Course Schedule

CHN 517 – Advanced Modern Chinese

Study of advanced modern (Mandarin) Chinese through readings in modern literature. for non-native speakers. Native speakers may not take this course. Graduate-level requirements include more translations and additional reading.

CHN 549 – Foundations of the Chinese Literary Tradition: The Early Modern Period

This course is an introduction to the the major themes and genres of Chinese literature from the Song (960-1279) to the Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. Primary readings will be in Chinese, though translations will be available.
Secondary readings will be in English. The course is intended to be an opportunity for advanced language learners to use their skills to read and translate premodern literature, and for graduate students to gain an understanding of major trends in the study of premodern Chinese literature.

CHN 565 – Chinese/English Translation: Theory and Practice

Introduction to the theory and practice of English-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-English translations including study of the role of translation in China-West encounters and learning the craft of translation. Graduate-level requirements include much longer and more difficult assignments.

EAS 556 – Creative Humanities and Art Practices: International Perspectives

Cross Listed

The course investigates ways in which humanities engage in the global creative economy. It examines key concepts such as creativity, aesthetics, and contemporaneity in humanities, and examines how they become inseparable to the rise of the global creative economy, whether through culture industries, digital media, creative spaces, artistic activisms, or urban development. It focuses on the connections and intersections between aesthetics and art, knowledge and information, and creative economies around the world. Examples of the creative economy include cities from Asia, America, Europe, and Africa. This course is suitable for students who are interested in humanities, global studies, media arts, e-society, visual culture and media studies, urban planning, economics, business, and even those dealing with intellectual property laws.

Graduate-level requirements include longer papers, additional readings and research, reading reports, additional meetings with instructor, and significant longer presentations in class.

EAS 577 – Qualitative Research in Applied Linguistics: East Asia and Beyond

Cross Listed · GIDP: Applied Intercultural Arts Research (AIAR) · GIDP: Second Lang. Acquisition & Teaching (SLAT)

This course introduces its students to the theories, principles and techniques underlying qualitative research and its application in applied linguistic research. Students apply the data collection and analysis tools and conduct their own qualitative projects during the semester . We begin by exploring the epistemology of qualitative research. The focus is on principles in designing a qualitative research project, such as constructing the research relationship, choosing among different approaches, and situating events in context . We then move to discuss how these theoretical positions are realized in practice through examining common data collection and analysis methods. In the final part, the students present their own projects and reflect on how qualitative methods can contribute to their understanding of specific issues in applied linguistics. Throughout the semester, we also engage in reading and critique of representative qualitative research in applied linguistics- within and beyond the East Asian context.

EAS 582 – Tantric Buddhism

Cross Listed

What is ritual? Tantric Buddhism employs ritual in radical ways to work towards the goal of enlightenment in this very lifetime. This course provides an introduction to the principles of tantric ritual, including themes of guru devotion, rites of consecration, vows of secrecy, and visualization practice. In particular, the course guides students in contemplating what it means to imagine oneself as a deity as a means of attaining enlightenment. The importance of ritual to the practice of Tantric Buddhism invites us to reflect upon the larger significance of "ritual" for understanding tantra, Buddhism, and religion at large. The course culminates in an in-class colloquium aimed at defining ritual in dialogue with tantric materials.

Graduate-level requirements include additional class presentations on research topics which will build upon the themes of the class to provide additional context, investigate a particular topic in greater depth, or diversify the scope of the material.

EAS 584 – History of East Asian Buddhism

Buddhism in China, Korea and Japan with emphasis on the relationship between East Asian Buddhist thought and practice and the various historical contexts in which they emerged. Graduate-level requirements include assigned readings in primary Chinese or Japanese sources and in modern Chinese and/or Japanese secondary sources, together with a research paper based in part on such sources.

EAS 593 – Internship

Specialized work on an individual basis, consisting of training and practice in actual service in a technical, business, or governmental establishment.

EAS 595A – Graduate Colloquium

The exchange of scholarly information and/or secondary research, usually in a small group setting. Instruction often includes lectures by several different persons. Research projects may or may not be required of course registrants.

EAS 596J – Second Language Acquisition Research

Cross Listed · GIDP: Second Lang. Acquisition & Teaching (SLAT)

The development and exchange of scholarly information, usually in a small group setting. The scope of work shall consist of research by course registrants, with the exchange of the results of such research through discussion, reports, and/or papers.

JPN 522 – Advanced Practice in Japanese

Reading and discussion in Japanese of a variety of advanced-level materials, including newspaper articles, short stories, and poetry. Graduate-level requirements include extra readings and extra translation project.

JPN 547 – Incorporeal and Ambiguous Bodies: Monstrous and Ghostly Tales in Premodern Japanese Literature

This discussion-centered, research seminar examines strange and ambiguous bodies prominently featured in premodern Japanese literature. Reading literary works in translation from the 8th to the 19th century, we will engage with a variety of rich depictions of ambiguous and mysterious bodies, including mythical creatures, vengeful spirits, shape-shifting foxes, strange apparitions, and incorporeal or invisible figures. Our topics of investigation include how ambiguous bodies challenge and reinforce social boundaries; the significance of gender dynamics in premodern sexuality; how the trauma of war is inscribed onto bodies; political authority over corporeal and incorporeal bodies; and the transformation of sacred spirits into the everyday grotesque. We will read a wide range of primary materials in translation, including mythologies, official historical records, literary tales, Buddhist didactic stories, women's diaries, and war-tales. We will also engage with scholarship on the cultural history of the body, religious beliefs, and theories of the monstrous, in addition to various theoretical frameworks related to post-colonial thought and gender studies.

JPN 562A – Stuff in Japan: Material Culture and Consumer Culture in History

Cross Listed

Modern life is filled with stuff. We buy stuff and throw it away, make it and invest it with meaning, and at times desire it, appreciate it, or dispense with it. Whether precious or disposable, artistic or ordinary, durable or ephemeral, the objects that surround us cannot help but shape our lives. This course explores the history of Japan as told through the objects, artisans, and consumers that help to define our experience of the world around us. Each week explores a different key theme in the material and consumer culture of Japan from the seventeenth century to the present to help students investigate how interactions with art, craft, technology, and consumerism mediated Japan's modern experience. Along the way, students will learn foundational theories and frameworks for thinking about material and consumer cultures as driving forces in everyday life, as well as politically potent symbols with the potential to reflect and inform social norms in both capitalist and pre-capitalist societies.

JPN 589 – History of Japanese Religions: Modern

Cross Listed

A selective survey of the history of Japanese religion from the 16th century through the present. Topics may include Shinto and Buddhism; Christianity and its suppression; Edo-period official and popular religion; State Shinto; and Japan's "new religions" and "new new religions." Graduate-level requirements include oral presentations and longer, more in-depth papers.

KOR 596K – Special Topics in Korean Studies

This course is designed to examine different topics in Korean studies, including the politics of modern Korea, late capitalism and social changes, new media and society, inter-Asia cultural flows and cosmopolitanism, youth culture, gender and sexuality, and beyond. Under this same course title, each year will focus on one of the listed topics. Students will be able to explore a variety of significant issues in Korean studies in relation to their own research agenda through this course. Graduate-level requirements necessitate more in-depth reading, thinking, and writing than an undergraduate level course.