Courses

Intended for students with some oral proficiency but little or no training in Hankul. Focus on grammatical analysis, the standard spoken language, and intensive training in reading and writing.

Continuation of KREN 130.

Continuation of KREN 132.

An advanced language course with emphasis on developing vocabulary and grammar, practice reading comprehension, speaking on a variety of topics, and writing in both formal and informal styles. Use storytelling, discussion, peer group activities, audio and written journals, oral presentations, and supplemental audiovisual materials and texts in class. Intended for nonheritage speakers.

This course is content and project-based to further develop integrated language skills-spoken and written, including grammar and vocabulary, as well as intercultural competence through Korean media. Through a variety of media, such as print media, publishing, digital media, cinema, broadcasting (radio, television, podcasting), and advertising, students explore and reflect on a wide range of topics and perspectives in Korean culture and society. The course learning activities include interactive, interpretive, and presentational communication; critical analysis; creative and authentic language applications in formal/informal contexts. 

This course is an advanced language course designed to further develop language skills through topics related to contemporary Korea, including lifestyle, society, culture, and literature, supplemented with authentic media materials. This course aims to expand students’ understanding of Korea while enhancing their multiliteracy. 

This course is an interdisciplinary content-based advanced course in modern Korean. It aims to advance language skills in all four areas and cultural competence to communicate with fluency and accuracy. Students build up wide-ranging vocabulary and grammar, while registering and deepening their understanding of cultural aspects through authentic materials and communicative tasks across a variety of topics, such as social, academic, or career interests.

An advanced language course designed to develop reading and writing skills using Web-based texts in a variety of genres. Students read texts independently and complete comprehension and vocabulary exercises through the Web. Discussions, tests, and intensive writing training in class.

This course teaches Chinese characters, Hanja, which are widely used in Korean society, to enable students to utilize them effectively. Additionally, students engage with various advanced Korean materials featuring Hanja and participate in diverse activities based on these resources. Through this process, students comprehensively improve essential linguistic skills in Korean, such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

Analysis of contemporary Chinese politics, with focus on how the country has become a major power and how the regime has endured. Topics include China’s recent history, state, ruling party, economy, censorship, elite politics, and foreign policy.

This class introduces students to 13 important puzzles about contemporary Japanese politics, domestic policy, and foreign policy, discusses various ways in which scholars have attempted to solve these puzzles, and suggests pathways for future research. Together, we seek to explain public policy outcomes across a wide range of topics, including constitutional revision, defense, economic growth, energy, gender, immigration, income inequality, population aging, territorial disputes, and trade. In the process, we learn (1) the important actors in Japanese politics (e.g., voters, politicians, parties, bureaucrats, and firms); (2) the positions that different actors take with respect to various policies, as well as the sources of these policy preferences; and (3) how political institutions block or enhance the representation of these actors’ interests.

This course examines select readings from Chinese church and academic theologians (including Hong Kong writers and diaspora voices) to explore the nature of Chinese Christian thought. The readings cover late imperial Roman Catholic writers, early republican Protestant thinkers, high communist-era church theologians, and contemporary Sino-Christian academic theologians. Students read primary materials in English, supplemented by background studies and lecture material to help make sense of the theological constructions that emerge. The course encourages reflection on the challenges for Christian theology and life in a communist context, on the tensions between church and state in the production of theologies, and on the challenges that Chinese Christianity poses for global Christian thought.