Courses

Close reading of classical Chinese texts (wenyan) primarily from late Imperial China. A selection of formal and informal prose, including memoirs, sanwen essays, classical tales, biographies, and autobiographies. Focus on cultural and historical contexts, with attention to reception in China and in some cases in Korea and Japan. Questions concerning readership and governmental censorship, function of literature, history and fictionality, memory and writing, and the aesthetics of qing (emotion).

This course introduces students to the genre often called huaben, or the vernacular short story. These stories are written in a version of spoken Chinese, and for texts dating from the 17th century are quite easy to read, while providing an unparalleled window onto everyday life. We will be reading a wide range of these stories, in significant volume, and the class will culminate in the student’s writing a final paper.

Chinese self-writing has a rich and multifaceted history. Autobiographical texts not only continue to make for fascinating reading, but they have also long been regarded as an important part of the Chinese literary tradition. Our inquiry pursues three goals: (1) To get an understanding of the conventions of self-writing in China, we read and discuss important premodern Chinese autobiographical texts in classical Chinese from a spectrum of genres, including prefaces, letters, and poems. (2) We review traditional and contemporary approaches to the interpretation of these texts, focusing on questions of narrative, the representation of self-hood, and authenticity. (3) To throw the early and medieval Chinese autobiographical tradition into sharper relief, we look beyond ancient China and include selected autobiographical works of other literary traditions (ancient and modern) into our discussions. To complement the literary sphere, we also look into self-representations in other media. Overall, the seminar revolves around what happens when humans put themselves into their writing: Why are we writing about ourselves and what are the rules of this kind of writing? Why are we reading autobiographies and making them part of our canons? 

Daizuo 代作, which literally means “writing on behalf of another,” or “ghostwriting,” was a widespread practice in premodern China that involved people of various social statuses and connections. No later than the third century, it became typical for literati to compose writings in the name of contemporary figures known by the author. This practice took place across a variety of genres, such as poetry, letters, and memoranda. The people who sought out a helping hand included members of the royal family, officials of different statuses, courtesans, and monks. The course explores this hitherto underexamined socially and culturally significant practice.

An examination of certain key problems in the study of early Chinese thought. Topics vary from year to year but in general include intellectual typologies and affiliations, relating received texts and excavated manuscripts, the role of Han editors in shaping pre-Han textual traditions, ruling ideology, and comparisons with other parts of the ancient world.

In this graduate seminar, we explore cultural representations of non-normative sexualities and gender variance produced in East Asia and its diaspora and survey the scholarly field that is broadly referred to as “queer East Asian studies.” The materials in this course include primary sources such as poetry, fiction, narrative and documentary films, as well as critical writings on LGBTQ history, culture, and activism in Japan, Korea, and the Sinophone world.

This recurring graduate research seminar and symposium examines different areas, periods, genres, and conceptual frameworks in Chinese and Sinophone studies. The topic this year is 1950s–2020.

Exploration of postwar theories of popular culture and subculture in Japan, particularly focusing on the intellectual debates over television and new media.

An introduction to modern Chinese history spanning from the fall of the Qing Empire to the present. Examines the factors that led to the end of China’s dynastic system, the political and social divisions that emerged after the Qing Dynasty’s collapse, and the various alternative visions for China’s future that have arisen from the late nineteenth century onward. Focuses on aspects of political, economic, and social history.

This advanced seminar examines Korean popular music from academic perspectives informed by ethnomusicology, Korean studies, and transpacific studies. The course first historicizes the Korean music industry’s dialogical formation with modern political, economic, religious, and military forces such as Western imperialism, Protestant missions, Japanese colonization, the Cold War, military dictatorship, state-sponsored internationalization, and global technosociality. While the first half of the course emphasizes the Korean domestic industry, the second half pivots outward, focusing on reverse directional flows obtained in the late 20th and early 21st century. We interrogate K-pop’s role in constructions of Korea and Asia in the North Atlantic cultural imaginary and pay particular attention to continuities and disjunctures between K-pop and “world music,” a genre conventionally marking non-Westerners’ colonial difference in the Western music industry. Themes such as race and racialization, gender and sexuality, migration and diaspora, voice and voicing, and media and technology inform our conversations throughout the semester.

News headlines and geopolitical debates alike focus on China’s policies towards Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and other areas on its periphery. But how did these areas come to be regarded as borderlands in the first place? Why does the government of the People’s Republic of China see these areas as core to its national interests? How does PRC policy continue or break away from the precedents set by the Qing Empire and the Republic of China? This seminar course explores these questions. Throughout the semester, students engage with a variety of primary and secondary sources as they produce a major research paper on a related topic of their choosing.

This class offers an overview of modern Japanese literature with a focus on detective fiction. Through detective fiction we can examine key concepts in literature such as narrative voice, point of view, genre, modernism and postmodernism, and learn about debates in Japanese literature, the distinction between highbrow and popular fiction, and the relation between Japanese literature and translated fiction. Detective fiction also allows for the exploration of key issues in Japanese history and society such as consumerism, colonialism, class, gender, and sexuality. Readings include a wide range of texts by canonical and popular writers, as well as theoretical texts on genre and detective fiction.