Courses

Continuation of CHNS 5700. Reading and interpretation of texts in various styles of literary Chinese (wenyan), with attention to basic problems of syntax and literary style.

This first-year seminar is an introductory course to modern and contemporary China through the lens of science fiction. We trace the development of science fiction alongside China's social and political changes since the mid-twentieth century. We discuss narratology, transnational influences, the Cold War, China's development, and cultural shifts and conflicts.

Escalating conflicts between China, Taiwan, and the U.S. are mediated in part by semiconductor manufacturing and their advanced uses, like artificial intelligence. Inquiries into the transpacific history of computer science (CS) can teach us that these relationships have been much more dynamic than ‘Friend or Foe,’ and have shaped CS in various ways. When cutting-edge computing capabilities are at the forefront of national interests, studying CS and U.S.-Asia relations should no longer be separate intellectual tasks, and multi-view perspectives are needed to understand both processes. This course combines lectures with team-based activities to explore the decentered, international history of CS. We focus on the transpacific relations between the United States and East Asian countries, including Asian diasporas in North America. The course focuses on CS research and engineering, with less emphasis on (anti-)social implications such as mis/dis-information and data privacy. The subjects of study include: China-born first-generation digital computer pioneers; digitizing Asian characters; developing transpacific networks of computers and labor; transpacific works in building CS fundamentals. The course culminates with current moods of exclusionism, trade protectionism, and ‘friendshoring’ across Asia-Pacific regions. 

This first-year seminar in the Six Global Perspectives series offers an introduction to college-level Humanities courses. We read six poems that are considered among the greatest in their very different cultural traditions. By filling in how each of these traditions understood the art of poetry, we consider the ways that verse, across cultures and historical eras, has allowed authors to navigate the challenging relationship between the universal and the particular. We make extensive use of Yale’s rich manuscript archives, historical object collections, and art galleries, and we devote sustained attention to improving academic writing skills. Friday lab sessions alternate between writing workshops and field trips to Yale collections. 

We explore in this course two worlds—the world in which Japanese feudal warriors, the samurai, lived and acted out vendettas, and the afterworld in which history and legend combined as the events of those vendettas were adapted in the three dramatic traditions of noh, kabuki, and bunraku puppet theater. The course considers in depth the twelfth-century Soga vendetta and the early eighteenth-century incident involving the 47 rōnin, or master-less samurai, and introduces the main theatrical forms of medieval and early modern Japan, combining the benefits of a seminar and a survey course. We also look at woodblock prints as complements to kabuki theater and actors. We may add screenings if there is interest. 

An introduction to the literature, culture, and thought of premodern China, from the beginnings of the written record to the turn of the twentieth century. Close study of textual and visual primary sources, with attention to their historical and cultural backdrops.

An introduction to Chinese philosophical, poetic, and visual explorations of landscape and the changing relationship between human beings and nature. Through texts, archaeological materials, visual and material culture, and garden designs from the 2nd c. BCE to modern times, we learn about the Chinese conception of the world, relationship to and experiences in nature, and shaping of the land through agriculture, imperial parks, and garden designs. We conclude with contemporary environmental issues confronting China, and how contemporary parks can help regenerate our ecosystem.

An introduction to the foundational works of ancient Chinese thought from the ruling ideologies of the earliest historical dynasties, through the Warring States masters, to the Qin and Han empires. Topics include Confucianism and Daoism, the role of the intellectual in ancient Chinese society, and the nature and performance of wisdom.

Exploration of the creative powers of imitation in Japanese literature and related cultural pursuits, with a focus on the emulation of earlier Chinese and Japanese models by premodern Japanese authors. This seminar makes use of Yale’s collections of East Asian manuscripts, printed books, calligraphy, and paintings. Discussions will revolve around enduring themes, such as originality, authenticity, nationalism, and universality

This course introduces students to Transpacific Studies with a focus on the historical and cultural relationships between Korea and Latin America. Through literature, film, and scholarly texts, students will examine the underexplored experiences of Korean immigrants in Latin America and Latin American migrants in Korea. Beginning with the early 20th-century history of Korean labor migration to Mexico and Cuba, the course then traces how transpacific movements evolved through the Korean War and into the era of postwar globalization. By engaging with fiction, documentaries, and analytical readings, students will gain insight into how transpacific migrations have shaped diasporic identities, labor economies, and cultural exchange between these two regions.

This seminar examines how Christianity, Buddhism, and shamanism have shaped modern Korean literature and film. We do not study religion by learning its teachings or doctrines, but by exploring how it functions as a cultural and social force that influenced how Koreans experienced modernization, socio-economic and gender inequality, national division, and diaspora. Through novels, short stories, poetry, and cinema from the colonial period to the present, we analyze how these traditions have been represented, debated, and reimagined, discovering the complex and sometimes contradictory roles of religion in Korea—as a support for authority on the one hand, and as a source of resistance and transformation on the other. 

The history of Japanese cinema to 1960, including the social, cultural, and industrial backgrounds to its development. Periods covered include the silent era, the coming of sound and the wartime period, the occupation era, the golden age of the 1950s, and the new modernism of the late 1950s.