: The Seventh Seal, Outbreak and Contagion, The Flu that Killed 50 Million, Casandra Crossing, the South Korean productions of Flu and The Train to Busan, as well as 28 Days Later and Twelve Monkeys. The course meets the requirement for a major or minor in Asian studies, as well as the minor in cinema studies. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Cinema Studies. (Same as: CINE 2080)

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester

Asian Americans have often been portrayed as the stereotyped other by both American cinema and mainstream media. This course presents an alternative vision and a counter-cinema: films directed by Asian American filmmakers, about Asian American experiences, and from Asian American perspectives. Themes and genres addressed include the family melodrama, the coming-of-age story, transnational migration, diasporic border-crossing, processes of racialization, and gender and sexual politics. We will explore how Asian American films recast images of Asian Americans through first-person narratives, how racial difference is reclaimed from white-centric imaginations, and how Asian American cinema as a communal practice negotiates sociocultural and institutional hegemonies. At the heart of the course is the building of an Asian American spectatorship whereby Asian Americans can view themselves on their own terms. This course is part of the college-wide Asian American initiative in 2023-2024. This course fulfills the non-US cinema and the film theory requirements for Cinema Studies minors This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Cinema Studies. (Same as: CINE 2081)

Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester

Explores the deep history of foodways in China. Takes students on a historical journey to visit the earliest rice paddy of Neolithic villages in southern China, witness the elaborate food preparation and lavish feasting of the Han elites, meet the exotic ingredients and foreign peoples on the Silk Roads, and experience family and community meals of ordinary Chinese today. Through the lens of food, meals, and cuisine, this seminar engages students to make connections between a variety of topics—agriculture, environment, and food production; cooking utensils, recipes, and domestic labor; feast, famine, and politics; and food, region, and identity—to understand the history of China. This course fulfills the pre-modern and non-Euro/US requirements for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 2746)

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

Examines the multitude of visual expressions adopted, re-fashioned, and rejected from China's last dynasty (1644-1911) through the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Major themes include the tension between identity and modernity, Westernization, the establishment of new institutions for art, and the relationship between cultural production and politics. Formats under study include ink painting, oil painting, woodcuts, advertisements, and propaganda. Comparisons with other cultures conducted to interrogate questions such as how art mobilizes revolution. This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ARTH 2655)

Examines the history of contemporary Chinese art and cultural production from Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) until today. Traces experiments in oil, ink, performance, installation, video, and photography and considers these media and formats as artistic responses to globalization, capitalist reform, urbanization, and commercialization. Tracks themes such as art and consumerism, national identity, global hierarchies, and political critique. Readings include primary sources such as artists’ statements, manifestoes, art criticism, and curatorial essays. This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ARTH 2660)

How did Japan become Japan? This course introduces the origins of Japan from the archeological record until industrial modernity. Lectures survey the unification of Japan under a court-centered state, the rise and demise of the samurai as its ruling order, and the archipelago's shifting relationship to the larger world. We will not only focus on the culture of conquest by the warrior class, but also conquest via culture as inhabitants of the archipelago transferred and transformed material commodities, knowledge systems, and sacred beliefs from beyond its horizons. Readings emphasize voices that comment on gender, status, religion, science, and nature. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: East Asia. It also meets the pre-modern and non euro/us requirements for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 2420)

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester

From possessing spirits and serpentine creatures to hungry ghosts and spectral visions, Japanese literary history is alive with supernatural beings. Our study will range from the earliest times to modernity, examining these motifs in both historical and theoretical contexts. The readings will pose the following broad questions: How do representations of the supernatural function differently in myths of the ancient past and narratives of the modern nation? Are monstrous figures cast as miscreants, or do these transgressive figures challenge societal orthodoxy? How do Buddhist ideas influence the construction of demonic female sexuality in medieval Japan, and how is this motif redrawn in modern Japan? How are sociopolitical anxieties articulated in horror films like Godzilla? This course will draw on various genres of representation, from legends and novels to art and cinema. Students will gain an understanding of the cultural history of the monstrous in Japan and develop a broad appreciation of the hold that these creatures from the “other” side maintain over our cultural and social imagination. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: GSWS 2236)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester

An examination of representations of samurai in historical, literary, and filmic texts from the twelfth to the twentieth century. Topics include the changing understanding of the way of the warrior, the influence of warrior culture on the arts in medieval Japan, and the modern appropriation of the martial arts. Analyzes the romanticizing of samurai ethos in wartime writings and the nostalgic longing for a heroic past in contemporary films. Focus on the reimagining of the samurai as a cultural icon throughout Japanese history and the relationship of these discourses to gender, class, and nationalism. Readings include the “Tale of the Heike,” “Legends of the Samurai,” “Hagakure and Bushido: The Soul of Japan.” Films may include “Genroku Chushingura,” Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai,” and the animation series “Samurai 7.”

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester

A study of Japan’s coming to terms with its imperialist past. Literary representations of Japan’s war in East Asia are particularly interesting because of the curious mixture of remembering and forgetting that mark its pages. Postwar fiction delves deep into what it meant for the Japanese people to fight a losing war, to be bombed by a nuclear weapon, to face surrender, and to experience Occupation. Sheds light on the pacifist discourse that emerges in atomic bomb literature and the simultaneous critique directed toward the emperor system and wartime military leadership. Also examines what is missing in these narratives -- Japan’s history of colonialism and sexual slavery -- by analyzing writings from the colonies (China, Korea, and Taiwan). Tackles the highly political nature of remembering in Japan. Writers include the Nobel prize-winning author Ôe Kenzaburô, Ôoka Shôhei, Kojima Nobuo, Shimao Toshio, Hayashi Kyoko, and East Asian literati like Yu Dafu, Lu Heruo, Ding Ling, and Wu Zhou Liu.

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester

In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry sailed to Japan with four naval warships and issued an ultimatum: open up to trade or face foreign invasion. Charts Japan’s swift emergence from its feudal origins to become the world’s first non-Western, modern imperial power out of its feudal origins. Lectures introduce the origins, course, and consequences of building a modern state from the perspective of various actors that shaped its past: rebellious samurai, anarchist activists, the modern girl, imperial fascists, and office salarymen. Readings complicate dichotomies of East and West, modern and feudal, nation and empire through the lens of ethnicity, class, and gender. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: East Asia. It fulfills the non euro/us requirement for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 2421)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester

This course explores key elements and the evolution of the Japanese economy from the sixteenth century to the modern era. Using the lens of economic theory and empirical evidence, the class analyzes key events and economic developments, including features of the economy under the Tokugawa Shogunate, the opening and modernization of the Japanese economy in the late nineteenth century, imperial expansion, World War II, post-war economic recovery, and recent economic conditions. Special emphasis is placed on Japanese policymaking as well as on the behavior of Japanese enterprises, financial institutions, workers, and households. This course originates in Economics and is crosslisted in Asian Studies. (Same as: ECON 2030)

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester

Comprehensive overview of modern Japanese politics in historical, social, and cultural context. Analyzes the electoral dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party, the nature of democratic politics, and the rise and fall of the economy. Other topics include the status of women and ethnic minorities, education, war guilt, nationalism, and the role of the media. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Government and Legal Studies. (Same as: GOV 2450)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester

Examines the interconnections between media, politics and society in cross-national perspective. Explores national differences in issues such as free speech policy; privacy rights; censorship and self-censorship; news production and consumption; and the role of public broadcasters such as the BBC and NHK. Also considers the role of pop culture in shaping national identities and creating diplomatic 'soft power.' Cases drawn primarily but not exclusively from the UK, Japan and the USA. This course originates in Government and Legal Studies and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: GOV 2446)

Investigates the construction of girlhood through the lens of global feminist resistance, centering the writings and struggles of young women and femmes in the experience and practice of colonized, transnational, and refugee girlhood. With groundings in race, class, gender, ability, and sexuality, the course will engage with not only academic writing but also media and cultural production by and concerning girls. The work of this course is to interrogate (neo)colonial histories by centering not only what empire wants and takes from girls (how their images are deployed, how their reproductive labor is extracted), but also what girls want and do in the course of their living with, under, and against colonial power(s). This course originates in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Asian Studies; Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: GSWS 2245, AFRS 2322, LACL 2322)

In the late nineteenth and throughout the twentieth century, as Japan transitioned from a feudal society to a modern nation-state, Japanese art was mobilized by the avant-gardes and government alike. Examines the wide variety of formats and mediums encompassed in competing claims for modernization, including ink painting, oil painting, photography, ceramics, woodblock prints, and performance art. Interrogates art's complicit role in ultra-nationalism, Pan-Asianism, Oriental Orientalism, colonial ambitions, US military occupation, and post-war reconstruction. Themes covered include: reinventions of tradition, East-West relations, colonialism, trauma, and renewal. This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ARTH 2650)

Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester

Often called “The City of Dreams,” today’s city of Mumbai has had a reputation for cosmopolitanism, glamor, and opportunity but also for violence, corruption, and extremes of wealth and poverty. From its supposed origins as a swampy archipelago of seven islands to its rise to prominence in the British imperial economy, to industrialization at the hands of an emergent Indian capitalist class, to hub of anti-colonial and radical politics, popular Hindi cinema (“Bollywood”), and increasingly, in recent decades, opulent urban spaces enclosed in sparkling towers of glass and steel, the story of Bombay/Mumbai is often told through a series of highly romanticized (or dystopian) dramatic flourishes. But the history of the city in fact offers a powerful vantage point to trace the history of global capitalism, as well as histories of modern political movements and popular creative expression of all kinds. This course takes up these latter concerns, centering the voices of the city’s everyday actors: Parsi, Muslim, and Hindu trading families, migrant textile-mill workers and women street vendors, anti-caste activists, nativist politicians, social workers, and urban planners. From neighborhood to nation and beyond, we will see how lines of gender, race, ethnicity, caste, and class were frequently consolidated, but also creatively undone. Counts toward the Non-Euro/ US requirement in history and fulfills the Introductory Survey, Humanities, and non-US requirements in urban studies. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; Urban Studies. (Same as: HIST 2341, URBS 2341)

Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester

Explores the development of Japanese international relations since the Second World War and how Japan is currently adjusting its policies to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. Despite having the world’s third-largest economy and advanced technological resources, Japan has been widely viewed as underperforming in world affairs. The central question is whether Japan remains an “underperformer.” Begins with a brief examination of Japanese foreign relations after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, then examines postwar Japanese foreign policy. Relations with the United States and China will receive special attention. Topics include Japanese participation in international institutions, the historical legacy of its past actions, the impact of US military bases in Japan, and contemporary debates over immigration. This course originates in Government and Legal Studies and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: GOV 2455)

A megalopolis of 37 million people, Tokyo is the largest city on the planet, a title it has held on and off since the early eighteenth century. Yet Tokyo as we know it today—as a futuristic city of glass, steel, cement, and neon—obscures its deeper past. From its founding four hundred years ago, it has endured fires, earthquakes, epidemics, and bombings, reinventing itself each time. This course takes Tokyo as its subject of study, from its supposed origins as a fishing village to its explosive growth as the castle headquarters of the Tokugawa shoguns, the command center of the Japanese empire, and finally an essential node in the global economy. Considering Tokyo as a series of transformations reveals both the power and problems of capitalism, consumerism, and industrialization, especially through the analytics of gender, class, and ethnicity. Lectures, readings, and films pay close attention to Tokyo’s design, architecture, and infrastructure as shaping and being shaped by the shifting political and cultural landscape of Japan and the wider world. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; Urban Studies. (Same as: HIST 2410, URBS 2525)

Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

Explains the nexus between religion and society in modern South Asia via the prism of South Asian literature in English. Confined to prose fiction, considering its tendency to attempt approximations of reality. Interrogates how ideas of religion and ideas about religion manifest themselves in literature and affect understanding of south Asian religions among its readership. Does not direct students to seek authentic insights into orthodox or doctrinal religion in the literary texts but to explore the tensions between textual religion and everyday lived reality in South Asia. This course originates in Religion and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: REL 2219)

Studies the emergence of Mahayana Buddhist worldviews as reflected in primary sources of Indian, Chinese, and Japanese origins. Buddhist texts include the Buddhacarita (Life of Buddha), the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, the Prajnaparamitra-hrdaya Sutra (Heart Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom), the Saddharmapundarika Sutra (the Lotus Sutra), the Sukhavati Vyuha (Discourse on the Pure Land), and the Vajraccedika Sutra (the Diamond-Cutter), among others. This course originates in Religion and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: REL 2223)

In this exploration of Hindu texts, we delve into some of the most ancient and beloved literature from the Indian subcontinent. Students read major scriptural sources, including the Vedas and Upanishads. In our study of the epics (the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, including the Bhagavad Gita), we discuss translations from Sanskrit and popular retellings of these stories into other languages and media. We discuss the Puranas, reading the story of the warrior Goddess in the Devi Mahatmyam and investigate visual representations of gods and goddesses. We also sample Sanskrit classical poetry and devotional literature to the Goddess translated from Bengali. This course originates in Religion and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: REL 2220)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

A view of the religious cultures of India “from the ground up,” focused on studies of lived religion beyond texts and institutional orthodoxies. With more than 1.3 billion people, India is home to an incredible diversity of religious cultures, including Hindu, Jain, Muslim, Christian, and Buddhist traditions. Readings examine traditions of pilgrimage, temple worship, yoga, goddess possession, healing practices, and rites of passage, including the ordination of monks and nuns. Themes include women’s lived authority in contrast to patriarchal structures and contemporary intersections between religion, class, and modernity. Religious cultures of India also exist beyond the modern nation’s borders, as diaspora populations have grown around the world and traditions of yoga, gurus, and mantra meditation are popular globally. The course explores these religious cultures in relation to new media and transnational networks, including debates about the practice of Indian religions in Asia and beyond. This course originates in Religion and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: REL 2221)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester

Introduces students to the major trajectories of Buddhist religious thought and practice. Readings include primary sources such as sermons, monastic codes, miracle tales, sutras, and poetry, as well as secondary scholarship on diverse lived Buddhist practices. Examines Buddhism’s transformations in specific historical and cultural settings, from its origins in South Asia to its spread throughout Central, East, and Southeast Asia. Highlights important historical developments, including early Buddhist monastic communities, philosophical traditions, the development of Buddhist art and architecture, Tibetan Buddhist traditions, devotion to the Lotus Sutra, Pure Land practice, and Chan/Zen traditions. Focuses on varied Buddhist practices and goals; dynamics of lay and monastic relations; debates about gender and ethnicity in Buddhist communities; and the interplay of everyday and transcendent concerns. This course originates in Religion and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: REL 2222)

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

An introduction to religion and politics in a region that is home to about one-fourth of the world’s population, with a focus on India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Topics include religious nationalism, religion and violence, and the role of religion in legislative debates about sexuality and gender. Over the past few decades, the region has seen the growth of religious nationalisms in India and Pakistan, a civil war in Sri Lanka that divided citizens along religious and ethnic lines, and the militarization of Kashmir. But South Asia is also home to shared religious shrines and communities whose identities are “neither Hindu nor Muslim,” resisting easy categorizations. Pride parades are held in Indian cities, but debates ensue on the role of religion in legislating sexuality. Questions include: How is religion related to national identity? Should religion have a place in democratic legal systems? Can Buddhist monks justify the use of violence in times of war? This course originates in Religion and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: REL 2288)

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

Explores the universe of sickness and healing from the perspectives of people living in South Asia—India and surrounding countries—and addresses several related topics: how people in South Asia have conceived of the body, health, and illness; how local and global cultural, political, and economic factors influence health, illness, and healing; and how people in South Asia understand and experience illness and seek healing through biomedicine, indigenous medical systems, ritual, and religious healing. Readings include ethnographic, historical, and theoretical texts from cultural and medical anthropology. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ANTH 2440)

Interrogates the relation between the imagined and the everyday through a focus on South Asia, the most densely populated region in the world. Discusses how South Asia is imagined as a site of (post)colonial desires, despairs, and revolts as well as through civilizational or national tropes. Explores how these imagined South Asias are reshaped and disrupted by the everyday habitations of various political communities within the region and in diaspora. May include discussion of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Through ethnography, fiction, poetry, film, and music aims to cultivate a distinctly postcolonial sensitivity to thinking about caste, gender, spirituality, ecology, language, militancy, and politics in the region. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ANTH 2243)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester

Traces the history of India and Pakistan from the rise of British imperial power in the mid-eighteenth century to the present. Topics include the formation of a colonial economy and society; religious and social reform; the emergence of anti-colonial nationalism; the road to independence and partition; and issues of secularism, democracy, and inequality that have shaped post-colonial Indian and Pakistani society. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: South Asia and Colonial Worlds. It fulfills the non Euro/US requirement of history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 2342)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester

Examines the new forms of politics and of popular culture that have shaped modernity in India. Topics include the emergence of mass politics, urbanization, modern visual culture, new media technologies, and contemporary media and democracy. Course includes a film component. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: South Asia and Colonial Worlds. It fulfills the non Euro/US requirement for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 2343)

Seminar. Examines major contemporary cities shaped by histories of colonialism, the Cold War, and contemporary neoliberalism. Considers how these large-scale forces interacted with local, regional, and national cultures and economies to produce specific spatial politics and patterns of urbanization (such as through race, class, caste, gender, sexuality, and ability). Course materials to include primary sources from a range of genres (e.g., film, personal narrative, municipal regulations, planning documents, graffiti), as well as secondary source works of recent historical and ethnographic scholarship and selected critical readings in urban theory. Key themes include segregation and urban mixing; urban infrastructures and technological change; formally recognized and unrecognized economies; impacts of war, mass migration, and mass violence; and the everyday sensory life of the city. Medium-length independent research project developed in stages over the semester. Fulfills the non-Euro/US requirement for history majors and minors. Not open to students who have taken HIST 2346. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; Urban Studies. (Same as: HIST 2805, URBS 2805)

Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester

Seminar. Examines the history of science and technology by exploring how these knowledges have defined and shaped human and nonhuman life in South Asia in the modern era. Considers debates about scientific evidence, the making of scientific authority and expertise, and the cultures of technology, as well as the circulation of popular knowledges and their entanglements with privileged sciences. Focuses on how people have thought—and produced knowledge—about nature, the human body, and bodily differences (such as race, caste, gender, sexuality, ability). Topics may include: science and technology in the service of empire, nation, or capital (such as race science, tropical medicine, plantation agriculture, nuclear power, natural resource extraction); modern yoga and Ayurveda; the pharmaceutical industry and bioprospecting; theories of the origins of castes, tribes, or linguistic communities; and new reproductive and assistive technologies. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: South Asia, Colonial Worlds. It fulfills the non euro/us requirement for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 2804)

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester

The course provides a historical perspective on forms of violence in several south Asian religious traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. It explores the role of violence by reading primary sources and reflects upon the significance of religious violence in their sociohistorical contexts. The course content will examine Vedic sacrifice in comparison with sacrifice in other early civilizations, ascetic violence among Buddhist renouncers, the philosophical justification and legitimization of violence in Mahayana and Tantra, and finally the religious violence in anticolonial and nationalist movements in India and Sri Lanka. This course originates in Religion and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: REL 2286)

Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester

Bollywood, India's Hindi-language film industry, produces the most films in the world and has shaped popular musics and cultures throughout India and its diasporas. This course examines the history and present of the Bollywood film music industry, from its origins in the silent film era of the 1910s until today. The course will engage with Bollywood film music in an ethnomusicological context, looking at the social, political, historical, and artistic influences that shaped Bollywood's distinctive musical eras and lives of Bollywood songs through song and dance performance. Students will learn about the confluence of genres including jazz, rock, hip hop, and various Indian classical and folk music in Bollywood soundtracks, and will explore musical connections and divergences with other regional film industries in India. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; Cinema Studies; Dance. (Same as: MUS 2241, DANC 2208, CINE 2702)

Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester

Explores the historical and cultural connections between anti-racist struggles in Urban America and anti-caste struggles in urban India. Examines how 'liberation' is imagined by their participants, through writing, scholarship, artistic production, spiritual practice, political participation, and direct action. Engages with the works of W.E.B. Dubois, Angela Davis, Saidiya Hartman alongside B.R. Ambedkar, Jyotirao Phule, Namdeo Dhasal, and Du Saraswathi. Delves into historical and ethnographic studies of liberation movements in American and Indian cities. This course originates in Anthropology and is cross-listed with: Africana Studies; Asian Studies; Urban Studies. (Same as: ANTH 2600, AFRS 2460, URBS 2600)

In recent decades, girls’ education and empowerment has emerged as a key site for investment and advocacy. Girls are often represented as having the potential to solve wide-ranging societal issues, from poverty to terrorism. Interrogates the current focus on girls in international development by examining its cultural politics. What kinds of knowledges about people in the global south are produced in/through girl-focused campaigns? What is highlighted and what is erased? What are the consequences of such representations? Examinations lead to an exploration of the different theories of ‘girl,’ ‘culture,’ ‘empowerment,’ ‘rights,’ and ‘citizenship’ that are operative in this discourse. Situates girl-focused campaigns within the broader politics of humanitarianism and asks critical questions about conceptualizations of ‘freedom’ and the constitution of the ‘human’. To provide a more nuanced understanding of the lives of girls in the global south, brings to bear ethnographic studies from Pakistan, Egypt, India, and Nepal. This course originates in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: GSWS 2268)

This course engages in an academic study of the gender, religion, and politics in Pakistan to deepen students’ understanding of the world’s sixth-most populous country. We begin with accounts of the British colonization of South Asia and the nationalist movements that led to the creation of Pakistan. We then consider the myriad issues the nation has faced since 1947, focusing in particular on the debates surrounding sovereignty, gender and Islam. In addition to historical and ethnographic accounts, the course will center a number of primary texts (with English translations) including political autobiographies, novels, and terrorist propaganda materials. This course originates in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: GSWS 2710)

Explores Asian national and diasporic/transnational social contexts through the lens of various media, including print, film, television, advertising, music, and digital media. Helps understand how media construct societies and cultures and, in turn, how social institutions, interactions, and identities get reflected in media. Focuses on South Asia to explore questions of ideology and power; political economy of media; construction and representations of gender, sexuality, race, social class, nation, and religion; generations; and social movements and change. This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: SOC 2520)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester

This course investigates societal transformations and ongoing sociocultural conditions in Japan, covering the Heisei Era (1989—2019) into the current Reiwa Era (2019—the present). Often referred to as “The Lost Decades,” the Heisei Era is frequently depicted as a period of societal stagnation and decline. While considering the impetus for the “lost decades” label, we will challenge that portrayal utilizing anthropological analyses, social theory, and narratives to examine this dynamic period of change across Japanese society. Topics will include the rapidly aging and decreasing population; shifting family dynamics, experiences of marginalized communities, gender norms and reforms, innovation and bioethics, reckoning with historical events, and the consequences of natural disasters. Depictions of these issues in popular culture mediums will also be studied. Case studies will be drawn from a variety of source material formats, with an emphasis on Japanese ethnography and theory in English translation. Engages directly with critical sociocultural issues and topics in contemporary Japan, and forefronts anthropological perspectives and methodologies. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ANTH 2652)

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester

Provides a historical perspective on how gender and power have intertwined in the diverse religious traditions of India. Explores ideas about femininities, masculinities, and genderqueer identities in religious texts and premodern religious communities, analyzing the influence of monastic ideals, economic patronage, and gendered notions of divine authority. Readings examine mythology, rituals, and ideas about gender and social power in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Muslim traditions; including gender roles in family and culture; transgender identity and religion; and, in the latter part of the course, the impacts of colonialism, nationalist politics, and migration on gender and religion. This course originates in Religion and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: REL 2280, GSWS 2292)

Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester

Explores the relationship between form and feeling through a wide variety of poetry, fiction, philosophy, and visual sources from Chinese and Korean traditions, from The Classic of Poetry to Korean pop culture. With particular attention to the premodern period, examines how classical, vernacular, and popular forms create new spaces of feeling; how particular emotions shape cultural, philosophical, and political imaginations; and how environments and spaces, both real and projected, dialogue with selfhood and subjectivity. Addresses issues of language and representation, gender and sexuality, psychology and cognition, and crosscultural translation. Authors may include Wang Wei, Cao Xueqin, Yi Yulgok, and examples from Korean drama.

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester

An introduction to the writings of Asian America and this literature's development from early twentieth century to the present. Focuses on the ways Asian American writers have responded to and contested dominant Western discourses of Asia/Asians. Also explores the intersections of race with gender, sexuality, class, and country of origin in shifting notions of Asian American identity. Authors include Winnifred Eaton, Carlos Bulosan, Monica Sone, John Okada, Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, and David Henry Hwang. Note: beginning with the Class of 2025, this class will fulfill the African American, Asian American, Indigenous, Latinx, and multiethnic American or global literature requirement for English majors. This course is U.S.-based. This course originates in English and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ENGL 2750)

Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester

Intermediate Seminar. Focuses on World War II as a global moment when modernity’s two sides, its dreams and nightmares, collided. Emphasis on contemporary Asian diaspora Anglophone fiction that probes the exclusions and failures of nation and empire—foundational categories of modernity—from both Western and Asian perspectives. On the one hand, World War II marks prominently the plurality of modernities in our world: as certain nations and imperial powers entered into their twilight years, others were just emerging. At the same time, World War II reveals how such grand projects of modernity as national consolidation, ethnic unification, and imperial expansion have led to consequences that include colonialism, internment camps, the atom bomb, sexual slavery, genocide, and the widespread displacement of peoples that inaugurates diasporas. Diaspora literature thus constitutes one significant focal point where modernity may be critically interrogated. Note: Beginning with the Class of 2025, this class will fulfill the African American, Asian American, Indigenous, Latinx, multiethnic American or global literature requirement for English majors. This course is U.S.-based. This course originates in English and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ENGL 2005)

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester

Examines developments in Asian American literature since 2000 and asks how postmillennial fictions extend earlier writings' core concerns with racial identity and national belonging in the United States. Themes and contexts include globalization and transnationalism, illegal immigration and refugee experience, the post-9/11 security state and surveillance, the expansion of Asian capital, the global financial crisis, digital technology and social media, and climate change. Considers the diverse genres and functions of Asian American literature as not simply ethnic self-writing but also social satire, political critique, historical archaeology, cultural memory, and dystopic science fiction. Beginning with the Class of 2025, this class will fulfill the African American, Asian American, Indigenous, Latinx, multiethnic American, or global literature requirement for English majors. This course is U.S.-based. This course originates in English and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ENGL 2758)

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester

Intermediate Seminar. Focuses on contemporary dystopian novels by Asian and Asian diaspora writers. Explores the idea that dystopic fiction works not simply by reimagining time and forecasting bleak futures but also by remapping political spaces and redrawing social boundaries. Anarchists and vigilantes, aliens and clones, murderous children and mythic animal deities populate these worlds as writers examine totalitarianism and dissidence, globalization and labor slavery, pandemics and biotechnology, race riots and environmental devastation. Beginning with the Class of 2025, this class will fulfill the African American, Asian American, Indigenous, Latinx, multiethnic American, or global literature requirement for English majors. This course originates in English and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ENGL 2023)

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester

Explores the ways global Asian women writers have transformed popular genres as well as traditional forms as they address issues of gender identity, migration, political polarization, imperialist expansion, and ecological crisis. Examines how writers from East, South, and Southeast Asian lineages merge the anglophone novel and modern short story with modes spanning Asian and Western literary traditions, including myth, fairy tale, ancient epic, fantasy, romance, ghost tale, martial arts and magical narrative (wuxia and xianxia), and science fiction. Featured authors include Zen Cho, R. F. Kuang, and Tasha Suri, with possible brief works by Amanda Lee Koe, Anjali Sachdeva, Vandana Singh, Nghi Vo, and J. Y. Yang. Note: Beginning with the Class of 2025, this class will fulfill the African American, Asian American, Indigenous, Latinx, multiethnic American or global literature requirement for English majors. This course originates in English and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ENGL 2749)

Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester

Focuses on Asian American experiences from an interdisciplinary perspective, including history, English, Asian studies, and sociology. Examines major issues in the experiences of Asian Americans, including immigration, the politics of racial/ethnic formation and identity, the political and economic forces that have shaped the lives of Asians in the US, historical experiences and influences, and ways that Asian Americans have resisted and accommodated these influences. Uses a variety of lenses to gain critical perspective, including history, social relations and practices, and cultural production. This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; English; History. (Same as: SOC 2266, ENGL 2757, HIST 2162)

Examines the Asian communism in China, Vietnam, North Korea, and Mongolia. Asian communism presents a series of fascinating questions. Why did communist revolutions occur in some Asian states but not others? Why were relations between some Asian communist states peaceful while others were hostile? Why did some adopt significant economic reforms while others maintained command economies? Why did communist regimes persist in most Asian states, while Communism fell in Mongolia and all of Europe? The approach of the course is explicitly comparative and structured around thematic comparisons between the four states. This course originates in Government and Legal Studies and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: GOV 2445)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester

Examines the tumultuous developments on the Korean peninsula over the past century and their significance from historical, security, economic, and geopolitical perspectives. The challenges and choices facing the Korean people, their governments, neighboring countries, and the United States are assessed to understand how conditions have evolved to the high-stakes tensions that exist today, and what forces are shaping the future of both Koreas and Northeast Asia. The first half of the course considers the history of both Koreas and the conditions that underlie the modern political environment. The second half focuses on political developments of the last twenty-five years. This course originates in Government and Legal Studies and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: GOV 2550)

An introduction to the literary and filmic tradition of Korea’s modern period through the thematic lens of madness. Explores the significance of madness within the history of twentieth- and twenty-first century Korean fiction, poetry, and film, from the colonial period and the Korean War to democratization and contemporary popular culture. With attention to political, economic, social, and technological developments, asks how the representation of madness illuminates problems of history and memory, language and representation, gender and sexuality, and global capitalism, that are both unique to the shaping of the Korean cultural identity and, at the same time, deeply universal. Authors and filmmakers may include Yi Sang, Kang Kyongae, Kim Tongni, O Chonghui, Kim Youngha, Han Kang, Park Chanwook, Lee Changdong, and Bong Joonho, as well as works relevant to North Korea.

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

Examines the ways in which contemporary Korean literature and film take on the world. Looks beyond received cultural and historical boundaries by exploring how the world figures within the Korean cultural imagination, as well as how Korea might fit in with the rest of the world. Drawing from, but not limited to, the fiction and films emerging after the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and Asian financial crises of the 1990s and as part of the recent global surge of Korean pop culture, follows Korean writers, filmmakers, and their characters, as they move between national borders (North/South Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam Soviet Union, Europe, Australia, and the US) and boundaries of genre, form, language, and identity. Explores themes of history and memory; relocation and dislocation; capitalism and globalism; technology and reimagining the human. Authors and filmmakers may include: Han Kang, J. M. Lee, Bong Joon-ho, Min Jin Lee, Lee Chang-dong, Kim Youngha, and Bae Suah.

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester

Surveys the history of Asian Americans from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Explores the changing experiences of Asian immigrants and Asian Americans within the larger context of American history. Major topics include immigration and migration, race relations, anti-Asian movements, labor issues, gender relations, family and community formation, resistance and civil rights, and representations of Asian Americans in American popular culture. Readings and course materials include scholarly essays and books, primary documents, novels, memoirs, and films.This course is part of the following field(s) of study: United States. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 2161)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester

Seminar. Examines the mass imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Focuses on how historians have interpreted this episode and how Japanese Americans have remembered and reclaimed it. Topics include government justifications for incarceration, the operation of the camps, the diverse experiences of Japanese Americans, the postwar redress movement, and historical memory and commemorations. Also analyzes the political application of this history in discussions of contemporary immigration policy and social justice more broadly. Readings include secondary and primary sources, such as court cases, government documents, films, photography, art, oral histories, memoirs, and fiction. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: United States. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 2641)

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester

Asian America encompasses a diverse and dynamic population. This interdisciplinary course explores the complexities of Asian America by focusing on key historical and contemporary issues. Recognizing that much Asian American experience comes from the processes and history of US empire building, we will examine topics such as immigration, citizenship, the politics of race and ethnicity, identity formation, literary and cultural self-representation, community building, class and generational divides, gender and sexuality, and political mobilization. We will use a variety of lenses to gain critical perspective, including history, social relations and practices, and cultural production, such as literature, film, media, and art. Beginning with the Class of 2025, this class will fulfill the African American, Asian American, Indigenous, Latinx, multiethnic American, or global literature requirement for English majors. This course is U.S.-based. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: English; History; Sociology. (Same as: ENGL 2906, HIST 2163, SOC 2264)

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester

Seminar. The Anthropocene defines an epoch in which humans have become the dominant force in shaping their environment. Examines the role of East Asia in the emergence of this new era, from the seventeenth century to the present. In debating the narrative of ecological change in China, Japan, and Korea, readings and discussions focus on how successive regimes transformed their environments, and conversely, how those environments also structured modern human society. Questions what specific political, social, and economic changes triggered the Anthropocene in East Asia; how cultural, religious, and intellectual constructs have conditioned its arrival and acceleration. Weekly topics include: commodity frontiers, environmental sustainability, public health, industrial pollution, and nuclear technology. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: East Asia. It fulfills the non euro/us requirement for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; Environmental Studies. (Same as: HIST 2891, ENVS 2491)

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

How has Hollywood treated Asia and Asians? To what extent have Hollywood film productions engaged in either erotic fascination or racial prejudice, when presenting Asia as a cinematic setting and Asians as a cultural other? Examining Hollywood’s imaginative visions of the east, the course takes students on an exploratory journey from classic Hollywood films to contemporary blockbusters. Issues may include race and stardom in 'Shanghai Express', yellowface in 'Good Earth', the exotic Asian female in 'The World of Suzie Wong', stereotypes of Tibetans in 'Seven Years in Tibet', and an American’s perception of Tokyo in ' Lost in Translation'. We will also explore the Orientalist imagination through sexualized Geisha or masculinized Mulan as well as transnational crossings in the animated film 'Kungfu Panda'. In addition to analyzing themes and the social-cultural implications of films, the course also introduces students to the cinematic language: mise-en-scene, cinematography, and editing. Counts toward the major in Asian studies and the minor in cinema studies. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Cinema Studies. (Same as: CINE 2078)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester

Examines Hawai`i as a site of cultural encounter. Topics include the ways that Hawai`’s tourism industry is connected to constructions of and consumption of ethnic identities by those within and outside Hawai`i; the ways historical and contemporary encounters between different ethnic groups (Hawai`ian, haole, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Pacific Islanders) have created the contemporary Hawai`ian social landscape; and the relations between mainland United States and Hawai`ian culture and politics, particularly the rising Hawai`ian sovereignty movement. Draws from theories of ethnic tourism, race/ethnicity, and colonialism. This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: SOC 2575)

Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester

Explores the experience of Asian Americans in contemporary US society. Focusing on the present but drawing from historical experience, we look at important elements and issues for Asian Americans today: the role of immigration and immigration policy; the advantages and disadvantages of the promotion of a pan-Asian culture; the particular experiences of different Asian cultures in the US; the “myth of the model minority”; and the role of gender in these experiences. Also discusses what an understanding of Asian American experience adds to our understanding of race and ethnicity in the US today. This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: SOC 2268)

Provides an introduction to diversity and development in East Asia. The course first focuses on the rise and decline of a China- and a Japan-centric order before WWII and discusses their historical impacts on today’s domestic politics and international relations. The course then traces the postwar political economic developments. It examines the economic miracles in Asian countries and discusses their democratization. It also presents the process of Chinese economic reform and its impacts on the regional order. The course finishes with an examination of the Asian financial crisis and its impacts on regional politics. This course originates in Government and Legal Studies and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: GOV 2444)

Analyzes relations between the various states in East Asia and between those states and countries outside the region, including the United States. The course addresses empirical and theoretical questions, including: What are the threats to peace and prosperity in the region, and how are the different countries responding? What explains the foreign policy strategies of different countries, including China and Japan, and how have they changed over time? How can broader theories of international relations inform, and be informed by, the nature of foreign policy choices in this region? Is East Asia headed toward greater cooperation or conflict? This course originates in Government and Legal Studies and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: GOV 2694)

Traces the emergence of ideas of universal humanity and human rights as these took shape in the context of European imperial expansion from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. Uses case studies of Europeans and their interlocutors in Latin America, Asia, and Africa to explore the seeming contradiction and actual historical connections between empire and appeals to humanity. Examines the operation of transnational institutions like the United Nations since the mid-twentieth century, as well as recent critiques of rights frameworks and of the distinction between humans and the rest of the natural world. Students will engage in original research on a topic of their choice. This course satisfies the non-Euro/US requirement in the history major and is part of the following field(s) of study: Colonial Worlds. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 2803)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester

Islamic traditions are generally associated with the Middle East, but the majority of the world’s Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region. Introduces students to Asian Islamic traditions, tracing their development from the medieval period until the current day. Readings examine the development of regional Islamic practices, including teachers and lineages of mystical traditions (Sufism), local pilgrimages, indigenous healing traditions, and religious art and architecture, with a focus on the diversity of lived Islam. Explores contemporary conflicts over Muslim identity in Asia and debates about the place of Islam in modern media, business practices, and governments. By 2050, the largest population of the world’s Muslims will live in India but they face social and political marginalization. In Indonesia, by contrast, Muslim teachers broadcast nationally televised self-help programs for an aspiring middle class. Focus on primary historical sources and contemporary studies. This course originates in Religion and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: REL 2808)

Rivers are more than just bodies of water—they define (and defy) borders, fuel economies, and spark conflicts. They shape history. Great rivers connect people, goods, and ideas across vast distances, yet they also divide, creating contested sovereignties and struggles for control. This seminar examines the transformative role of four major rivers—the Amur, Yellow, Yangtze, and Mekong—in Northern, Central, and Southern East Asia, exploring how they have shaped geography, migration, politics, and identity along their courses. From imperial hydraulic projects to current-day hydropower disputes, we explore how rivers have been forces of both prosperity and destruction. How have communities along these waterways developed distinct identities, economies, and societies? And how have rivers themselves resisted control—shifting courses, flooding cities, and defying human engineering? Students will engage with theories of water societies, transregional connectivity, and hydropolitics while critically assessing concepts such as “river civilization,” “hydraulic state,” and “oriental despotism.” Through historical case studies, we uncover the hidden currents of power that have shaped East Asia’s landscapes and societies and add critical context for understanding humanity’s next climate and energy challenges. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; Environmental Studies. (Same as: HIST 3011, ENVS 3011)

Seminar. Explores the paradoxes of contemporary China, a communist regime that boasts economic growth rates that are the envy of the world. While communism failed in Eastern Europe decades ago, the Chinese Communist Party has been surprisingly successful and leads one of the oldest dictatorships in the world. Explores how capitalism and state power actually work in China. Topics include ethnic conflict, patronage and corruption, elite politics, popular protest, elections, and civil society. Students develop and write a research paper on contemporary Chinese politics. Previous coursework in Chinese politics is not necessary. This course originates in Government and Legal Studies and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: GOV 3410)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester

Identifies and explores key topics in recent publications of contemporary Chinese art. Alongside of subject matter, students analyze usages of socio-political context and methodologies for framing different narratives of contemporary Chinese art. Through studies of individual artists and larger contemporary art trends, students unpack current art histories while also proposing alternative approaches. Readings include monographs, exhibition catalogs, interviews, and systematic reviews of journals. Questions include: What are the challenges of historicizing the present? How does the global art world reconcile the existence of multiple art worlds? How have artists intervened in narratives of contemporary Chinese art? This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ARTH 3610)

Examines China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) through the lens of cinema. Viewed as one of the most destructive mass movements in China’s modern history, the CR dramatically shaped national politics and deeply affected the life of ordinary people. With film productions made during and after the CR as primary materials, the course seeks to explain the nature of the Cultural Revolution as well as how motion pictures (re)construct CR rhetoric and why the CR remains a source of trauma that haunts the memories of those who experienced it. Popular film titles such as 'The White Haired Girl', 'To Live', 'Farewell My Concubine', and others will lead students on a journey through history via the cinemas of socialist model operas, post-socialist retrospections, and alternative re-constructions. The course aims to be intellectually thought-provoking and cinematically engaging. Note: The course fulfills the major in Asian studies and minor in Chinese. It also fulfills the non-US cinema requirement for cinema studies minors. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Cinema Studies. (Same as: CINE 3053)

Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester

Analyzes the political, social, and cultural underpinnings of modern politics and asks how democracy works in Japan compared with other countries. Explores how Japan has achieved stunning material prosperity while maintaining among the best healthcare and education systems in the world, high levels of income equality, and low levels of crime. Students are also instructed in conducting independent research on topics of their own choosing. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Government and Legal Studies. (Same as: GOV 3400)

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester

Seminar. Explores how and why the only non-white modern empire with overseas colonies achieved and maintained domination in the absence of racialized difference. Examines debates over whether the postwar order in East Asia emerged from the violent oppression and subsequent resistance of colonized subjects or from economic and infrastructural development under the Japanese regime. Traces how these fraught issues continue to provoke controversy in East Asia to this day. May cover topics such as ethnic ideologies, travel and consumerism, print media, comparative fascism, comfort women, repatriation and decolonization, and memory wars. Requires a major research paper based on primary sources written during the semester. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: East Asia. It fulfills the non-Euro/US requirement for history majors and minors. This course is not open to first-year students. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: HIST 3421)

Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester

Examines some key social issues confronting South Asians in North America. Pays particular attention to ascendance of digital archives as repositories of South Asian American narratives and underlying questions of power. Explores questions of South Asian racial identity and how it fits into and challenges dominant conceptions of race in the US. Possible topics include citizenship, inclusion and exclusion; differences within South Asian Americans; relationship with the larger Asian American community and other communities of color; immediate and enduring effects of 9/11; media representations; memory; and family and kinship. Students will study and analyze narratives as well as start collecting life stories of South Asian Americans in New England to contribute to an existing digital repository or create a new one. This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: SOC 3330)

Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester

Although functional harmony is the central organizing principle of Western music, it is completely absent in other complex musical systems around the world. Considers other means of music organization and how to incorporate those concepts in students' compositions. Topics include traditional polymeter in Ewe drumming, scale construction and metric design in Indian raag and taal, Confucian philosophy in Chinese sizhu music, and colotomic organization in Javanese gamelan. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: MUS 3502)

Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester

Examines how Asia has been represented by America and Europe and how Asian authors have responded. Draws from a wide archive of literature, theory, film, and mass culture from mid-nineteenth century to the present. Not a survey: focus on case studies that explore historical exemplars of as well as conceptual alternatives to the critical model of orientalism, which regards western depictions of Asia as necessarily reflecting the culture of empire. Issues include US racial discourses of exoticism and the yellow peril; western modernist and postmodern appropriations of “oriental” cultures for self-critiques; and strategies of hybridity, self-orientalism, and occidentalism by Asian and Asian diasporic writers and filmmakers. Possible works by Edward Said, Pierre Loti, Bret Harte, Jack London, Winnifred Eaton, David Henry Hwang, Ezra Pound, Italo Calvino, Roland Barthes, Gayatri Spivak, Rey Chow, J. G. Ballard, Kazuo Ishiguro, Amitav Ghosh, Haruki Murakami, Bei Dao, Shan Sa, Su Tong, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai, and Stephen Chow. Note: Beginning with the Class of 2025, this class will fulfill the African American, Asian American, Indigenous, Latinx, multiethnic American, or global literature requirement for English majors. This course originates in English and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ENGL 3028)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester

Studies competing claims over what it means for contemporary art to be called global. In particular, traces how the controversial category of “global contemporary art” has been used to both perpetuate and resist Western-centered views of the world. Focuses on artworks, exhibitions, and texts that specifically counter Western-centrism in gatekeeping tactics, exclusionary systems of evaluation, and hegemonic art historical narratives. Examples include the 1989 Havana Biennial, 1999 Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, post-colonial critiques, and recent artworks and exhibits that have sought to re-map global cartographies of contemporary art. Students taking this as an ASNS course will concentrate on examples relevant to their focus of study. This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ARTH 3625)

From China’s defeat in the Opium Wars to the opening up of Japan in 1868, the nineteenth century launched critical debates in East Asia over how to become modern. Rising up against dominant Western powers, some proposed a pan-Asian entity under the slogan “Asia is One.” Within a few decades, however, this devolved into disparate political realities for colonizers (Japan), the colonized (Korea and Taiwan), and the semi-colonized (China). Analyzes how art was mobilized during this chaotic 150-year period to assert radically different political agendas. Topics include: the spread of abstraction across East Asia and artists' use of canvases, bodies, and photographs to register the trauma of war and the promises of utopia. Movements and styles such as the Japanese Gutai Group and Superflat are studied. This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ARTH 3605)

Examines manifestations and mobilizations of “art for the people” from the early twentieth century to today. Focuses on ideological imperatives in modern and contemporary Chinese art and invites cross-cultural examples from East Asian democracy movements and global pop spectacle. Asks “Who are the people?” and how art has been used to define and serve them. Discussions call attention to the implication of art in politics as well as the use of art in protest. Considers artists’ tactics for intervening in institutional and ideological claims on “the people” and limitations of national and class boundaries. Topics include publicness, mass media, art school pedagogy, and social art practice. This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ARTH 3615)

This seminar explores the changing implications of “Asian art” within global art histories. How has this category been empowering, how has it been limiting, and how does it make us rethink what constitutes both “Asian art” and “global art”? Students will investigate existing art historical models as well as alternative possibilities. Topics to be examined include the impact of theories of cultural representation, transnationalism, deterritorialization, decolonialism, and diaspora on methods for interpreting art, writing histories, and classifying artists. Through a wide range of examples of “Asian art”, students will analyze how artists have addressed processes of globalization in their work, how they have sought to position themselves in the world, and how they have been historically positioned in art histories and exhibitions. Comparisons with other geo-cultural and thematic categories will also be used to complicate invocations of difference, belonging, and tradition. This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ARTH 3630)

Examines different histories of contemporary art across Asia from nationally bounded narratives to broader claims of shared connection. Studies dominant chronologies, categories of historicization, and recent historiographical interventions asserted in exhibitions, survey texts, and monographs. Topics to be studied include the role of post-colonialism, neo-colonialism, deterritorialization, and environmentalism in histories of contemporary art production across Asia. Inclusive of East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: ARTH 3635)

Examines how law and justice in East Asia became markers of modernity and sovereignty from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries.The kinds of punishment used in a society often act as a measure in judging whether that society is civilized or barbaric, advanced or backward. Major themes include: stereotypes of “oriental barbarism,” torture and capital punishment, village law and gender, extraterritoriality and imperialism, sentiment and mass media, war tribunals, and thought reform. Students analyze legal documents in translation alongside recent scholarship in the field and write a major paper based on primary source research. No prior knowledge of an Asian language necessary Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: East Asia. It fulfills the non euro/us requirement for history majors and minors. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: History. (Same as: HIST 3420)

Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester

Contemporary migration and globalization trends have transformed where and how religious traditions are practiced, radically altering the landscape of local religion around the world. But religion in practice is always changing, and what we consider 'timeless traditions' are also reframed by individuals and communities in every generation. While migration has been integral to the development of many religions, this course considers how contemporary migration and the global spread of practices like yoga and meditation have led to the creation of new religious identities, diversifying where religions are practiced around the world. Readings highlight debates about religious identity in relation to gender, race, ethnicity, and transnational communities, including the rise of mega gurus in India and the US, the global popularity of Buddhism, and the relationship between race, religion, and authority among American Muslims. This course originates in Religion and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies. (Same as: REL 3209)

Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester