Courses

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.

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. 

“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.

Exploration of the rich intellectual landscape of the Chinese middle ages, introducing students to seminal works of Chinese civilization and to the history of their debate and interpretation in the first millennium. No previous knowledge of China is assumed. Instead, the course serves as a focused introduction to Chinese philosophy, religion, and literature.

This course explores the “fantastic” in premodern Chinese literature from the first millennium BCE up until late imperial China. Students engage critically with a selection of masterpieces and examine the historical and cultural specificity of what constitutes the “fantastic.” The course takes a chronological approach, and within the chronology, each class focuses on a specific theme, such as shifting boundaries of human/non-human, the aestheticization of female ghosts, and the use of the fantastic as social criticism and allegory.

Core concepts and traditions of classical Japanese poetry explored through the medium of translation. Readings from anthologies and treatises of the ninth through early twentieth centuries. Attention to recent critical studies in transcultural poetic theory. Inspection and discussion of related artifacts in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Yale University Art Gallery. 

Japanese literature and art from the 1920s through the 1940s. The avant-garde and mass culture; popular genre fiction; the advent of new media technologies and techniques; effects of Japanese imperialism, militarism, and fascism on cultural production; experimental writers and artists and their resistance to, or complicity with, the state.

What happened to socialism? This course offers an in-depth exploration of this question through the lens of Chinese cinema, from its early days in the early 20th century to the contemporary era. Students examine China's social, political, and cultural transformations, from heteronomy to autonomy, and the ideological transition from socialism to postsocialism. Is socialism with Chinese characteristics interchangeable with capitalism with Chinese characteristics? What impact has revolutionary politics had on Chinese cinema? What is feminism with Chinese characteristics? How do the radical transformations that occurred in China during the 1980s and 1990s manifest in the aesthetics and narratives of Chinese films? How have spatial consciousness and construction of images informed filmmaking in China? How are the sentiments of alienation, disconnection, and displacement depicted in Chinese films? Does globalization bring us closer together or push us towards solitude? The course explores these questions by delving into the cultural dynamics of China's changing identities and ideologies in response to its integration into capitalist globalization. Topics include the evolution of Chinese film generations, cultural politics, postsocialist decay, aesthetics and method of seeing, kinship and love, violence and solitude, fragmentation and disconnection, and feminism with Chinese characteristics in Chinese films. Students critically analyze films by renowned Chinese directors such as Xie Jin, Chen Kaige, Feng Xiaogang, Jia Zhangke, Lou Ye, Zhang Yimou, and Huang Shuqin.

This course is an introduction to Japanese literature written in the last fifty years, with a focus on women writers. We read poetry and prose featuring mothers, daughters, and lovers, novels that follow convenience and thrift store workers, and poetry about factory girls. Our reading takes us from the daily grind of contemporary Tokyo to dystopian futures, from 1970s suburbia to surreal dreamscapes. We attend carefully to the ways in which different writers craft their works and, in particular, to their representation of feelings and affects. Whether the dull ache of loneliness, the oppression of boredom or the heavy weight of fatigue, it is often something about the mood of a work–rather than its narrative–that leaves a distinct impression. We develop the tools to analyze and discuss this sense of distinctness, as well as discover ways to stage connections and comparisons between the works we read. 

In this course, 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.