Courses

Advanced language course with a focus on Chinese business terminology and discourse. Discussion of China’s economic and management reforms, marketing, economic laws, business culture and customs, and economic relations with other countries. Case studies from international enterprises that have successfully entered the Chinese market.

Advanced language course with a focus on Chinese business terminology and discourse. Discussion of China’s economic and management reforms, marketing, economic laws, business culture and customs, and economic relations with other countries. Case studies from international enterprises that have successfully entered the Chinese market.

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

Continuation of CHNS 170.

This course aims to prepare students for the language requirements of advanced research or employment in a variety of China-related fields. Materials include readings on contemporary social, cultural, and political issues, which are written by prominent scholars in related fields. This level is suitable for students who have had four years of college Chinese or who have taken three years of an accelerated program for heritage speakers.

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

Continuation of CHNS 570.

This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of the complex cultural and political paradigms of late socialism from a transnational perspective by focusing on the literature, cinema, and popular culture of the Soviet Union and China in 1980s. How were intellectual and everyday life in the Soviet Union and China distinct from and similar to that of the West of the same era? How do we parse “the cultural logic of late socialism?” What can today’s America learn from it? Examining two major socialist cultures together in a global context, this course queries the ethnographic, ideological, and socio-economic constituents of late socialism. Students analyze cultural materials in the context of Soviet and Chinese history. Along the way, we explore themes of identity, nationalism, globalization, capitalism, and the Cold War. 

What can we learn about Russian and Chinese cultures through their fantasies? How do Russian and Chinese writers and filmmakers respond to the global issues of animal ethics, artificial intelligence, space immigration, surveillance, gender and sexuality? How are Russian and Chinese visions of the future different from and similar to the western ones? This course explores these questions by examining 20th-21st century Russian and Chinese science fictions in their cultural, historical, and philosophical contexts. All readings and discussion in English. Sci-fi authors and translators will be invited to give guest lectures.

“Grant me chastity and strength of will—but not yet!” In this infamous prayer, Augustine wrestles with a perennial problem for human agency: the apparent gap between knowing that we should do something and actually wanting to do it. How wide is the gap? How can we bridge it? How pervasive is the problem? This course introduces first-year students to writing in the discipline of philosophy by tracing the contours of these questions and exploring their answers in ancient China, ancient Greece, and modern analytic philosophy. We begin by considering the traditional account of weakness of will as akrasia (i.e., doing what one knows one shouldn’t do) and explaining how such a gap in our agency is or isn’t possible. Next, we consider an alternative account, that of acedia (i.e., not doing what one knows one should do), and assess strategies for helping an agent bridge this kind of gap. Finally, we reassess the phenomenon of weakness of will in light of arguments that position it in a broader context, approach it from a new perspective, or try to rewrite our understanding of the phenomenon altogether.

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.

A reading of the central work of prose fiction in the Japanese classical tradition in its entirety (in English translation) along with some examples of predecessors, parodies, and adaptations (the latter include Noh plays and twentieth-century short stories). Topics of discussion include narrative form, poetics, gendered authorship and readership, and the processes and premises that have given The Tale of Genji its place in “world literature.” Attention will also be given to the text’s special relationship to visual culture.