Film adaptations, as a popular cross-media practice, offer a valuable lens for exploring conversations about knowledge production across historical, cultural, and national boundaries, the sociopolitical and economic systems and institutions shaping it, and the power dynamic involved. This course examines case studies of film adaptations based on Chinese literature and beyond. Many of these literary texts and films were created by Chinese authors and directors and intended for Chinese readers and audiences. Other--such as films by the internationally renowned directors like Ang Lee, Hou Hsiao-Hsian, and Zhang Yimou, the Japanese film Princess Yang Kwei-fei (1955), or the American films like Mulan (1998) and Shang-Chi (2019)--were designed to appeal to cross-cultural audiences. Through readings, discussions, written assignments, and group projects, students will critically reflect on such issues as cultural exchange within the context of Western-dominated capitalism and globalization, cultural authenticity and appropriation, gender construction, politics of popular culture, the commercialization of religion, and the representation of Chinese American culture in the U.S.
One of the most prominent themes of early Japanese literature is a longing for and deep appreciation of beauty coupled with a poignant understanding of its perishability. In this class students read classical Japanese literature from the mid-eighth to the mid-eighteenth century and analyze the works in the context of these major themes of desire and death. In such varied works as "The Tale of the Genji", "Chûshingura" (the story of the 47 ronin), and the memoirs of Medieval recluses, students explore the different shapes that desire and death take, and how the treatment of these themes changes alongside developments in Japanese culture.
This course is a survey of modern Japanese literature with an emphasis on Japanese writers in the late nineteenth through the twentieth centuries who struggled with questions of identity. The course is organized chronologically and focuses on some of the major authors of the modern period, including Natsume Sôseki, Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, Kawabata Yasunari, and Mishima Yukio.
Chinese-language films produced in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora have been global powerhouses, winning major international awards and capturing remarkable box office receipts. With a long and intricate history, Chinese-language cinema is not only one of the most important forms of cultural productions within the region, it also has assumed an increasingly important role in the global cultural industry and imagination. This course introduces students to the broad historical scope of the Chinese-language cinema, covering three major traditions of Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The films examined in the course powerfully capture the ethos of their times, from the early twentieth century to the present. They address important issues such as gender, modernity, national identity, ethnicity, and globalization. While these issues define the contemporary societies under study, they also condition the making of the films.
The examination of the self and its representation that has dominated Japanese literature since the Meiji period (1868-1912) took on a new urgency and tone in Japan's post-war period, with many authors exploring identities that challenged the established order. For some, that challenge was expressed through transgression and violence; for others, it was embodied in characters who lived outside of the boundaries of social acceptance. During a post-war period of general economic prosperity in which the Japanese government has famously taken pride in being a "homogenous" society, the country's contemporary literature is consistently and remarkably populated by characters who live on the margins of that homogenous identity. This course will explore the dominant themes of the most important modern and post-modern authors of Japan, including Ôe Kenzaburo, Murakami Haruki, and Yoshimoto Banana, with particular emphasis on these marginalized characters and what they say about the "center" and the self. The goals of this course are 1) to become familiar with the most critically acclaimed literary voices of the post-war period; 2) to identify dominant themes in the literature of the period and examine what they say about what it means to be human; 3) to develop skills in critical reading, thinking and writing.
The arrival of the first Portuguese trade ship in Japan in 1542 brought to Japan and some European countries a new and different Other that forced both sides to reevaluate their understanding of their own cultures. A wide range of texts produced during the first 100 years of that encounter document how both sides struggled to define the new cultures they found and place them in the context of their known worlds, even as those worlds were often changed by that process. Using a multidisciplinary approach, students will examine letters, maps, reports, religious treatises, legal documents, and literary accounts produced by European traders and missionaries on the one hand, and by Japanese officials, religious scholars and chroniclers on the other, to identify the discourses that these documents constructed of the Other during this period. They will analyze which voices dominated those discourses and which were silenced, what political, economic and religious factors influenced them, and what power those discourses exerted over relations between Japan and Europe. Finally, they will read two 20th-century Japanese fictional accounts of the period and watch an American film, and examine how those earlier discourses were employed in the analysis of contemporary issues and themes.
This course explores the interactions of Asian peoples ' the commodities, social practices, and ideas which they produce ' across borders, both political and imagined. The course crosses disciplinary borders, as well, drawing upon divergent materials from the humanities and social sciences in an attempt to do justice to a contemporary context that could be called 'Asia in motion.' An underlying thesis holds that, since nineteenth-century colonialism, nations in the 'West' and 'Asia' participate in a global, dialectical movement in which notions of identity (national, cultural, ethnic, religious, territorial, linguistic) share moments of fluidity and fixity.
Since antiquity, many cultures have turned to retribution as a means of restoring justice. Stories about getting even through revenge abound in both highbrow and popular Chinese literature. The themes of revenge and retribution have lent themselves effectively to various literary genres throughout Chinese history, from historical biographies and classical tales to vernacular short stories and plays, extending all the way into twentieth-century ballet and film. Literature has served as an important site of inquiry into the morality and mechanisms of revenge and retribution, sometimes offering conclusions that are a good deal more ambiguous than legal and philosophical discourses about the same question. This course works through four organizing themes: The Collective (assassination and self-destruction for a larger cause); The Individual (revenge and redemption in interpersonal relationships); Modern Man and Nation Building (from the Republican Period to Socialism); and Transnational Interpretations of "China's Hamlet." By the end of the course students should be able to identify the relevant genres, produce effective oral and written analyses of the material, and critically and cogently reflect on how Chinese conceptions of revenge and retribution might help them think through their own beliefs about revenge, justice, forgiveness, and identity.
An overview of diversity and change in Southeast Asia, with a focus on, and field component in, Indonesia and Thailand. Students will examine the origins and development of complex state societies from an in-depth, ethnographic perspective. Students will explore issues of religious syncretism, gender, agriculture, the cultural impact of European colonialism, and the post-colonial period of nation building in Southeast Asia. Students will also delve into geographically focused case studies, which look at the cultural component of many important issues facing the region, including environmental decline and deforestation, the impact of globalization, the problems of ethnic and religious minorities, and other socio-cultural issues. The second half of the course will examine economic and political processes shaping the region. Specific topics include the economic legacies of colonialism, contemporary patterns of economic growth, patterns of change in rural communities, the process of urbanization and challenges faced by residents of Southeast Asian cities, the role of the state in managing development, democratization and human rights in Southeast Asia, and demographic patterns. The international portion of the course lasts approximately two weeks, and features an immersive stay at local universities in Indonesia and Thailand. The field component is required, and includes guest lectures by local scholars, trips to cultural and historic sites, ethnographic projects, and potential trips to neighbouring areas. Students will be responsible for their own airfare, as well as other potential program fees.
The purpose of this course is to prepare students for the semester of study and travel in Asia. The focus of this course is primarily on academic preparation for the study-travel semester in Asia, but will also include some practical matters. Because PacRim welcomes and encourages students from a variety of majors and with varying backgrounds on Asia, this course serves to ensure that all students on the trip have a shared foundation for course-work on PacRim, most especially preparing students for ASIA 491, the Independent Experiential Learning Project. This course is required for all students participating in the PacRim Program.
This course consists of independent research and the preparation of a significant paper of original scholarship. Each student seeking the Minor in Asian Studies as Robert Trimble Distinguished Asia Scholar must initiate a topic, identify a supervising instructor in the Asian Studies Program, and develop a plan for research, writing, and public presentation of the project. Alternatively, a student may meet the one-semester thesis requirement for the Distinguished Asia Scholar distinction in Asian Studies by an approved research seminar in a department participating in the Asian Studies Program.
Students trace a topic in multiple PacRim countries in order to develop a comparative, capstone project. Course deepens intercultural comprehension and deploys ethnographic methods of data-collection and observation.
An independent study allows a student to pursue a specific topic not covered in existing courses, under the supervision of a faculty member. A written proposal must be submitted and agreed upon by the faculty independent study advisor.