Asian Literature and Culture Courses

Courses marked with an * are available for graduate credit.

Asian Humanities

Chinese Culture

College Seminar
- ASIAN LC 101-7 – To Paint Their Lives

Japanese Culture

Korean Culture

South Asian Culture

Asian Humanities

ASIAN LC 290 – Buddhist Cultures and Rhetoric of Violence

Overview of Course
Although episodes of religious violence are still met with incomprehension and bafflement, even a cursory reading of world history would remind us that religion’s power to inspire violence is not only not new, but it is pervasive. This course investigates the intersections between religion and violence in the context of Buddhist Asia while also considering why in many religious traditions there seem to be a link between the two. The course will be structured in two parts: in the first part students will be encouraged to build expertise in the basic concepts, definitions, and general academic consensus (as well as debates) about categories including “religion,” “violence,” “sacrifice,” “ritual,” “martyrdom,” and also “nationalism,” “politics,” and “terrorism” through reading both primary sources (in English translation) and secondary sources (scholarly writings). We will then move into an analysis of case studies that focus on specific circumstances where Buddhist rhetoric, scriptural authority, and religious practices have played a role in violence including suicide, terrorist-related actions, and self-immolation predominantly in pre- and modern Asia. Some of the provocative questions that this course asks include: Why and how is religion involved in politics? Is Buddhism a pacifist religion? How does religion rationalize violence? How can some Buddhist leaders embrace terror as a political tool? Are the recent practices of self-immolation in Tibet acts of violence? Can non-violence be violent?

Learning Objectives
By engaging primary sources and recent academic literature in the field, students will be encouraged to enrich their knowledge of these problematic categories and phenomena through critical and objective analysis.

Teaching Method
Lecture and discussion

Class Materials (required)
• Mark Juergensmeyer and Margo Kitts, Princeton Readings in Religion and Violence, Princeton University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0691129143
• Michael Jerryson & Mark Juergensmeyer (eds), Buddhist Warfare. Oxford University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0195394849

ASIAN LC 290 – Intro to Contemporary Tibetan Literature

Overview of Course

Course summary coming soon!

ASIAN LC 290 – Intro to Tibetan Literature

Overview of Course
What are Tibetan literature’s distinctive features? In what ways has Buddhism determined Tibetan literary genres? How have modern forms of Tibetan literature developed? Students in this course will read Tibetan literature in English translation along with secondary sources to learn and reflect upon the long history of Tibetan literature up to the present. Given the impact that religious concerns have had among Tibetans for centuries, in the first part of the course students will analyze the ways in which Buddhism and Tibetan literary forms are intertwined from the Tibetan imperial period forward. The second part of the course will survey modern and contemporary Tibetan literature and its myriad influences, such as Chinese literary and political theory. Students will gain familiarity with diverse genres of Tibetan literature in translation including fiction, poetry, biographies, and historical treatises.

Learning Objectives
• Develop an undergraduate-level understanding of the variety and genres of Tibetan literature
• Reflect upon the role of Buddhism in Tibetan literature
• Understand the Chinese influence on modern Tibetan literature
• Consider the continuities and innovations that separate traditional genres of Tibetan literature from its modern developments.

Teaching Method
Lecture and discussion

Evaluation Method
Participation, in-class presentation, term paper

Class Materials (required)
- Heruka, Tsangnyon, Life of Milarepa. PENGUIN. ISBN 13: 9780143106227

- Chogyel, Tenzin. Life of the Buddha. PENGUIN. ISBN 13: 9780143107200

- Schaeffer, Kurtis R. Himalayan Hermitess: Life of a Tibetan Buddhist Nun. OXFORD UNI PRESS. ISBN 13: 9780195152999

ASIAN LC 390* – Buddhist Cultures and the Rhetoric of Violence

Overview of Course
This course investigates the intersections between religion and violence in the context of Buddhist Asia while also considering why in many religious traditions there seem to be a link between the two. The course will be structured in two parts: in the first part students will be encouraged to build expertise in the basic concepts, definitions, and general academic consensus (as well as debates) about categories including “religion,” “violence,” “sacrifice,” “ritual,” “martyrdom,” and also “nationalism,” “politics,” and “terrorism” through reading both primary sources (in English translation) and secondary sources (scholarly writings). We will then move into an analysis of case studies that focus on specific circumstances where Buddhist rhetoric, scriptural authority, and religious practices have played a role in violence including suicide, terrorist-related actions, and self-immolation predominantly in pre- and modern Asia. Some of the provocative questions that this course asks include: Why and how is religion involved in politics? Is Buddhism a pacifist religion? How does religion rationalize violence? How can some Buddhist leaders embrace terror as a political tool? Are the recent practices of self-immolation in Tibet acts of violence? Can non-violence be violent?

Teaching Method
Lecture and class discussion

Evaluation Method
In-class participation and presentation Weekly response papers Term paper

Class Materials (required)
Mark Juergensmeyer and Margo Kitts, Princeton Readings in Religion and Violence, Princeton University Press, 2011 - ISBN 978-0691129143 Michael Jerryson & Mark Juergensmeyer (eds), Buddhist Warfare. Oxford University Press, 2010 - ISBN 978-0195394849

Class Materials (suggested)
Michael Jerryson, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road: Buddhism, Politics, and Violence. Oxford University Press, 2010 - ISBN 9780190683566 Michael K. Jerryson, Buddhist Fury: Religion and Violence in Southern Thailand. Oxford University Press, 2011 - 978-0199793242 Brian Victoria. Zen at War, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.; 2nd edition (June 28, 2006) - ISBN 978-0742539266

ASIAN LC 390* – Martial Arts, Religion, and Philosophy in East Asia

Overview of Course
This course offers the opportunity to investigate martial art culture in Japanese society in the centuries between the Tokugawa shogunate takeover in the sixteenth century until the aftermath of WWII. Students will learn how samurai military culture and the Japanese art of sword fighting (kenjutsu) evolved conceptually from a system of fighting to cut down an adversary to one aimed at personal spiritual growth and cultivation of the mind. Course readings include treatises, essays, and poetry (waka, haiku) by several expert Japanese swordsmen including feudal lords, samurai, Buddhist monks, and philosophers who highlight not just actual combat techniques, but also the inward aspects that can lead to psycho-spiritual realization.

Grounded in Confucian virtues, Buddhist doctrine, and the Shinto worldview, these figures discuss martial arts not only as mere external techniques of death, but also as inner techniques of life. In this course students will read works in English translation by and about several authors including Yagyu Munenori (1571-1646), Soho Takuan (1573-1645), Miyamoto Musashi (1582-1645), Kaibara Ekiken (1630-1714), Yamamoto Tsenetomo (1659-1719), Daidoji Yuzan (1639-1730), Yamaoka Tesshu (1836-1888), Takahashi Deishu (1835-1903), Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki (1870-1966), Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969), Taisen Deshimaru (1914-1982), and Omori Sogen Roshi (1904-1994).

Some of the probing questions we will address are: what instigated the separation between traditional martial systems (bujustu) and modern martial arts (budo)? Where do the spiritual and the physical intersect in martial arts? What is the relationship between Buddhist doctrine and violence in the art of the sword? What does it mean for Aikido to be promoted as an “art of peace”? What kind of values can modern martial arts instill in their practitioners?

Learning Objectives
Understand the difference tradition and modernity in East Asian martial arts.
Understand where spirituality and violence intersect in the practice of martial arts in Japan.
Grasp Buddhist, Confucian and Shinto values that martial culture instill(ed) in practitioners.
Understand the role of Buddhist philosophy in the elaboration of modern Japanese swordsmanship.
Discuss the content of some of the most famous treatises of Japanese martial art.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Weekly Response paper; in-class presentation; in-class discussion; term paper.

Class Materials (required)
Takuan Soho. The Unfettered Mind: Writings from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman. 2012 - ISBN 978-1590309865

Musashi, Miyamoto and Thomas Cleary - The Book of Five Rings: A Classic Text on the Japanese Way of the Sword (Shambhala Library) Mass Market Paperback - ISBN 978-1590302484

Yagyu Munenori and Hiroaki Sato - The Sword and the Mind - Overlook Press 1986 - ISBN 978-0879512569

William S. Wilson - Budoshoshinshu (Paperback) - Shambala ISBN 978-1569571897

Taisen Deshimaru - The Zen Way to the Martial Arts - ISBN 978-0140193442

Morihei Ueshiba - The Art of Peace: Teachings of the Founder of Aikido (Paperback) - Shambala ISBN 978-0877738510

Class Materials (suggested)
PDFs and additional material will be provided in class.

ASIAN LC 390* – Buddhist Literature and Translation

Overview of class
In this course, students will read writings from Buddhist canonical and non-canonical literature on a variety of subjects to gain an introduction to the variety of literary genres used in Buddhist works, as well as to consider the central tenets of the Buddhist literary tradition these works convey. Who was the Buddha? What did he preach? Why do we suffer and how do we realize enlightenment? How should one follow the Buddhist path? What metaphors and parables have Buddhists used to convey these insights over the centuries? Students will be able to explore these and other questions through a selection of English translations of original texts in Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, and Tibetan including the life of the Buddha, his sayings, Buddhist sutras, and Buddhist autobiographies. As this course is an introduction to Buddhist literature, there are no prerequisites, and students will gain familiarity with Buddhist teachings through engaging directly with primary sources in translation.

Teaching Method
Lecture
Discussion

Evaluation Method
Paper, final
Presentations
Class participation
Paper, mid-term

Class Materials (Required)
- The Life of the Buddha (Penguin Classics 2015 - by Tenzin Chogyel and Kurtis R. Schaeffer. 978-0143107200 - The Dhammapada (Penguin Classics) Paperback - 2010 by Valerie Roebuck (Editor, Translator, Introduction) ISBN 978-0140449419 - The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng, by Red Pine, Counterpoint 2008, ISBN 978-1593761776 - Himalayan Hermitess: The Life of a Tibetan Buddhist Nun 1st Edition, by Kurtis R. Schaeffer, ‎Oxford University Press, 2004 - ISBN 978-0195152999

ASIAN LC 390* – Fate, Fortune, and Karma in East Asia

Overview of class
Are our actions free or fated? What larger forces shape the choices we make? To what do we owe our successes, and what is to blame for our mistakes? In East Asian religions, such questions have been answered with reference to a variety of different concepts of fate, fortune, and karma. These concepts shape not only how people have viewed the world, but also how they have made their way through life. This class focuses on religious approaches to questions of destiny in premodern East Asia. We begin by studying Indian Buddhist ideas of karma and early Chinese notions of fate and fortune preceding Buddhism's arrival in China, then turn to the ways people in China and Japan negotiated these various concepts over the many centuries following the arrival of Buddhism. In the end, we discover important throughlines amid the diversity of religious responses to the problem of destiny in East Asian history.

Learning Objectives
1. Learn about the history of religion in East Asia by studying concepts of fate, fortune, and karma 2. Engage with key themes and methods in the academic study of religion 3. Develop skill in analyzing textual and visual primary sources, as well as in engaging with secondary scholarship 4. Build skill in critically and constructively analyzing complex subjects through reading, writing, discussing, undertaking research, and formulating original arguments

Class Materials (Required)
All assigned readings will be uploaded to Canvas.

ASIAN LC 390* – From the Ramayana to Rhoma Irama: India, Indonesia, and the Indian Ocean World

Overview of Course
India and Indonesia share more than just a name. For thousands of years, these two regions—distant in geographical terms, but united by the winds and tides of the Indian Ocean—have been in close contact. Alongside trade, India and Indonesia have engaged in a continuous religious and cultural dialog that persists to the present day. This course takes an transoceanic approach to examine the past of these two regions. Our focus will range from tangible connections—from the rise of Hindu kingdoms in Indonesia and the exchange of Sufism-tinged Islam, to the influence of Bollywood film songs on the Indonesian music industry today. It will also engage shared conceptual issues—how, for example, have Indonesia, India, and Pakistan approached such vexing questions as selecting and creating a national language or unifying diverse populations? By the end of the course, students will have a strong historical understanding of the history of dialog and exchange between South and Southeast Asia, as well as a framework for thinking conceptually across borders. This course is an advanced seminar. Prerequisite: strong familiarity with one of the following: India, Indonesia, Pakistan. For more information, email dmaj@northwestern.edu.

Teaching Method
Seminar

Evaluation Method
discussion, final essay/project

Class Materials (Required)
None

ASIAN LC 390* – Reading China in Translation

Overview of Course
What do we lose and gain by reading about non-Western cultures in English rather than in their native languages? Can we have an “authentic” understanding of these cultures (if there ever is one) when they have already been translated into another language? This advanced undergraduate course focuses on the methodological and ethical question of linguistic medium in approaching the non-West: why are they always in translation? In this course, we will cover a wide range of Western (mis)representations of China (and the Chinese) from the nineteenth century to the present. From the lumbering, stagnant, opium-poisoned country of the nineteenth century, to “The World’s Factory” and “Crazy Rich Asians” in contemporary discussions of global capitalism, China and the Chinese have featured in Western imagination as an ultimate other, both hopelessly backward and disturbingly modernized. As we contextualize the West’s changing perceptions of China through historical writings, we will reflect on our own positions and methods of learning about China through English-language materials (both originals and translations). The main literary text we will read throughout the quarter is R. F. Kuang’s Hugo-award winning bestseller Babel (2022), a counterfactual history of the nineteenth century in which translation makes all the difference in the world, including Britain’s domination of China. We will situate Kuang’s fantasy novel (also a campus novel, if that makes it even more enticing!) about translation in relation to contemporary theories of translation. This course provides students with a grounding in contemporary topics in translation studies, and it mobilizes these theoretical insights to approach a historically situated China that has continually been imagined, read, and produced through (mis)translation.

Teaching Method
Discussion

Evaluation Method
Class Participation Presentation Short Paper Final Paper

Class Materials (required)
R. F. Kuang, Babel ISBN: 9780063021426

ASIAN LC 392 – Media in East Asia

Overview of Course

course information coming soon!

Teaching Method

Evaluation Method

Class materials (required)

ASIAN LC 397 – Decolonizing Knowledge Production While Writing Your Own Research

Overview of Course
Many students find writing their own research project to be one of the big milestones of their college experience (aside from Dance Marathon and Dillo Day). This seminar aims to help you meet this milestone by completing a research paper of your own design on Asia, a paper of 12-15 double spaced pages in length. Taking your strongest seminar paper from your undergraduate career to date as a jumping off point, you will expand and develop an original argument with further research and writing – an important and necessary part of research writing that students often do not have a chance to explore in topical seminars. This class provides the space for students to read, think, and talk about their respective research methods and questions, finding references, writing and developing arguments in stages, and working through multiple drafts of writing to produce a polished research paper. Students will also have a chance to practice sharing their research findings with peers, advisors, and the university community.

While mainly a writing-focused seminar driven by individual student projects, the course will also engage questions of how researchers from different communities and fields have sought to decolonize the kinds of knowledge they glean and produce. How might you, with your respective life experiences, positions, and interests, produce knowledge that is meaningful to you, the communities and histories at stake, and the general public?

Enrollment in this course requires instructor approval (direct your inquiry to jwe[at]northwestern[dot]edu, with your reasons for wanting to take this class). While generally intended for juniors and seniors in ALC, this course is open to students of all years and majors, space allowing. Please secure a primary advisor on the field of your research prior to enrolling in this course, as you will need to consult your primary advisor on key aspects of your research project. If you intend to pursue an honors thesis project, you are encouraged to consult your primary advisor about this as early as possible. The course convenes once a week, which means that for six days of the week, your work will be largely self-guided. Your commitment to bringing materials to share and workshop each week with your peers is important to making the most out of this seminar.

Registration Requirements
Instructor Approval by email

Learning Objectives
Develop research questions on chosen topic and explain their importance as academic arguments.
Cultivate a research methodology in conversation with well-chosen references.
Hone the skills to communicate your research topic to peers and non-specialists.
Polish research writing and learn to revise drafts.

Teaching Method
Seminar Discussion; Workshopping.

Evaluation Method
Essays
Participation

Class Materials (required)
Novelist as a Vocation - Murakami Haruki (Knopf). ISBN: 0451494644.
Craft of Research, 5th Ed. - Wayne Booth et al (U Chicago Press). ISBN: 0226826678 * earlier editions are okay.
Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks, 2nd Ed. - Wendy Laura Belcher. ISBN: 022649991X

ASIAN LC 492* – Human/Non-Human/Posthuman

Overview of Course
This seminar considers the legacy of the idea of “the human” and the ideology of humanism as it originates in early modern European thought and through its encounter with other places, other people, and other forms of matter. It offers students a concentrated introduction to key texts and trends in humanist thought, animal studies, posthumanism, new materialism, and other fields. It also considers these theoretical texts in light of “non-European” literary and cultural sources, particularly from Sinophone contexts.

Teaching Method
Discussion

Evaluation
Presentations
Final Essay

Course Material (required)
TBD

ASIAN LC 492* – Approaches to Asia

Overview of Course

This seminar considers methods of cultural analysis that have shaped the field of Asian Studies and questioned its status as an academic discipline and institutional formation. We begin with a brief history of the field, examining its roots in the philological practices and colonial knowledge production of its various subfields, before moving through the critique of area studies and into contemporary developments. While attending to the epistemological and political stakes of producing scholarship about literature, media, theory, and other forms of cultural production in Asia, we will explore the efficacy of particular practices of interpretation: from modes of theorization and historicization to close reading and translation. In terms of praxis, we will consider how we position ourselves within and between fields through the methods we use in our research. We will ask, for example: how can we make our work legible to scholars in overlapping disciplines and areas while remaining focused on a specific project? How and why might we put our work into dialogue with scholarship from academic fields outside of the Euro-American context? What role does translation play in the interpretive and writing process? How do we identify our audiences and how do we speak to them? Designed for students whose research involves studying aesthetic media and cultural practices in Asia, this seminar will approach these issues by examining the methods employed in recent and past scholarship in the fields that constitute Asian studies.

Registration requirements
Open to graduate students; undergraduate students with permission of the instructor

Teaching Method
Seminar discussion, student presentations

Evaluation Method
Attendance and participation, in-class presentations, final assessment

Class Materials (required)
All materials will be available on Canvas for download

ASIAN LC 492* – Fanon Now: Race, Gender, Coloniality

Overview of Course
A revolutionary, thinker, psychiatrist, and physician, Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) has produced a diverse and groundbreaking life work from Martinique to Algeria that has shaped and continues to shape generations of activists and scholars today.

This graduate seminar will examine major writings of Fanon, from his early to late life, and a selection of scholarship on and influenced by Fanon in the fields of critical race theory, feminist theory, and decolonial thought, such as Gordon, Karera, Maldonado-Torres, Zambrana, Mbembe, Al-Saji, Snorton, and Wynter, among others. The range and nature of responses to Fanon’s work since his time speaks to the continued problem of colonialism, anti-Blackness, and the racialized gender system, as well as the changes in paradigms and discourse surrounding these issues. The course encourages seminar participants to think critically with and about Fanon’s work, to find ways to incorporate Fanon into their respective research agendas and explore the renewed significance of Fanon’s work today.

Teaching Method
Seminar

Evaluation Method
Long Paper

Class Materials (required)

Black Skin, White Masks. Frantz Fanon. Trans. By Richard Philcox. ISBN: 978-0802143006
Toward the African Revolution. Frantz Fanon. Trans. By Haakon Chevalier. ISBN: 978-0802130907
The Wretched of the Earth. Frantz Fanon. Trans. By Richard Philcox. ISBN: 978-0802158635

ASIAN LC 492* – Global Caste

Overview of Course
Critical and comparative caste studies is a rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field. This is a graduate-level, reading intensive course in which we will collectively investigate both classic and emerging scholarship on caste in South Asia and around the world from a number of different disciplinary perspectives (literature, history, media, performance, anthropology, religious studies etc.). The organization of the class will be democratic and syllabus will be built collectively: everyone will contribute texts and/or critical questions from their own fields of expertise and inquiry and together we will shape the intellectual journey of the course. Books may include: Aniket Jaaware, "Practicing Caste: On Touching and Not Touching" (Fordham UP 2018), Nico Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Fordham UP 2017), Shailaja Paik, The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford UP 2022), and Joel Lee, Deceptive Majority: Dalits, Hinduism, and Underground Religion (Cambridge UP 2021).

Learning Objectives
In this course we will become familiar with the dynamic interdisciplinary field of critical and comparative caste studies. Reading and discussing both classic and cueing-edge new scholarship, we will understand global caste from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. Students will each craft a research paper from the perspective of their own disciplinary fields of inquiry and expertise.

Teaching Method
Discussion

Evaluation Method
Evaluation will be based on engagement with the course materials and class participation, including regular reading responses and leading discussion. There will be a final research paper.

Course Materials (required)
Aniket Jaaware, "Practicing Caste: On Touching and Not Touching" (Fordham UP 2018) ISBN 0823282260 Nico Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Fordham UP 2017) ISBN 0674979727 Shailaja Paik, The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford UP 2022) ISBN 1503634086 Joel Lee, Deceptive Majority: Dalits, Hinduism, and Underground Religion (Cambridge UP 2021) ISBN 1108826660

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Chinese Culture

ASIAN LC 200 – East Asian Classics

Overview of class
Course summary coming soon!

ASIAN LC 204 – Modern Chinese Popular Culture

Overview of Course

Course summary coming soon!

ASIAN LC 290 – Fashion Matters

Overview of Course
Course summary coming soon!

ASIAN LC 290 – Sinophone Feminisms

Overview of Course
The aim of this course is to introduce the histories of feminisms and feminist consciousness in the Sinosphere, and to thus provide students with exposure to non-Western-centered cases of feminist struggles for human rights and social justice from the late nineteenth century to the present. To achieve this goal, we will analyze a variety of sources, including literature, films, and other media by authors and activists concerned with the lives and realities of Chinese women. In the course of our discussions, we will map our respective positionalities vis-à-vis the study of feminist engagements, histories, and actors in the Sinophone.
Throughout the quarter we will combine our engagement with primary and secondary sources to navigate questions like: How do we study feminisms within the remit of Chinese studies? What biases, legacies, and challenges do we need to contend with as scholars working (mostly) in the Anglophone outside of the Sinosphere? Who determines when and where Sinophone feminist engagements emerged? What disciplinary methodologies and tools do we have in our interdisciplinary toolbox that we can deploy as researchers and as teachers?
We will be joined in this enterprise by two exciting and distinct cohorts both virtually and in person. A series of guest speakers based in the USA, Europe, mainland China, and Taiwan who, in their roles as scholars and activists, will help us probe the contested claims about the births and birthplaces of Chinese feminisms, to engage, critique, and discuss both conventional and alter/native approaches to studying and teaching Sinophone feminisms in the Anglophone. We will thus have the opportunity, to engage in a dialogue with scholars like Barbara Mittler, Wang Zheng, Jia Tan, and others. For each of these lectures, we will share a virtual synchronous classroom with fellow classmates in Heidelberg University, who will attend an intensive version of this course over Summer 2024, also taught by Professor Zamperini. Our learning will thus help us build a collective, transcultural, and global community of thinkers and researchers, one that helpfully will continue long after the end of our course at the end of the Fall quarter.
Knowledge of Chinese and previous exposure to the course’s topics, while helpful, is not required.

Learning Objectives

• Apply key theoretical concepts from the course to understand and analyze social issues related
to gender, sexuality, new media, social equity, ethics, and justice from a feminist perspective.
• Critically investigate, explain and analyze the readings and topics of the course in class discussion and writing assignments, and improve analytical skills in these two connected spheres.
•Reflect on questions of location and privilege especially in relation to scholarship and activism.
• Integrate course insights into one’s daily lives and cultivate activism about gender equality and
diversity that takes into consideration global, regional, political, historical, and cultural contexts.
• Understand the cultural logic of a time and place not our own
• Become an active part of a transnational, transcultural learning community that integrates scholars and peers in a variety of academic environments around the world, beginning with Heidelberg University

Teaching Method
Student-centered discussion and lectures

Evaluation Method
The final grade will be based on the following criteria:
-Active class participation (attendance, preparation, and discussion) 30%
-Assignments (writing statements, short papers, in class presentations, collaboration with peers, etc.) 35%
-Final Project 35%

Class Materials (required)
All materials will be available on Canvas

ASIAN LC 300* – Chinese Feminisms

Overview of Course
The aim of this course is to introduce the histories of feminism and feminist consciousness in modern and contemporary mainland China, and to thus provide students with exposure to non-Western-centered cases of feminist struggles for human rights and social justice from the late nineteenth century to the present. To achieve this goal, we will analyze a variety of sources, including literature, films, and other media by authors and activists concerned with the lives and realities of Chinese women. We will be joined in this enterprise by guest speakers based in the USA, mainland China, and Taiwan who, in their roles as scholars and activists, will help us navigate questions like:
What do Chinese women wish to liberate themselves from, how do they enact this and to what end? In what ways does the problem of gender complicate the ideological advent of modernity in China? How do different technologies of communication and exchange, from the literary journal to cinematic narratives to cyberspace, help and/or hinder activism aimed at fostering gender equality and diversity in China? What connections exist between feminists and gender, sexuality, the body, media, nationhood, and politics? What changes and breakages do we see in the paradigms of traditional Chinese culture and the evolving expectations of women under Confucianism, communism and capitalism in the late nineteenth, twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, especially in the contemporary situation of globalization?

Learning Objectives
• Learn about feminisms and their histories in mainland China, and, where possible and relevant, in other Sinophone areas, including the ways feminist projects across time intersect with debates on colonialism, postcolonialism, and globalization. • Become familiar with theoretical discussions of power and agency in recent feminist discourses as well as specific information on the situation of women in China in various historical settings. • Become familiar with the terms of feminism, activism, media and technology, gender, and sexuality that are crucial to understand the past and current cultural, political, social, and economic trends occurring within mainland China, and, where possible, in the Sinophone. • Apply key theoretical concepts from the course to understand and analyze social issues related to gender, sexuality, new media, social equity and justice from a feminist perspective. • Critically investigate, explain and analyze the readings and topics of the course in class discussion and writing assignments, and improve analytical skills in these two connected spheres. •Reflect on questions of location and privilege especially in relation to scholarship and activism. • Integrate course insights into one’s daily lives and cultivate activism about gender equality and diversity that takes into consideration global, regional, political, historical, and cultural contexts. • Understand the cultural logic of a time and place not our own

Teaching Method
Lecture, discussion, films, group work, guest speakers, presentations, readings, research and creative projects

Evaluation Method
The final grade will be based on the following criteria: -Active class participation (attendance, preparation, and discussion) 30% -Assignments (writing statements, short papers, in class presentations, etc.) 35% -Final Project 35%

Class Materials Required
All course materials will be provided on Canvas.

ASIAN LC 300* – Sinophobia, Yellow Peril, and other Fantasies of China as Threat

Overview of Course
China has long been an object of fascination and anxiety in the Euro-American imagination. In recent decades, a politicized and racialized discourse of a “rising” China has constructed that nation as an existential threat to America’s global hegemony. As a figure of possibility rather than probability, threat refers not to what is likely to happen but to what could conceivably happen. Threat, like risk, requires acts of the imagination, speculative fictions designed not simply to create fear but to inspire action. This course offers both a critical history of those speculative and often sensational visions of a threatening China (in literature, film, visual culture, and other media) as well as an introduction to key theoretical texts that allow us to better understand how China has been constructed as an object of imagination from the19th century to the present day. Rather than simply centering on “Western” imaginaries, however, this course stages a broad dialogue between global visions of China and expressions of cultural, environmental, and political threat from within the Sinophone world. It asks how shared anxieties manifest in competing discourses of threat within and outside of China.

Teaching Method
Discussion

Evaluation Method
Tentative Evaluation Breakdown
Participation and Preparation (15%)
Short Essays: 30%
Final Essay Proposal: 10%
Final Essay: 45%

Class Materials (required)
Ling Ma, Severance (ISBN 1250214998)

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College Seminar

ASIAN LC 101-7 – To Paint Their Lives

Overview of class
This seminar will focus on how women, across cultures and time, represent their lives through various media and means, from visual art to literary engagements to graphic media, from movies and photography to music and social media. Our interdisciplinary investigation of (mostly non-Western and as often as possible Asian) women's autobiographical practices, past and present, will allow us to work closely with primary sources (in English translation, if necessary), and with pertinent theoretical work in the fields of gender, sexuality, feminist theory, and queer studies.
The authors we will engage include Lady Sarashina, Artemisia Gentileschi, Li Qingzhao, Lady Hyegyong, Orgyan Chokyi, He Yin Zhen, Charlotte Salomon, Theresa H. K. Cha, Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, San Mao, Theresa H. K. Cha and Thi Buy, among others. When possible and meaningful, we will set their autobiographical practices against the grain of male representations of women's lives, and in dialogue with our own autobiographical gestures and utterances.

Learning Objectives
In College seminars, students gain skills in:
• setting and evaluating academic goals
• communicating effectively, both orally and in writing
• studying effectively
• thinking critically
• understanding standards of academic integrity
• knowing when and how to ask for help

In our time together, we will integrate the objectives above with the themes, issues, and methodologies related to women’s autobiographical practices. More specifically, we will
1) Introduce major ideas in the study of autobiographical practices over time, from the perspective of a variety of disciplines, and in a variety of genres and media
2) Explore a variety of disciplinary methodologies to think about and study autobiographical practices, their intersections with gender, subjectivities, class, status, culture, across time and space
3)Think critically about the standpoints, methods, omissions, and possible uses of each study
4) Learn to reflect on our respective positionalities and how our intersectional identities inflect, inform, and shape our understanding of cultural practices and productions, our own as well those different from ours
5) Foster detailed, persuasive writing and conversation about these complicated topics
6) Create individual and communal spaces of dialogue and conversation around the seminar’s topics

Teaching Method
Student-centered discussion, with the occasional lecture

Evaluation Method
The final grade will be based on the following criteria:
-Active class participation and attendance (discussion, preparation, short assignments) 25%
-Assignments (writing statements, short papers, etc.) 25%
-Presentation 15%
-Final Project 35%

Class Material (Required)
All materials will be available on Canvas and on e-reserve.

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Japanese Culture

ASIAN LC 221 – Introduction to Classical Japanese Literature

Overview of Course
Course summary coming soon!

ASIAN LC 222 – Birth of Modern Japan

Overview of Course
This course is an introduction to the literature and culture of Japan’s Meiji period (1868-1912). This was a moment of rapid social and cultural transformation as Japan rushed to adopt the institutions of Western modernity, and Japanese writers and readers turned to literature to make sense of the changes taking place around them. In order to understand this moment, we will read a series of major literary works (novels and short stories) that focus on the shifting mores, social opportunities, and moods brought on by Japan’s embrace of modernity. The main emphasis of the class is on understanding these works in historical context: on furnishing ourselves with the historical knowledge of Meiji Japan necessary to understand, appreciate, and interpret literary texts. In interpreting these works, we pay particular attention to the feelings they represent or produce, and to what those feelings might tell us about the experience of modernity in Japan and the non-West broadly speaking. All readings are in English; no knowledge of Japanese or prior study of Japan is required or expected.

Teaching Objectives
• Describe major genres and works of Japanese literature, as well as major cultural keywords, from the Meiji period (late 19th-early 20th c.).
• Situate literary works in relation to meaningful social and cultural contexts, and interpret how they both reflected and commented creatively upon those contexts.
• Analyze the thematic content and formal structure of literary works as a basis for interpretation and comparison.
• Interpret key conceptual terms like ‘modernity” and ‘the novel’ in historical and cultural contexts and in relation to primary texts.
• Communicate and debate humanistic knowledge, including interpretation and critical evaluation of literary works from multiple, possibly conflicting perspectives, both orally and in writing

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Attendance and participation, discussion forum, collective annotation, midterm essay, quizzes, final paper

Class Materials (required)
All materials will be provided digitally in PDF format.

ASIAN LC 224 – This class topic changed from Manga: Its History and Forms to Japanese Cinema I

Overview of course

Introduction to Japanese Cinema I: From Early Cinema to the Golden Age
This course offers a history of Japanese cinema from its earliest days through the so-called “Golden Age” of the 1950s. We will consider how film and other moving image technologies have reflected historical moments and shaped cultural discourses in modern Japan. Focusing on films that raise disciplinary questions related to both the cinematic medium and Japan, we will examine, among other topics, the era of silent cinema; the relationship between nationhood and the formation of a “national” cinema; technological transformations and the coming of sound; the wartime period; cinema during the occupation; and 1950s modernism. We will also study the place of important individual directors – Ozu, Mizoguchi, and Kurosawa – within the broader economic and institutional contexts of Japanese cinema and its global circulation. Students will learn how to critically analyze various films from multiple theoretical perspectives while gaining an understanding of the major figures and movements in the history of Japanese cinema. Syllabus subject to change.

Evaluation Method:
Attendance and Participation; Quizzes; Short Essays

Class Materials (required):
All readings are available on Canvas as individual files.
All films will be screened in class and can be streamed through Canvas

ASIAN LC 224 – Japanese Cinema II

Overview of course
This course offers a history of Japanese cinema from the beginning of the New Wave movements in the mid-1950s to the present moment. We will consider how cinema has reflected historical moments and shaped cultural discourses in this period. Focusing on films that raise disciplinary questions related to both the cinematic medium and Japan, we will examine, among other topics: the relationship between cinema and the era of high economic growth, the decline of the studio system, postmodernism, and cinematic responses to the post-bubble economic recession. We will also study the shifting position of directors within the broader economic and institutional contexts of Japanese cinema and its global circulation. Students will learn how to critically analyze various films from multiple theoretical perspectives while gaining an understanding of the major figures and trends in the history of postwar Japanese cinema. Syllabus subject to change.

Learning Objectives
This course introduces students to humanistic approaches to analyzing cinema in postwar Japan. Students will learn: 1. methods for interpreting the significance of formal techniques used in cinema 2. how to connect particular films to their historical contexts 3. how to write clearly and incisively about cinema.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Class Participation; Weekly Responses; Short Essays; Possible Short Presentations

Class Materials (required)
All readings are available on Canvas as individual files. All films can be streamed through Canvas.

ASIAN LC 321* – Paying For It: Sex, Money, and LIterature in Early Modern Japan

Overview of Course
In early modern or Edo-period (1600-1868) Japan, the licensed prostitution quarters of the three main cities (Kyoto, Osaka, Edo) were among the most fertile sites of literary production, and the courtesan was one of the most complex literary figures. This course examines the relationship between prostitution and literature in Japan during this period: how was the commodification of literature, through the emergence of a commercial publishing industry, related to the commodification of sex? Topics addressed include representation and the use of the courtesan as a literary symbol; tensions between literary image, lived experience, and embodied performance; questions of agency and identity politics, and the methodological challenges of reconstructing marginalized historical subjectivities; the role of media in producing sexual desires and norms of gender; ideological functions of the figures of courtesan and “geisha” in modern cultural imaginaries; and more. Our orienting concern is with understanding the logics of commodification in the early modern context: what was the impact of the commodity form on cultural production and social relations in early modern Japan, and how was it shaped by hierarchies of gender, class, and status? All readings are in English; no knowledge of Japanese is required or expected.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Attendance (10%), participation (10%), forum essays (15%), response comments (5%), working annotation (10%), midterm paper (20%), final paper (30%)

Class Materials (required)
All materials will be provided in PDF format.

ASIAN LC 322* – Art and Activism in Modern Japan

Overview of Course
This course examines the relationship between arts and politics in modern Japan. We will examine examples of how art has been conceived as a form of political activism and how social movements have, in turn, shaped cultural and aesthetic forms. The course will move chronologically while exploring a set of historically persistent questions: How have art and politics been defined as distinct or overlapping realms of human activity? What is the relationship between aesthetic form and political ideologies? How is artistic production itself a form of social organization and engagement? We will consider, among other topics, how transnational anarchism and struggles for democracy in the late 19th century shaped the modern novel; feminist literature and proletarian arts movements; fascist aesthetics; practices of democracy in the postwar avant-garde; afro-Japanese solidarities and cultural exchange; the intersection of art and social protest in the 1960s; and the role of the arts in anti-nuclear movements. Drawing from an array of disciplinary perspectives, this course investigates how the arts have been used to imagine and enact social change on local, national, and global scales. Syllabus subject to change.

Learning Objectives

1. To develop a working knowledge of major political and artistic movements in modern Japanese history
2. To reflect critically on the relationship between art and politics
3. To become conversant in the political and discursive stakes of aesthetic media through group discussion, written assignments, and verbal presentation
4. To improve skills of interpreting aesthetic objects in different media
5. To learn how to complete basic research combining political and aesthetic approaches to the study of Asia as part of a final project

Teaching Method
Lecture and discussion

Evaluation Method
Class Participation, Discussion posts, Midterm Essay, Final Essay

Class Materials (Required)
All Materials are available as PDFs on Canvas

ASIAN LC 322* – Finance Fictions: The Japanese Economic Novel

Overview of Course
The economic novel is one of the most popular literary genres in postwar Japan. Since their inception in the late 1950s, economic novels have sold as well as, if not better, than mysteries and twice as well as the more high-brow form of “pure literature” (jun bungaku). Centering on the economic realities of life under capitalism, Japanese economic novels portray the workings of financial corruption, the mechanics of production and distribution, and the experience of laboring within one of the largest consumer economies in the world. This course traces this genre from its origins in 1957 to the contemporary moment. Reading works by early practitioners of the form to its more recent inflections in the literature of writers like Oyamada Hiroko (The Factory), Tsumuro Kikuko (There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job), and Murata Sayaka (Convenience Store Woman), we will examine the relationship between literature and the transformations in Japan’s capitalist economy. We will consider, among other topics, how this genre depicts changes in the workplace and forms of labor, systemic modes of economic exploitation, the psychological and emotional experience of debt in a financialized economy, and the gendering of particular types of work. Guiding our inquiry will be an overarching question: what are the connections between literary and economic form. The syllabus is subject to change.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
Class Participation, Short in-class presentations, Midterm Paper, Final Paper

Class Materials (Required)
The instructor will try to make all class materials available as PDFS but student may need to purchase the following books: Azuchi Satoshi, Supermarket (trans. Paul Warham, ISBN 0312382944) Miyabe Miyuki, All She Was Worth (trans. Alfred Birnbaum, ISBN 0395966582) Kirino Natsuo, Out (trans. Stephen Snyder, ISBN 1400078377) Oyamada Hiroko, The Factory (trans David Boyd, ISBN 0811228851) Tsumura Kikuko, There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job (trans Polly Barton, ISBN 1635576911) Murata Sayaka, Convenient Store Woman (trans. Ginny Tapley Takemori, ISBN 0802128254)

ASIAN LC 322* – Video Games in/as Japanese Culture

Overview of class
Course summary coming soon!Return To Top

Korean Culture

ASIAN LC 240 – Contemporary Women Authors of South Korea and Feminist Criticism

Overview of class
Course summary coming soon!

ASIAN LC 240 – Colonial Korean Literature and Culture

Overview of Course
Why is the Korean-Japanese relationship so strained to this day? How might we think about the colonial period (1910-1945) on the Korean peninsula from our present, and about intra-Asian colonialism?

This introductory course offers students some snapshots of colonial era Korean literature and culture and tackles difficult but rewarding questions about this period. We will read short fictions from prominent authors of the time and discuss visual cultures (illustrations, art, films) surrounding New Woman, Indigeneity, race, and wartime mobilization. The course also invites students to consider the often-forgotten Korean diaspora and migrations created under the vast Japanese empire that exceed the limits of the peninsula: what does it mean to be “Korean” in the shifting identities of the colonized in these different places around the empire? Finally, the course examines more contemporary representations of the colonial period to think about how the colonial period haunts the present as we desire and consume the colonial.

No prior knowledge of Korean language or culture is necessary to take this course. Course assignments include a deconstructed paper (short writing exercises), a group presentation, and a final creative group project. Participation in class discussion and peer collaboration are important aspects of this course.

Learning Objectives
Develop the skills to build layered and well-reasoned arguments on given topics.
Practice expressing multi-stage arguments in both writing and verbal presentation and providing analyses of adequate and well-chosen evidence. Identify the differences between literary and cultural representation, what is represented, and positionality.

Teaching Method
Discussions; Short Lecture

Evaluation Method
Short deconstructed papers (3) throughout the quarter; one 10 minute group presentation; one creative final group project; participation

Class Materials (required)
All materials available via Canvas

ASIAN LC 240 – Introduction to Korean Culture

Overview of Course

Course summary coming soon!

ASIAN LC 240 – Wynter's Fanon: Race, Gender, Coloniality

Overview of Course

Course summary coming soon!

ASIAN LC 340* – Feminist, Queer, Crip: South Korea and Its Discontents

Overview of Course
This course examines contemporary discussions on the topics of gender, sexuality, and disability in South Korea. The past decade has seen an explosion of popular interest in feminism in South Korea. Along with this were competing debates on social and economic inequalities and legislations, as well as debates on gender identity, everyday experiences of discrimination, and overlooked sites of intersectional violence.

As the scholar Alison Kafer has poignantly shown, thinking through the entanglements of feminist, queer, and disability concerns is important to rethinking exclusionary claims and their attendant problems. Students will explore how queer and crip frameworks trouble and deepen feminist debates, and situate these frameworks in relation to Korea’s history of militarism, war, and migration. Course materials include scholarship on feminist, queer, and crip theories beyond the Korean context, novel and short stories, TV show, news articles, and films.

No prior knowledge of the Korean language or culture is necessary. Student participation, discussion, and peer collaboration are important aspects of this course, and all students will be encouraged to speak in class.

Learning Objectives
1. Theorizing
Recognize the different feminist theoretical approaches. Interpret the ways Korean cultural and literary texts explore the issues of gender, sexuality, and disability.

2. Communication
Develop the skills to build layered, advanced, and well-reasoned arguments on Korean literature and culture. Engage the arguments of authors without reducing them.

3. Complicating “Korea”
Identify how Korean literature and culture have explored and shaped social issues surrounding gender, sexuality, and disability in South Korea.

Teaching Method
Discussion, Group Work

Evaluation Method
One Final Long Paper
One Individual Presentation
One Group Creative Short Op-Ed Writing

Class Materials (required)
1. The Hole: A Novel by Pyun Hye-young. ISBN: 1628727802
2. Concerning My Daughter by Hye-jin Kim. ISBN: 1632063492

ASIAN LC 340* – The Rise of K-Culture: Korean Media and Cultural Industry Since the 1990s

Overview of Course
Course summary coming soon!

ASIAN LC 340* – Transforming Seoul: From Imperial Periphery to Global Smart City

Overview of class
Course summary coming soon!

ASIAN LC 340* – Transpacific Literature: Saboteurs and Tricksters

Overview of Course
This seminar is organized around two multilingual and experimental literary texts by Native American and Asian American authors on intertwined histories of violence across the Pacific, paired with secondary readings on Korea, Japan, and Native America. The seminar asks: what happens when literary texts approach historical violence with irony and irreverence? How do we engage different scales of violence across the Pacific without reducing them to relics of the past or objects in a museum framed by somber mood? Would doing so cause offense, or reveal something unsaid about how we are often asked to engage such histories? First, you will read the Anishinaabe writer and thinker Gerald Vizenor’s Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57 (2003), followed by the Korean American poet and non-fiction writer Cathy Park Hong’s Dance Dance Revolution (2007). Weaving together stories of the atomic bombing, military occupations, settler colonialism, imperialism, and disablement, these texts serve as a gateway to explore the questions raised in transpacific studies on decolonization. While focusing on Hiroshima, Kwangju, and White Earth reservation as key sites of inquiry, the seminar will bridge relevant readings from Asian Studies, Asian American Studies, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. This seminar will be discussion-centered with several writing assignments. No prior knowledge of the geographic areas or language skills are necessary. Students with prior exposure to at least one literary, cultural studies, or theory course at 200 or 300 level (if you are unsure, email Professor We) are encouraged to enroll, though there are no pre-requisites. The course engages closely with histories of violence, and participation is an essential component of this course. There will be frequent collaborative writing assignments and one final research paper.

Learning Objectives
Interpret the ways Korean cultural and literary texts explore the issues of colonialism, nation building, citizenship, gender, sexuality, disability, and neoliberalization. Develop the skills to build layered, advanced, and well-reasoned arguments on Korean literature and culture. Engage the arguments of authors without reducing or unquestioningly accepting them as one’s own. Practice expressing advanced, multi-stage arguments in both writing and verbal presentation. Provide analyses of adequate and well-chosen evidence. Develop clarity and creativity of expression on Korean literature and culture.

Interpret the ways Korean cultural and literary texts explore the issues of colonialism, nation building, citizenship, gender, sexuality, disability, and neoliberalization. Develop the skills to build layered, advanced, and well-reasoned arguments on Korean literature and culture. Engage the arguments of authors without reducing or unquestioningly accepting them as one’s own. Practice expressing advanced, multi-stage arguments in both writing and verbal presentation. Provide analyses of adequate and well-chosen evidence. Develop clarity and creativity of expression on Korean literature and culture.

Teaching MethodDiscussion

Evaluation Method
Group Writing Assignment, Final Research Paper, Presentation, Participation.

Class Materials (required)
1. Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57. By Gerald Vizenor. ISBN: 978-0-8032-3284-6. 2. Dance Dance Revolution: Poems. By Cathy Park Hong. ISBN: 978-0393333114.

ASIAN LC 390* – Transpacific Literature: Tricksters and Saboteurs

Overview of class

Course summary coming soon!

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South Asian Culture

ASIAN LC 260 – The India/Pakistan Partition in Literature, Film, and Popular Culture

Overview of Course
Course summary coming soon!

ASIAN LC 260 – Midnight's Children: South Asian Literature and Culture after 1947

Overview of Course
Course summary coming soon!

ASIAN LC 261 – The Big B: Amitabh Bachchan and Bollywood Stardom

Overview of Course
The Hindi film industry, often called Bollywood, is famously one of the world’s biggest and most recognizable. Every year, the studios in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) put out hundreds of movies, in addition to hundreds more that are released by India’s other film industries in languages like Tamil, Telugu, and Bengali. Most of these movies are full of songs and dances, and bring action, comedy, tragedy, and romance together into one (often very complex) story. As the subject of our class has said, Hindi cinema “offers poetic justice in three hours. You walk away with a smile on your lips and dried tears on your cheeks.”

Film industries everywhere choose a few actors to elevate above all others. The biggest of these movie stars in India, and perhaps in the world, is Amitabh Bachchan. With his brooding, rebellious charisma, not to mention his ready wit, resonant baritone voice, and enviable dance moves, his “angry young man” persona dominated the films of the 1970s. Today, half a century after his film debut, he is still a major star. His face and voice are instantly recognizable, not only throughout South Asia and its diaspora, but in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere. As his characters have aged from youthful rebels to somewhat less youthful rebels to stern patriarchs to goofy old men obsessed with their digestive tracts, he has at times seemed inescapable off the movie screen as well. He has spent time in politics, hosted a wildly successful game show, and starred in children’s comic books; one fan has even built a temple to worship him as a literal idol.

In this course, we will focus on Amitabh Bachchan, not only because he and his films are so interesting, but because he has so much to tell us about how Indian films work and what a star is. Students will have opportunities to think and write, not only about Amitabh and his films, but about film and celebrity more broadly.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this course, students will be able to:

- analyze Hindi films, and other elements of South Asian popular culture, in light of cultural, social, and political considerations;

- critically evaluate scholarly work relating to South Asian history and culture;

- work with classmates to produce knowledge collaboratively;

- make cogent and persuasive arguments, orally and in writing, incorporating careful analysis of primary and secondary materials.

Teaching Method
seminar/lecture

Evaluation Method
papers and presentations

Class Materials (required)
William Elison, Christian Lee Novetzke, and Andy Rotman, Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation (Harvard University Press, 2016). ISBN 9780674504486; available at https://www-jstor-org.turing.library.northwestern.edu/stable/j.ctvjsf4sr .

ASIAN LC 261 – Living Indian Epics - Ramayana

Overview of Course
This course will consider one of two fundamental mythological pillars of Indian society – the great Hindu epic, The Ramayana (Story of Rama). Thought to be composed almost three thousand years ago (give or take a few centuries), this epic tale has been re-told and re-imagined in changing social and cultural contexts ever since. This course is dedicated to understanding the nature of this ancient epic as a modern, “living” text in contemporary Indian society. After we develop, as a group, a basic understanding of the major events and characters of the Ramayana, we will explore it in modern contexts of literature, visual art, film, television, and political rhetoric. We will ask whether the resonance of the epic varies in each of these modern contexts, or if its “meanings” are as immortal as the tale itself. In light of several recent controversies resulting from both scholarly and aesthetic approaches to the Ramayana, we will also consider the difficulty of bridging the fraught divides between religion, literature, history, and art. Therefore this course will provide you with an introduction not only to the fascinating stories of the ancient epic literature itself, but also to major issues of religion, gender, popular culture, and social politics in contemporary India. By the end of the course you will be able to understand and explain how the modern and contemporary cultures of India are constructed, in part, through a constant re-evaluation of the Ramayana among other Hindu epic narratives.

Learning Objectives
You will become very familiar with one of the foundation narratives shaping classical and modern Hindu-Indian society.

You will learn how to understand the intersections of religion, literature, art, and politics.

You will think critically about the ways in which classical religious and literary texts can have significant impacts on modern notions of belonging and exclusion.

Teaching Method
Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method
discussion, quizzes, midterm and final, short writing assignments.

Course Materials (required)
RK Narayan, The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Classics, 2006)
ISBN: 978-0-143-03967-9

All other materials will be available on Canvas.

ASIAN LC 265 – Kings, Courtesans and Khan Artists

Overview of Course

Course summary coming soon!

ASIAN LC 360* – Beyond the Canon; A Radical Introduction to Classical Urdu Literature

Overview of Course

Course summary coming soon!

ASIAN LC 360* – Umrao Jan Ada

Overview of Course coming soon!

ASIAN LC 360* – The Classical Urdu Ghazal

Overview of Course coming soon!

ASIAN LC 370* – Talking the Talk: Language in South Asian History

Overview of Course
Why do people say certain languages are “sweet”? Why are some languages written in several different alphabets? Why have people killed and died, not for a nation or a religion, but for a language? Questions like these will drive our exploration of language in South Asia, both past and present. Although languages sometimes seem like facts of nature, they have been shaped in profound ways by both human and nonhuman forces, sometimes deliberately and sometimes entirely by accident. In this course, we will examine these histories from a variety of perspectives. Drawing on approaches from cultural and social history, linguistic anthropology, and sociolinguistics, we will think about how political struggles, cultural expressions, and technological revolutions have remade these essential facets of everyday life.

Learning Objectives
At the end of this course, students will be able to: - analyze historical, social, and cultural aspects of language in South Asia and its diaspora; - make cogent and persuasive arguments, orally and in writing, incorporating careful analysis of primary and secondary materials; - critically evaluate scholarly work relating to South Asian history and culture; - work with classmates to produce knowledge collaboratively.

Teaching Method
Seminar

Evaluation Method
Papers, presentations, participation, and short responses

Class Materials (required)
N/A

ASIAN LC 373* – Commemorating Karbala: Shia Islam in South Asian Literature and Culture

Overview of Course

This course will explore the intersection of Shia religious belief and practice with art and literature in South Asia. Shias constitute about fifteen percent of the Muslim population of India and Pakistan today. Despite this minority status, Shia Islam has had a broad influence on intellectual and ethical thought in South Asia, with a particularly profound impact on Sufism. Royal patronage in in cities like Hyderabad and Lucknow also allowed Shiism to develop a rich visual and literary culture that speaks to the core tenets of Shia devotion. Manifestations of this diverse and syncretistic expression are found in architecture, painting, calligraphy, public performance, and literature, the emotive power of which has influenced Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Pairing scholarly readings with primary source materials, this course will examine the legacy and contemporary relevance of South Asian Shia Islam and its cultural and intellectual heritage. Primary source materials include verse poems written in Hindi and Urdu, which we will read in the original. Copies of all Hindi and Urdu texts will be made available in both the Urdu (Nastaliq) and Hindi (Devanagari) scripts.

Pre-Requisite
Fluency or advanced ability in Hindi or Urdu

Teaching Method
Seminar

Evaluation Method
participation, final project

Class Materials (required)
None

ASIAN LC 373* – Buddhist Literature in Translation

Overview of Course

course information coming soon!

Teaching Method

Evaluation Method

Class Materials (required)

ASIAN LC 375* – Buddhist Cultures and the Rhetoric of Violence in Asia

Overview of Course
Although episodes of religious violence are still met with incomprehension and bafflement, even a cursory reading of world history would remind us that religion’s power to inspire violence is not only not new, but it is pervasive. This course investigates the intersections between religion and violence in the context of Buddhist Asia while also considering why in many religious traditions there seem to be a link between the two. It will be structured in two parts: in the first part students will be encouraged to build expertise in the basic concepts, definitions, and general academic consensus (as well as debates) about categories including “religion,” “violence,” “sacrifice,” “ritual,” “martyrdom,” and also “nationalism,” “politics,” and “terrorism” through reading both primary sources (in English translation) and secondary sources (scholarly writings). We will then move into an analysis of case studies that focus on specific circumstances where Buddhist rhetoric, scriptural authority, and religious practices have played a role in violence including suicide, terrorist-related actions, and self-immolation predominantly in pre- and modern Asia. Some of the provocative questions that this course asks include: Why and how is religion involved in politics? Is Buddhism a pacifist religion? How does religion rationalize violence? How can some Buddhist leaders embrace terror as a political tool? Are the recent practices of self-immolation in Tibet acts of violence? Can non-violence be violent?

Learning Objectives
By engaging the recent academic literature in the field, students will be encouraged to improve their knowledge of these problematic categories and engage critically in the analysis of the specific issues dealt with during the course.

Teaching Method
Lectures and Discussions

Evaluation Method
In-class participation and presentation; term paper

Class Materials (required)
Mark Juergensmeyer and Margo Kitts, Princeton Readings in Religion and Violence, Princeton University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0691129143

Michael Jerryson & Mark Juergensmeyer (eds), Buddhist Warfare. Oxford University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0195394849

ASIAN LC 390* – City and Court in Colonial India

Overview of Course
This seminar unpacks the entangled histories of colonial, imperial, court art, architecture and the marketplace from 18th-early 20th century South Asia. It examines the role of images and spaces as sites of social and cross-cultural encounters, and for negotiating racial difference. The course addresses key shifts within visual culture, urbanism, patronage and collecting practices engaging with a wide of media from drawings, paintings, prints, ivory souvenirs and photographs. Focusing on South Asia’s transition from a court dominated culture to its colonization as a British Indian dominion, the course will address the broader framework of the modernity-tradition bind, the rise of nationalism, and the struggle for independence.

Teaching Method
Lecture, Discussion section, Readings, Class Participation

Evaluation Method
Final paper, Attendance, Class Participation, Readings, Writing assignments, Mid-Term paper.

Class Materials (required)
All materials will be provided on CANVAS.

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