Courses for Spring 2024

EAST

  • Beyond Orientalism: Understanding “East Asia”

    This course explores the cultural and ideological foundations of the region we call “East Asia,” from prehistoric times to the present day. After interrogating the colonial origins of the Euro-American concept of “East Asia,” we will examine the historical distinctions, interactions, and mutual influences that shaped the regions and peoples now associated with the countries of China, Japan, and Korea. In addition exploring systems of status and political power--including class, race/ethnicity, and gender--the course will expose students to the rich religious, literary, and artistic traditions developed within and across the East Asian region.
    EAST 0010 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Bossler
  • Childhood and Culture in Japan

    This seminar offers students an interdisciplinary look at how children became central to social life in modern Japan. What set of historical and philosophical conditions made childhood newly visible in the late 19th century? How has the relationship between the marketplace and childhood evolved over the past hundred years? How have class, gender, ethnicity and sexuality inflected the ways childhood has been experienced? Students will analyze different cultural texts for and about children (early fairy tales, comic books, propaganda, film) in relation to critical essays drawn from a variety of disciplines.
    EAST 0140 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Perry
  • China Through the Lens: History, Cinema, and Critical Discourse

    This is a critical introduction to the history of mainland Chinese film. It focuses on three dimensions of cinematic practice: the historical context of film productions, the specific context/form of each film, and the critical reception of Chinese films in film studies. Important themes such as nation, visual modernity, cinematic narrative, and commercialism will be studied across the three dimensions.
    EAST 0307 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Wang
  • Two Koreas

    This course aims to look beyond larger regional politics and the security issues to the “invisible” North Korea – its culture, everyday life, films, and literature, within the general parameters of peninsular Korean history. We will begin with a detailed look into the formation of the North and South Korean states, and will continue on, focusing on the cultural and political history of North Korea. Most effort will be given, however, to dismantling conventional media coverage and representations, and to understanding how symbols, propaganda and media have affected the lives of millions of North Koreans in their everyday lived experiences.
    EAST 1505 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Choi
  • Chinese: A History of the Language

    This course traces the historical evolution of modern Chinese, commonly known as Mandarin. We will examine the uniqueness of Chinese characters, and explore their relationship to other features of the language, including word formation, phonology, grammar, and dialects. The goal will be to understand the manner by which the written script has become so central to the development of Chinese civilization.
    EAST 1510 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Li
  • Pacific Indigeneities: From Māori Mythology to James Cameron’s Avatar

    What is indigeneity? The answer is all but straightforward, especially in the context of the Western Pacific. We will examine a deeply eclectic mix of sources of Pacific indigeneity – from Māori Mythology, the Kuroshio Current, and Okinawan cuisine to Southeast Asian revolutionary thought, Oceanian cosmology, and James Cameron’s Avatar. In doing so, we will lay bare the intricacies of the concept of indigeneity as they relate to one of the world’s hotbeds of bio- and linguistic diversity. Paying close attention to forms of knowledge production both within and beyond the academy, this course explores Pacific manifestations of the global indigenous movement.
    EAST 1702 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Dotulong
  • Brush Talk: Reading/Writing Across “Sinographic” East Asia

    Chinese logographic (or “sinographic”) writing underpins literary and intellectual cultures across East Asia. From antiquity until well into the twentieth century and even today, this “scripta franca” served as a medium that facilitated communication among speakers of unrelated languages and as a conduit for information, values, concepts, and tropes. Stretching from Vietnam to Korea and from Japan to Inner Asia, the so-called “sinographic sphere” has been vaunted as a “literary cosmopolis” and a “world without translation,” yet it is also an uneven terrain of imbalanced flows and a site out of which local literacies and eventual national languages carved their autonomy. In this seminar we will attend to watershed moments from a wider East Asian history of literacy and inscription—as well as to recent attempts to theorize and critique an ecumene of Chinese letters.
    EAST 1703 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Niedermaier
  • Independent Study

    Sections numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
    EAST 1910 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Bossler
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Brokaw
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S03
    Primary Instructor
    Chen
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S04
    Primary Instructor
    Nedostup
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S05
    Primary Instructor
    Niedermaier
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S06
    Primary Instructor
    Perry
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S07
    Primary Instructor
    Sawada
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S08
    Primary Instructor
    Smith
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S09
    Primary Instructor
    Wang
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S10
    Primary Instructor
    Wang
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S11
    Primary Instructor
    Yamashita
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S12
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S13
    Primary Instructor
    Chin
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S14
    Primary Instructor
    Chen
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S15
    Primary Instructor
    Hu
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S16
    Primary Instructor
    Jiao
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S17
    Primary Instructor
    McPherson
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S18
    Primary Instructor
    Su
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S19
    Primary Instructor
    Borgmann
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S20
    Primary Instructor
    Wang
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S21
    Primary Instructor
    Jung
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1910 S22
    Primary Instructor
    Moon
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
  • Senior Reading and Research: Selected Topics

    Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
    EAST 1920 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Bossler
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1920 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Brokaw
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1920 S03
    Primary Instructor
    Chen
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1920 S04
    Primary Instructor
    Chin
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1920 S05
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1920 S06
    Primary Instructor
    Nedostup
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1920 S07
    Primary Instructor
    Niedermaier
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1920 S08
    Primary Instructor
    Perry
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1920 S09
    Primary Instructor
    Sawada
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1920 S10
    Primary Instructor
    Smith
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1920 S11
    Primary Instructor
    Wang
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1920 S12
    Primary Instructor
    Wang
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1920 S13
    Primary Instructor
    Yamashita
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1920 S14
    Primary Instructor
    Bossler
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
  • Memory and Justice in East Asia

    How does history affect the present, the political, the social, and the personal around East Asia? What are the social mechanisms and frameworks of affect and knowledge that have shaped historical memories of humiliation, violence, trauma, and culpability? This seminar focuses on several key topics to explore modern modes of remembering and justice seeking including: mapping memory; imperialism and the museum; wartime conduct and war crimes trials; political violence and transitional justice; and grassroots organizing, community justice, ritual actions, and other non-state memory work. Final projects can be web portfolios or podcasts on an event or phenomenon of your choice.
    EAST 1936 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Nedostup
  • Reading and Writing of the Honors Thesis

    Prior admission to honors candidacy required. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
    EAST 1981 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Bossler
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1981 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Brokaw
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1981 S03
    Primary Instructor
    Chen
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1981 S04
    Primary Instructor
    Chin
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1981 S05
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1981 S06
    Primary Instructor
    Nedostup
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1981 S07
    Primary Instructor
    Niedermaier
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1981 S08
    Primary Instructor
    Perry
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1981 S09
    Primary Instructor
    Sawada
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1981 S10
    Primary Instructor
    Smith
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1981 S11
    Primary Instructor
    Wang
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1981 S12
    Primary Instructor
    Wang
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    EAST 1981 S13
    Primary Instructor
    Yamashita
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
  • Courses of Interest to Concentrators

    East Asian Studies is a highly interdisciplinary concentration. The following courses in other departments can be taken for concentration credit. Please check the listing of the appropriate department for the time and location of each course.

    Comparative Literature
    COLT 0711O Off the Beaten Path: Fiction in Modern Japan Literature
    History
    HIST 1123 China's Socialist Dreams
    EAST XLIST 0

CHIN

  • Basic Chinese

    A year-long introduction to Standard Chinese (Mandarin). Speaking, reading, writing, and grammar. Five classroom meetings weekly. This is the second half of a year-long course. Students must have taken CHIN 0100 to receive credit for this course. The final grade for this course will become the final grade for CHIN 0100. If CHIN 0100 was taken for credit then this course must be taken for credit; if taken as an audit, this course must also be taken as an audit. Exceptions to this policy must be approved by both the academic department and the Committee on Academic Standing.
    CHIN 0200 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Jiao
    CHIN 0200 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Jiao
    CHIN 0200 S03
    Primary Instructor
    Jiao
    CHIN 0200 S04
    Primary Instructor
    Jiao
  • Intermediate Chinese

    An intermediate course in Standard Chinese designed to further communicative competence and to develop reading and writing skills. Five classroom meetings weekly. Prerequisite: CHIN 0300 or permission of instructor.
    CHIN 0400 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Chen
    CHIN 0400 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Chen
    CHIN 0400 S03
    Primary Instructor
    Chen
  • Advanced Chinese for Heritage Learners

    This course is primarily designed for Chinese heritage students who have successfully completed CHIN 0350. If you have not taken CHIN0350, please contact the instructor for a proficiency evaluation. Upon completing this course, you can take CHIN 0700 or equivalent, i.e. courses that have a prerequisite of CHIN 0600. This is an advanced-level course offering comprehensive work on all four language skills, with a focus on developing your ability to use sophisticated grammatical structures, vocabulary, and improving your reading and speaking skills. Materials used in this course will include a textbook, supplementary articles, and video clips.
    CHIN 0450 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Hu
  • Advanced Modern Chinese I

    An advanced course designed to enable students to read authentic materials. Students enhance their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills; improve their narrative and descriptive abilities; and learn to express abstract ideas both orally and in writing. Five classroom meetings weekly. Prerequisite: CHIN 0500 or permission of instructor.
    CHIN 0600 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Su
    CHIN 0600 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Su
    CHIN 0600 S03
    Primary Instructor
    Su
  • Advanced Modern Chinese II

    See Advanced Modern Chinese II (CHIN 0700) for course description. Prerequisite: CHIN 0700 or permission of instructor.
    CHIN 0800 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Wang
    CHIN 0800 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Wang
  • Environment, Food, and Health in China

    Environment, Food, and Health in China is an advanced Chinese course that aims to further improve students' comprehensive language ability and help students gain a basic understanding of China's environmental challenges and policies, the culinary tradition, and conceptions and practices related to health. The learning materials are adapted from authentic articles, documentaries, reports, and interviews in multimodal formats. The topics include the relationship between human and nature, energy utilization, pollution and protection, food culture, food exchange in globalization, food safety and health, food as medicine, etc. In this course, students will improve their four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing in Chinese, be able to understand China’s environmental issues, dietary tradition, and health practices. Students are expected to write simple analysis essays in formal style and improve presentational and interpersonal language skills on these themes.
    CHIN 0914 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Su
  • Modern Chinese Literature

    Introduces students to the most representative writers in 20th century China. Emphasizes textual and historical analyses. Major issues include Westernization, nationalism, revolution, class, gender, and literary innovations. Designated primarily as a literature course, rather than language class, and conducted entirely in Mandarin Chinese. Prerequisite: CHIN 0800. Instructor permission required.
    CHIN 1040 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Wang

JAPN

  • Basic Japanese

    Introduction to Japanese language. Emphasizes the attainment of good spoken control of Japanese and develops a foundation of literacy. This is the second half of a year-long course. Students must have taken JAPN 0100 to receive credit for this course. The final grade for this course will become the final grade for JAPN 0100. If JAPN 0100 was taken for credit then this course must be taken for credit; if taken as an audit, this course must also be taken as an audit. Exceptions to this policy must be approved by both the academic department and the Committee on Academic Standing. The East Asian Studies department wishes to provide language instruction to all interested students. If you are unable to register for this course due to enrollment limits but are dedicated to learning Japanese, please contact the instructor via email.
    JAPN 0200 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Borgmann
    JAPN 0200 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Borgmann
    JAPN 0200 S03
    Primary Instructor
    Borgmann
    JAPN 0200 S04
    Primary Instructor
    Borgmann
    JAPN 0200 S05
    Primary Instructor
    Borgmann
  • Intermediate Japanese

    See Intermediate Japanese (JAPN 0300) for course description. Prerequisite: JAPN 0300 or equivalent. Enrollment limited to 18.
    JAPN 0400 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Yamakawa
    JAPN 0400 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Yamakawa
    JAPN 0400 S03
    Primary Instructor
    Yamakawa
  • Japanese Language Through Popular Culture

    Japanese pop culture has been disseminated worldwide and it is one of the top reasons why people start studying Japanese today. This content-based language course examines various aspects of Japanese pop culture including but not limited to manga, anime, and video games. While students discuss topics related to Japanese pop culture, they will also learn grammar structures that enable them to write formal essays in Japanese. Through the materials of Japanese pop culture, students will also develop the skills needed to succeed in today’s world, such as critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, digital literacy, and communication. Above all, this course will emphasize creativity and help students learn how to attract people.
    JAPN 0401 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Tatsumi
  • Advanced Japanese I

    See Advanced Japanese I (JAPN 0500) for course description.
    JAPN 0600 S01
    Primary Instructor
    McPherson
    JAPN 0600 S02
    Primary Instructor
    McPherson
  • Japanese Linguistics

    This course will provide a structural overview of the Japanese language. Students will learn how to develop skills for analyzing the language through looking at sounds, meaning, and grammar. Topics include linguistic analysis of various sentence structures that students often find difficult to use, learning to choose words and sentences in appropriate situations, looking at the relation between language and culture.
    JAPN 0711 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Yamashita
  • Advanced Japanese II

    See Advanced Japanese II (JAPN 0700) for course description.
    JAPN 0800 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Hiramatsu
    JAPN 0800 C01
    Primary Instructor
    Hiramatsu
    Schedule Code
    C: Discussion Section/Conference
  • Readings in Contemporary Japanese Fiction

    Introduces contemporary short stories and novellas by award winning writers published after 2000. Authors include Yoko Ogawa, Natsuo Kirino, Jiro Asada, Bin Konno. We will analyze why the great many readers are drawn into these literary works through socio cultural background of urban communities. Prerequisites: JAPN0700 or instructor permission.
    JAPN 1010 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Yamashita

KREA

  • Korean

    Begins with an introduction to the Korean writing system (Hangul) and focuses on building communicative competence in modern Korean in the four language modalities (listening, speaking, reading, writing). Provides a foundation for later work in spoken and written Korean. Six classroom hours per week. Enrollment limited to 18. This is the second half of a year-long course. Students must have taken KREA 0100 to receive credit for this course. The final grade for this course will become the final grade for KREA 0100. If KREA 0100 was taken for credit then this course must be taken for credit; if taken as an audit, this course must also be taken as an audit. Exceptions to this policy must be approved by both the academic department and the Committee on Academic Standing.
    KREA 0200 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Moon
    KREA 0200 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Moon
    KREA 0200 S03
    Primary Instructor
    Moon
  • Intermediate Korean

    See Intermediate Korean (KREA 0300) for course description. Prerequisite: KREA 0300 or equivalent.
    KREA 0400 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Jung
    KREA 0400 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Jung
  • Advanced Korean

    See Advanced Korean (KREA 0500) for course description. Prerequisite: KREA 0500 or equivalent or permission of instructor.
    KREA 0600 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Jung
  • Translating Korean: Fiction, Poetry & Film

    This class explores the theory and practice of translation in the context of Korean cultural production. Each week we shall grapple with a particular issue in translation studies in dialogue with a Korean-language text. By the end of this course students should be able to locate the tools necessary to carry out translations from Korean to English, to demonstrate an understanding of translation as a craft with its own standards, responsibilities, and complexities, and to have completed a significant translation project themselves. Learners of the Korean language who have completed Korean 600 as well as native speakers of Korean are welcome.
    KREA 1090 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Perry