Courses

This course is an introduction to Japanese literature written in the last fifty years, with a focus on women writers. Since the 1970s, Japanese women writers have increasingly appeared on the shelves of international bookshops and on the lists of international prizes. These authors have experimented with multiple genres, from romance to horror, and depicted diverse worlds, from the daily grind of working women to the simple pleasures of eating and cooking. Over the course of a semester, students encounter a new novel each week that introduces them to the world of contemporary Japanese literature. Novels are selected around a different theme each year. This year the class focusses on the circulation of post-1970s Japanese fiction as world literature and the economy of literary prizes.

This course is an introduction to Japanese literature from the 1880s to 1980s. Our reading is guided by a different “ism” each week, from 19th-century eroticism and exoticism, through mid-century cosmopolitanism and colonialism, to second-wave feminism and existentialism in the wake of World War II. These distinct moments in the development of Japanese modernism (modanizumu) are shaped by encounters with foreign cultures, and by the importing of foreign ideas and vogues. All the same, we question—along with modernist writer Y­ū Ryūtanji–the “critique that says modanizumu is nothing more than the latest display of imported cosmetics” (1930). We seek to develop a correspondingly nuanced picture of the specific and changing ways in which Japan understood and figured its relationship to the rest of the world through the course of a century. 

Students read key works of Korean literature in English translation from the early twentieth century to the present day. The specific course topic varies by semester. Primary sources include long-form novels, short stories, poetry, and nonfiction writing by representative authors, as well as literary scholarship on themes and historical context relevant to the materials. The readings in this course are arranged in roughly chronological order, requiring us to examine Korea’s colonial modernization process in the first half of the twentieth century, the authoritarian regimes of South Korea from 1948 to 87, and South Korea’s integration into the neoliberal world order after democratization. Supplementary audio-visual materials such as artwork, video clips and music may be presented to students in class. 

Critical inquiry into the myth of a homogeneous Japan through analysis of how Japanese film and media historically represents “others” of different races, ethnicities, nationalities, genders, and sexualities, including women, black residents, ethnic Koreans, Okinawans, Ainu, undocumented immigrants, LGBTQ minorities, the disabled, youth, and monstrous others like ghosts.

Study of the “New Wave” in Japanese cinema in the period between 1955-1975, with focus on how films sought to make social and political interventions both in content and film form. Consideration of what New Wave films and critical writing tell the world about Japan's postwar, high-speed economic growth; student and counterculture movements; and the place of Japan in the Cold War order.

A research course designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate students working on early, imperial or modern China in preparation for their theses. Students use their own research topic as a focus to explore and utilize the wealth of primary sources and tools available in China, Japan, and the West. As a group, we learn about the history of Chinese book collecting, classification of knowledge, the compilation of the encyclopedia Gujin tushu jicheng and the canon Siku quanshu, as well as the darker aspects of censorship from ancient times to the present. For native speakers of Chinese, the course includes secondary literature in English and instruction in professional writing in English about China. Other topics include Chinese bibliographies, bibliophiles’ notes, specialized dictionaries, maps and geographical gazetteers, textual editions, genealogies and biographical sources, archaeological and visual materials, major Chinese encyclopedias, compendia, and databases, and evaluating variations and reliability. The course is supplemented by materials from the Beinecke rare books collection. 

Close reading of the eighteenth-century Chinese novel The Dream of the Red Chamber, with particular attention to historical context. Readings also in secondary and theoretical materials. Students are expected to read three chapters a week in the original Chinese. 

This advanced undergraduate seminar examines the dissemination, visibility, and prominence of Korean popular culture within and outside its national borders. We spend time exploring a wide variety of cultural forms such as music, film, television, fashion, performance, and new media from the early twentieth century to the present-day moment, focusing our attention on the following questions: How did Korean cultural values and historical experiences shape the content, style, and aesthetics of contemporary Korean popular culture? What is the ideological, economic, and socio-political function of popular culture in South Korea today? What makes Korean popular culture attractive to a global audience who are not necessarily familiar with the Korean language and culture? In answering these questions, we examine Korean popular culture against major historical events that took place in Korea over the twentieth century such as Japanese occupation and the Korean War, as well as the military dictatorships, democratization, and neoliberalization of South Korea. On top of conventional research writing assignments, students are also expected to produce creative essays reflecting on their own relationship with Korean popular culture and present them in class. 

This course explores the visual culture of postwar and contemporary Japan through the lens of visual studies. Taking a cross-media approach, it critically investigates diverse visual media such as live-action film and anime, manga, television, photography, performance, advertising, design, material goods, and more, tracing connections to the sociohistorical and cultural backgrounds of their production. Representation is key, but other aspects of visual media analysis, such as consumption, image-making practice, industrial concerns, and the process of constructing media histories is also considered. Students are asked to engage with “Japanese images” as well as the effects these images have on their surrounding social, media, historical, and lived environments. Crucial to this inquiry is the importance of thinking about not only who is looking and whom/what is being looked at but also how and why we look. 

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 second century 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.

Exploration of the creative powers of imitation in Japanese literature, with a focus on the emulation of Chinese models by premodern Japanese authors. This seminar makes use of Yale’s collections of East Asian manuscripts, printed books, calligraphy, and paintings.

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.