This seminar explores topics related to pre-modern and modern Japanese literature. Topics vary by year and participants conduct in-depth discussion, reading and research related to the topic.

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.

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."

Selective survey of the history of religions in Japan from the 11th century through the 16th. Topics covered may include the medieval worldview; apocalyptic thought and related practices; Pure Land Buddhism; Zen; and proselytization and religious competition in medieval Japan.

A selective survey of Japanese religious history from earliest times through the 11th century. Topics covered may include prehistoric religions; the development of Shinto; Nara-period state Buddhism; tantric Buddhism in the Heian period; and spirit possession and exorcism.

This course offers students an in-depth look at the history and historiography of Modern Japan (1868-Present), with a special emphasis on the relationship between empire and everyday life in Japan's modern experience. The course is divided into four chronological units spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and students will have the opportunity to crowdsource their reading materials from a list of recommended and representative books within each unit. Class discussions will provide an overview of the latest English-language scholarship on Japan's modernity to familiarize advanced undergraduates and graduate students with the styles of research and interpretation that inform our understanding of history today.

This course offers students an in-depth look at the history and historiography of Edo Japan (1600-1868). Each week explores a different key theme in the social and cultural atmosphere of Japan under Tokugawa rule to provide a holistic view of life during the "Great Peace." Topics include the emergence of order from a time of instability and upheaval, exchange and tensions with the outside world and between social groups, and the political stakes of Edo's flowering popular culture. Class discussions will also provide an overview of the latest English-language scholarship on the Edo period to familiarize advanced undergraduates and graduate students with the styles of research and interpretation that inform our understanding of Japanese history today. We will pay particular attention to the major epochs in historiography and how their unique concerns influenced the diverse meanings attributed to Edo Japan over the last half century.

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.

Survey of modern Japanese literature with readings in English translation: Postwar and Contemporary 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.